26 Hubbard's poultry secrets. 



the hen kept them very quiet and let them rest, not offering to 

 feed them anything until they were 60 hours old. By doing 

 this, she got much stronger and larger chicks than I did by 

 my method. I found that by following her method of letting 

 the chicks rest, and not feeding them until they were sixty 

 hours old, I got just as strong and large chicks as she did, and 

 I have followed her method ever since. I think this is one of 

 the greatest secrets of starting baby chicks right. 



For the next six weeks I was kept very busy watching her 

 and studying her method of feeding. The first three days, she 

 fed the chicks very little. The food they got was composed 

 of worms, bugs, seeds from weeds, timothy seeds, and tender 

 grass just sprouting up. I noticed they were very fond of 

 this. In fact, I should judge that twenty-five per cent, of the 

 food they ate was green stuff. 



The first thing in the morning, I would find the hen in the 

 shallow ditch scratching for worms. Then she would work 

 up land into the grass and weeds. She would reach up and 

 pull down the timothy hay stalks, and strip the seeds from it 

 and call her flock. They semed to be very fond of this. She 

 would also feed them seeds from the different weeds. Then 

 she would go over into a meadow that had been mowed and 

 catch grasshoppers and bugs. It was a sight worth seeing, 

 those bright little chicks following their mother who was run- 

 ning down a grasshopper. They were right on the job every 

 minute. Now I had found that their food consisted of worms, 

 bugs, seeds of different kinds, of weeds and grass. Another 

 thing I learned, that she fed her chicks only three times a day. 

 She would feed them in the morning and then take a long rest. 

 After the noon feed, she would take another rest, and about 

 four o'clock start feeding them again. This feed would con- 

 tinue until bed time. I noticed the last feed was the heaviest 

 of the day. I also adopted her method of feeding the first 



