CHAPTER IX 
CHICKEN-REARING 
no food and no drink. It will not matter if sixty hours 
pass without food. Nature has arranged that the new 
arrivals have a store of the best possible food inside of them when 
born. This is nothing less than the yolk of the egg, which is absorbed 
by the chicken, and is calculated to keep it in the best of health 
for forty-eight hours. This is why it is not only possible but easy 
to send day-old chicks by rail, road or steamer for long distances. 
Day-old chickens will travel to London quite safely from the re- 
mote parts of Scotland or Wales, but nevertheless a twelve hours’ 
journey is ample for the young travellers. 
There are differences of opinion about the first food to be given 
to baby chickens. At one time one was supposed to put a pepper- 
corn in their mouths when hatched. This is an exploded idea. 
To-day, however, it is widely taught that a hard-boiled egg 
chopped up fine should be one of their first meals. Personally I 
think it a mischievous food for a forty-eight-hour-old chicken. If 
a hard-boiled egg is difficult of digestion by man, how much more 
must it be for the little ball of fluff that has lately emerged from 
theegg? The white of an egg hard boiled is not a bad substitute for 
rubber, and is just about as digestible. The yolk portion crumbled 
down is probably all right as a food, but I would not even give 
that hard-boiled before the chicken was at least a week old. 
The very best thing and the safest for a first meal is what is 
called pin-head oatmeal, which simply means the coarsest ground 
oatmeal obtainable. Oatmeal is the most perfect of all chick foods. 
If the chickens are in a coop and run this is best fed either on 
a clean portion of the floor or on a very shallow wooden dish. 
Nothing but oatmeal need be fed for a day or two, but very soon 
82 
FE OR the first forty-eight hours at least give the baby chicks 
