THE CHICK BOOK 



23 



easily heated with a lamp that will not blow out nor smoke. 

 I prefer the single brooders to the pipe system. In winter 

 heat your house to 60 and 70 degrees and keep your brooders 

 90 degrees at the start, gradually lowering the temperature 

 after twelve days. Dto not let the chicks get chilled at any 

 time nor allow them to crowd, for if you do bowel trouble 

 will be the result, which will take off a large per cent in a 

 Bhort time. Too much heat will weaken them and cause 

 many to die, so you must be very careful, especially at 

 night, about obtaining the right temperature, as it often 

 grows very cool the latter part of the night, so a little extra 

 flame should be left on in cool nights. 



I use runs Ave feet wide, ten feet long inside of house, 

 and outside runs fifty feet long well shaded in summer. 



The next and most important of all is food. I wish to 

 say right here that overfeeding for the first four weeks of a 

 chick's life has put more people out of the business than all 

 other things combined. You can hardly feed too little. We 

 feed four times a day for the first five weeks. The first 

 three weeks we use principally dry food and make them 

 scratch for every meal but that given at night. We feed 

 prepared dry chick food morning and night. At ten and 

 two o'clock we feed millet seed, pinhead oatmeal and 

 cracked wheat. We keep them well bedded with cut clover 

 two or three inches deep, and throw all their food in this. 

 They also eat much of the clover. We feed very sparingly 

 at first. Keep them hungry at all times. Much depends 

 on keeping them at work; it assists in keeping them in good 

 health. We keep grit and charcoal before them all the time, 

 and fresh water is always before them. Care must be 

 taken to keep their drinking dishes free from slime; they 

 should be washed daily. Clean your brooder every other 

 day if you bed with cut hay, and every day if you use sand 

 or bran. 



After three weeks your chicks will begin to tire of this 

 feed, then we give two meals a day of soft food composed 

 of one part stale bread soaked in water, or better, milk, one 

 part bran, one part hominy meal, ten per cent finely 

 ground meat. The same mash with ten per cent good 

 beef scraps is a grand growing food and much more easily 

 prepared, but more expensive. We continue feeding chick 

 feed once a day for two weeks longer, giving mash morn- 

 ing and night, using cracked corn and wheat once a day. 

 If running for broilers make your mash one-half cornmeal. 

 We run but fifty to sixty chicks in one lot, as this is enough 

 for any single brooder if you want them to live. 



After they are old enough to leave the brooder and you 

 cannot give free range make yards twenty feet wide by one 

 hundred feet long and put sixty to seventy-five in a flock on 

 grass yards with plenty of shade, dividing the pullets from 

 the cockerels. Keep them free from lice and you will have 

 birds of fine quality for breeders. EDGAR BRIGGS. 



PRINCIPALLY A QUESTION OP MOISTURE. 



"I can hatch the chicks easily enough, but to raise them 

 is the question." This expression is very frequently heard 

 from those raising poultry by artificial methods, 



I have done a great deal of experimenting along this 

 line during the past eight years. Somi3 seven years ago I 

 thought I had struck the right idea for brooding young 

 chicks When first hatched. I had three separate houses, 

 7x12. I built flues on each of these houses and put indoor 

 brooders in them, also a small stove. Now, for the results. 

 The chicks did fine for about a week and I thought now I 

 am on the road to success, but, lo! I went to feed them one 

 morning and a number of them looked like big toads swol- 

 len to nearly double size. I removed the stoves and the 

 trouble stopped. I then worked along a few years with in- 



door brooders and cool, dry houses with varied success. In 

 1899 I commenced with outdoor brooders. This season I 

 have used nine of them, raising some broods nearly to a 

 chicken, while losing some broods almost entirely — all losses 

 except a few with the universal disease, bowel trouble. 

 Those brooded with hens occasionally died In same propor- 

 tion. I concluded from observation that it was moisture 

 and not the food that caused the trouble, as I noticed if the 

 weather was dry whether the temperature was high or low 

 I raised about all the chicks, and also if I got them by the 

 first ten days without bowel trouble they were all right. 

 To satisfy myself that it was moisture the first week or ten 

 days that gave them bowel trouble I put several hens with 

 chicks up iti a loft for a week. It was perfectly dry in this 

 loft and I never lost a strong chick after this experiment. 

 From this experience I shall construct a room In the loft of 

 some of my buildings next season with plenty of light and 

 ventilation without fire except in the brooder and keep all 

 incubator chicks up above the ground for the first ten days. 



A good many perusing this article will say, "He has 

 not said a word about food." I don't expect to say much 

 about food, as it is immaterial what you feed if you solve 

 the moisture problem. I can raise every chick hatched, as 

 I have done it, on the same food I feed old fowls when there 

 Is no moisture to contend with. Give the chicks plenty of 

 grit and clean water, a little green food and you can safely 

 feed them any food you may have, if you keep them free 

 from moisture the first two weeks of their lives. 



As to space required for brooder chicks, of course the 

 more the better. With my outdoor brooder chicks I use 

 three boards, making a triangular yard, the sharp angle 

 coming up to the brooder, using two sixteen and one twelve- 

 foot boards one foot wide. I keep them In this yard with 

 plenty of chaff to scratch in until they get large enough to 

 fiy over the board. Then I cut small openings in the boards 

 for them to go out and in at will. If you have limited space 

 this yard will accommodate probably forty until near frying 

 size if you are careful about sanitary conditions. I am en- 

 abled to put forty to sixty in brooders three feet square, and 

 keep them in these at night until frying size is reached. I 

 then cull and run them in a movable brood house until four 

 or five months old, gradually moving the brood house 

 nearer to permanent house, and finally moving brood house 

 away. O. E. SKINNER. 



CARE OP BROODER CHICKS. 



It might be of some advantage to some of the readers 

 of this book to know how we raise brooder chicks. While 

 I have never raised brooder chicks extensively I have been 

 very successful, raising from 75 per cent to almost every 

 chick. At one time, out of a hatch of seventy-nine chicks, 

 I raised seventy-seven to maturity. 



These birds were brooded in a home-made brooder 

 heated with hot water put in gallon jugs, using two of them. 

 I used fiannel strips tacked to common laths resting at each 

 end on a cleat nailed to the side of the hover. I use a broad 

 board for a partition dividing the brooder into two com- 

 partments, cutting a small opening in the partition board 

 for a passway for the chicks to the run. This part of the 

 brooder has a glass in the top about 16x24. 



These birds were hatched about March 1st. The first 

 thing we do with our chicks after hatching them is to place 

 them In small baskets with some fiannel cloths in them, 

 wrapping up good and warm — keeping them in that way 

 until twenty-four hours old. By that time I have some 

 fresh corn bread baked just as we use it for our table. Be- 

 fore feeding them I place them in the brooder, which Is now 

 heated up to a temperature of about 85 or 90 degrees. The 



