THE CHICK BOOK 



53 



I keep the eggs and nest clean. When the chicks are hatch- 

 ing I take the shells out of the nest to give the chicks room. 

 I leave the chicks in the nest twenty-four hours to give them 

 strength. 



Chicks don't need food for thirty-six hours after hatch- 

 ing. The first food is oatmeal, dry, mixed with fine grit or 

 prepared chick feed. Give them cold water and very little 

 at a time when young. Take the hen and chicks off the 

 nest and put them under a good shade tree. Make a coop 

 for hen and chicks two feet long, eighteen inches wide, 

 twelve inches high. Don't nail the top — leave it loose so you 

 can look in at the chicks from the top. Make a slat coop 

 four feet long, two and one-half feet wide and fifteen inches 

 high to put in front of the coop. Let the hen and chicks 

 out in the slat coop so the chicks can run around. Keep the 

 hen in the siat coop for a week, until the chicks get strong 

 and learn the hen's cluck. Let the hen and chicks run out 

 over the farm to hunt bugs and other insects. The exercise 

 makes them strong, and gives plenty of muscle. Peed June 

 chicks by themselves. X don't have any more trouble rais- 

 ing June chicks than I do raising April hatched chicks. 



JOHN W. TANNER. 



difference in caring for late hatched chicks and early hatched 

 ones is in keeping one cool and the others warm. 



U. R. FISHEL. 



PUT THE LATE HATCHED CHICKS IN A CORN- 

 FIELD AND RAISE THE BEST COLORED BIRDS 

 OF THE SEASON. 



I have often wondered why there were not more eggs 

 set and chicks hatched during the month of June. To be 

 sure it takes some precaution to successfully rear chicks 

 hatched in the months of June and July, but not nearly so 

 much trouble and expense as is needed in the months of 

 January and February. To readers of this book who have 

 no brooder houses I will give you my plan for successfully 

 rearing late hatched chicks. Supposing you are aware of 

 the fact that you must not take the chicks oft the nest or 

 out of the incubator until fully forty-eight hours old, it is 

 unnecessary to go over that part of my method. If you have 

 a small poultry house or an outhouse where rats cannot get 

 at the chicks place the brood in this building, keeping them 

 in it for three or four weeks. This gives the chicks size and 

 strength enough to withstand the hot sun and small grass 

 lice. When you move them from the building put them, if 

 possible, in a shady place. If you can do so, by all means 

 place them in a cornfield, for there is no place where a late 

 hatched chick will grow as fast as in a field of corn well up, 

 as it affords them plenty of shade, keeps them off the dewey 

 grass and the fresh cultivated ground gives them plenty of 

 insects, worms, etc. 



I feed my chicks while in the brooder, or say for the 

 first six weeks, a chick food composed of wheat, kafCir corn, 

 hog millet and rice, mixed and cracked, the greater portion 

 of the food being w*heat. To this I add a little pin head 

 oats (very little), hard boiled eggs, some green cut bone, 

 etc. Keep granulaJted charcoal by them all the time, as 

 we'll as fresh water. Do not feed too much, but often. 



Make tihe little fellows work all you can. After you 

 take them from the building they will find plenty to do and 

 require little food. After they are six weieks old change 

 the food to a mixture of rolled oats, cracked corn and whole 

 wheat, feeding three times a day, or better yet, hopper feed- 

 ing, which I believe to be the best way to feed chicks from 

 six weeks of age umtll matured. The White Rock cockerel 

 which Von first at Chicago and for which I refused $400 was 

 a June hatched chick. ' 



There is no use arguing the question, the best colored 

 specimens in nearly all breeds are late hatched chicks. The 



A Shaded Yard tor Growing Chicks. 



INSECT LIFE SURROUNDS THE JUNE HATCHED 



CHICK WITH DELICACIES ITS EARLIER 



HATCHED RELATIVE CANNOT ENJOY, 



AND HELPS TO MAKE IT 



A WINNER. 



To all those interested we most heartily commend the 

 June hatched chicks, for various reasons. 



Many people think, and especially amateurs, that they 

 must hatch a chick in February or March if they wish to get 

 a prize winner, but with our experience nothing is farther 

 from the truth. A truly healthy chicken and one that can 

 successfully combat the pests and diseases that afflict it 

 must start on the voyage of life with all conditions as fav- 

 orable as possible, and there is nothing so conducive to vig- 

 orous growth and good health as warm sunshine; the sun's 

 rays also have a wonderful influence in bringing out and 

 beautifying the plumage, especially in a two or more colored 

 fowl. Another advantage that the June hatched chick has, 

 and one of very material worth to him, is the warmth com- 

 ing from mother earth at that time of the year. Warm feet 

 are a great incentive to rapid growth, but the greatest bless- 

 ing that can probably come to this bird in his race for 

 maturity with his older brother is his opportunity to prey 

 on insect life in his pillage for food. From the very first 

 day that he emerges from the place of his birth to comfort- 

 able quarters on some grassy plot he begins to enjoy his 

 existence in the warm sunshine and to prey on the little 

 worms, spiders and files, and as he grows older and larger 

 and his courage comes to him he becomes a bold hunter 

 and wanders farther from home, making conquests on larger 

 game, like the cricket, and eventually as his strength and 

 endurance come to him he is able to capture that greatest 

 of delicacies to the chicken appetite, the grasshopper. These 

 advantages the earlier hatched bird does not have. At the 

 time of his advent into the world, in March or April, when 

 the atmosphere is usually damp, and there are more or leas 

 cold winds and a great deal of cloudy weather; consequently 

 the chicken hatched at that time of the year has to be shel- 

 tered, carefully fed and supplied with artificial heat, which 

 except in brooders cannot be kept at an even temperature. 

 These difficulties make the raising of early chicks not only 

 very troublesome, but also very expensive. 



One of the greatest obstacles, perhaps, in raising late 

 hatched chicks comes in the extremely hot and dry weather 



