90 The Truth About the Poultry Business 



our chicks develop very bad bowel-trouble of the watery 

 kind and begin to die. We immediately begin to change the 

 bran and middlings and use every mixture we can think of, 

 but no change we make does them any good. The more 

 middlings we use now the more laxative the droppings be- 

 come. We feed Turkey Red bran and middlings in the mash 

 and this does not help. We cut out the mash and feed 

 nothing but chick-feed, but this does not work. Now we 

 feed nothing but dry bran with a very small amount of chick- 

 food, but this proves disastrous, for a large number die 

 from lack of nourishment. We now go back to Ration No. 12, 

 and we notice that the chicks pick the bran out of the mash, 

 and yet when we fed the bran with a small amount of chick- 

 food they died rapidly. It seems as though the chick is 

 trying to tell us what it wants, but we cannot understand it. 

 At last the idea comes to us that there is something in the 

 mash it wants and something it does not want, what is it? 

 We cut out the corn and leave only bran and middlings, but 

 the chick does not eat much of the mash. Then we cut out 

 middlings and feed two parts of bran to one of corn, and 

 the chick will eat this ration quickly. Now we see exactly 

 what that chick wanted, it was after the corn, it is not fond 

 of a large amount of dry bran, but it would eat it in prefer- 

 ence to the middlings and corn that were causing the trouble. 

 Instead of getting better, the more corn the chick now 

 gets the worse its condition becomes, and we reach the con- 

 clusion that the chick does not know what is best for it. 

 We now! give a ration of four parts of bran to one of corn- 

 meal, from poor corn, and put down in front of them Russian 

 Red wheat and cracked corn. As the droppings were bad 

 and watery we now bring about pure white-diarrhoea In 

 many of the chicks in a couple of days with this combina- 

 tion of foods. This is not a very good ration to produce 



