42 CHICKS 



short cut alfalfa. We mix in the. chick feed and it is great 

 fun to see their efforts to scratch. Some topple over, but 

 arise and go at it again. • If you teach them the way up 

 to the hover room the first few times, they* are capable of 

 keeping warm and happy. 



Hovers Discarded April First. 



After April first we discard the hover tops and use only 

 the hover room. It prevents them from sweating during 

 warm nights and gives us stronger chicks. The seventh 

 day we begin to furnish, them green feed, all the chopped 

 onion or beet that they will eat. The eighth day beef scraps 

 in a hopper is put before them. When the chicks are ten 

 days old we open the brooder and teach them to use the 

 house yard, taking care that they learn the way in. 



Three Meals a Day at Three Weeks. 



From then on they are quite self-reliant. At three 

 weeks old the meals are cut down to three a day; the heat 

 is down to seventy-five degrees, and they have been weaned 

 from chick feed and are eating wheat, cracked com and 

 oatmeal. At six weeks of age the birds are placed in colony 

 houses in cool brooders. They have practically free range 

 and are fed by the hopper system, cracked com, wheat, 

 beef scraps, dry mash, charcoal and grit. One feed a day 

 of whole oats and wheat, soaked, is fed at four P. M., in 

 troughs. Fresh water is carried around each morning. 



We clean brooders daily, spray the colony houses once 

 a week and scald the drinking fountains very often. Our 

 birds grow like weeds and we never lose any young stock 

 by sickness after it is six weeks of age. They began laying 

 at five months and eight days this past year, on September 

 seventh, and are still at it. They are bi-ead-winners. 



