ON A TOWN LOT 31 



brooder. During the early spring months give them 80 degrees until they 

 are six or eight weeks old, and after they are ten or twelve weeks old the 

 weather has moderated sufficiently to take them from the brooder and 

 place them in a piano-box colony house that is described on page 36 

 I keep them in these houses until they are taken to their quarters. The 

 cockerels are separated from the pullets when they are taken from the 

 brooder. I have the parks containing these_ brooders plowed and culti- 

 vated every spring and sowed with rape seed. This produces a splendid 

 green feed up until the snow flies, and it also makes a splendid shade. 

 It furnishes them with lots of bugs and worms, which are generally found 

 on such plants. At one end of the park I planted two or three dozen 

 hills of sunflowers, which make excellent shade and give a crop of seeds. 

 It is in here that they have their best times and flourish. When the 

 cockerels are two or three pounds in weight I sell off the culls to the 

 market and the balance are kept in these colony houses until the late fall, 

 when they are taken to their winter quarters. After the pullets are four 

 months old they are put in their winter quarters, in order that they will 

 not be disturbed when they are getting ready to lay. 



Making Baby Chicks Work 



Take as one of your mottoes in feeding chickens that, "If they will 

 not work, neither shall they eat." Teach them to work by feeding them 

 in litter, so that they will have to scratch and dig around for what they 

 eat, and keep this up as long as they live. On the third day I feed them 

 hard-boiled eggs (boiled twenty minutes) mixed with bread crumbs thor- 

 oughly dried, or corn bread will make a good substitute. The coarsest 

 ground oat meal obtainable is a very safe food for the first meal. It 

 has been called a perfect chick food. 



At the beginning it is a good plan to mix chick feed in lake or any 

 other coarse sand. This will teach them industry and as they develop the 

 muscles in their legs and bodies, naturally makes them stronger chicks. 



Chick Physiology 



Strange as it may seem, the little fellows thrive on sand and tiny 

 bits of flint. The chicken has no teeth and never will have, and needs 

 something hard, brittle and rough with which to grind its food to pulp 

 when it reaches the gizzard — the "feed mill" of the chicken. The crop 

 is simply a large pouch low down in the neck, into which the food is 

 shovelled, awaiting the process of digestion. Shown herewith is a rough 

 diagram of various parts of a chicken's anatomy. This will show pretty 

 well how food travels on its way down the digestive tract. 



