CHICKS FROM DYING IN THE SHELL 19 



arrangements with a Chicago firm from which to buy rice. I can buy it 

 so that I can sell it for S3.00 p^r hundred weight. This is cheaper than 

 wheat for it does not require more than halt as much rice as it does most 

 any other kind of food. It is the best food for little chicks that can be 

 procured; it is nutritious but nothing rich or greasy about it. There is not 

 so much danger of bowel trouble when you feed rice. It is the best food I 

 have ever tried and I have tried everything. Break up charcoal and scat- 

 ter over the floor of your brooder house, or better still, pound it up real 

 fine and mix it with chopped lettuce; it keeps their crops sweet and aids 

 digestion. You must sow lots of lettuce; it will save so much feed. 



Early Hatched Chickens Are Best 



BEST results are obtained from early hatches -March, April and May. 

 There are then not so many disease germs as appear later in the 

 season, and you do not have lice and mites to contend with until 

 June, July, August and September. You can hatch and raise chicks in 

 June, July, and August, but you can raise a greater per cent with less 

 trouble earlier in the season. I would advise every one to hatch their 

 chicks as early as possible. The early chicks seem stronger and grow 

 larger than those hatched later in the season. Another advantage in hav- 

 ing early hatches, the pullets will commence laying early in the fall and if 

 they have comfortable quarters and proper food, will continue to lay all 

 winter. 



I used to hatch chicks all summer, for I had but two incubators and 

 could not hatch as many as I do now. After I hatched all I wanted for 

 myself, I would hatch for my neighbors. In this way I could keep up ex- 

 penses for eggs, oil, incubators, brooders, feed yard, etc. At one hatch this 

 season I took 1,087 chicks from my incubators in one day. I advertised in 

 the papers two weeks before my incubators were due to hatch that I would 

 hatch 1,000 chicks on the 19th day of July. 



Many people have expressed the desire to come to my home when my 

 incubators hatched, so they could see just what I did to obtain such good 

 results. That is why I advertised that I would hatch 1,000 chicks on that 

 day. I invited all to come, and about 100 responded. I exceeded my 

 promise by eighty- seven and only lost twenty-three chicks in the shell. 

 The weather was quite warm and my incubators, six of them, were all in 

 one room. The animal heat in the egg kept up the desired temperature, so 

 that I did not have any lamps under my incubators for four days before 

 the hatch, and removed 97.5 chicks before I used any artificial heat at all. 

 Then I collected the eggs that were pipped and those that were not and 

 put them in one incubator, lighted a lamp and placed under it to finish 



