Feeding, Rearing, and Management of Chickens. 
49 
underparts. This will greatly assist in keeping down insect pests, which worry the life out of the 
chickens, and which are the cause of 90 per cent, of the deaths and failures in rearing them. The coop 
should be made high and wide enough to accommodate the hen without cramping her up, as many chickens 
are tramped to death by the hen's movements when in a too confined space. The first three or four days 
cracked wheat, bread crumbs, millet seed, hempseed, and pollard, the latter mixed with boiling water 
into a crumbling state, will bring them along nicely. Change of diet is one of the principal means to 
arrive at success in rearing chickens. This is a good time to begin giving the chickens some meat daily, 
chopped up into very small pieces. This they will relish greatly. Meat will be found of great value in 
feeding chickens, and if a grass run is handy to the coop very little further attention is required. 
Should there be no grass run available, almost any description of green food — lettuce, cabbage, turnip 
tops, thistles, green oats or barley, or fresh-cut grass, cut up very fine, and given daily — will be most 
necessary ; fine grit and broken charcoal should also be placed where it can be obtained by the chickens 
at will. Our experience on the question of coddling chickens (one mistake the enthusiastic beginner is 
very likely to make) is, that it never pays to bother with delicate or weakly chickens. Their existence 
is best terminated at once, which gives the others a better chance. A weakly, miserable chicken often 
irritates the hen, and makes her quite restless, causing the other chickens to be neglected, a sickly, 
weedy one, often standing outside of the coop, making a plaintive and incessant noise, causing the hen 
to make fruitless attempts to get out to it. The others are by this means prevented from obtaining the 
proper attention by being nursed just at a time when it is desirable. 
Cold weather, providing it is dry, suits chickens infinitely better than very hot spells, the latter 
seeming to bake the life out of them, though cold weather, supplemented by a damp or wet coop, 
frequently causes great losses by cramps and colds. Where the ground outside the coop is damp or 
wet, a wooden floor to the coop is the best method. This will prevent ill results from following, and if 
covered with sand or ashes will make them comfortable. When the chickens are ten days to a fortnight 
old it will not be necessary to feed oftener than four or five times per day. This should be continued 
until they are two or three months old, when, after that time, they may be treated on the same lines 
as adult stock. 
To encourage early growth, where this is desired, we know ot nothing better than green cut bone, 
or bone dust, mixed with the morning meal. By being thus given, it has a decided tendency to check 
the inclination to leg weakness, which some breeds are extremely liable to, besides acting as an almost 
certain preventive of diarrhoea. 
Very little success in rearing chickens will be met with if they are allowed to run about indis- 
criminately with adult stock, and it is wise to divide a poition of the run or yard for their separate 
accommodation. The floor of the coop should be raked over and renewed occasionally. The little 
trouble taken fussing about this detail will be amply repaid by the health and growth of the chickens. 
Another important point not to be overlooked is to prevent the chickens from roosting on perches until 
they are at least four months old, as this invariably causes them to contract crooked breasts — a great 
disfigurement to. any bird, and a certain disqualification for the Show pen. This can be prevented by 
giving them plenty of soft earth or sand to sleep on until the breast-bone is suflBciently set, which will 
be at or about four to five months old. Insects, such as lice and ticks, play sad havoc with many a 
fine brood of chickens ; but if looked for, and when found, treated at once, will generally save them ; for 
ordinary lice, or the red mite, the carbolic mixture mentioned in the early part of this chapter will 
destroy them, and prevent them making headway ; but the worst of all chicken pests, and one that 
takes off whole broods at a time, is the tick. Many breeders and fanciers are unaware that there is 
such a thing as a chicken tick, and would not know them if they saw them. If a chicken is moping 
about, and making a plaintive noise, their presence may be suspected. The tick always infests the head, 
neck, and throat, burying themselves deeply in the skin ; when pulled out, the chicken cries out in pain. 
