RELIABLE POULTRY JOURNAL PUBLISHING COMPANY eS ee AN has invented and built machines to supplant the IWAN hen in the motherly functions of hatching and raising, but the old hen still has a monopoly of the egg producing branch of the business. Still she can supply such eggs as hatch strong, vigorous chicks only when she is well taken care of. The matter of conditioning the breeding stock is not a difficult or intricate proposition. If the birds are kept in good flesh, not fat, and have plenty of good food, fresh air and exercise, there will be no trouble getting fertile eggs that will hatch. Eggs with weak germs will sometimes hatch well, but the chicks will not be worth the trouble. Eggs intended for hatching should not be chilled, but in cold weather should be collected very frequently and placed in a dry room where the temperature is about stationary at 45 degrees. Although it is desirable to set all eggs as soon as possible after they are collected, they may be held for two weeks without much deterioration if the above condi- tions prevail. Cases are recorded where eggs have been kept four and even six weeks, and have hatched. Only such eggs should be selected for incubation as are of medium size and good shape, with perfect or nearly perfect shells. Small or extra large eggs seldom give good results and porous shells allow too rapid evaporation or too rapid absorption, as the condition of the surrounding air varies. From Shell to Brooder. It is not difficult to secure good hatches from good eggs; almost any one having a good machine can obtain a satis- factory hatch. Authorities differ somewhat as to the bene- fits derived from cooling the eggs and a few deny that any good can come of the practice; but the consensus of opinion seems to be that reasonable cooling is decidedly beneficial. In cold weather the best hatches seem to be secured from eggs which are cooled slightly the twelfth day and for an increasing period each day until the eighteenth, inclusive, when they are allowed to remain out of the machine until the shells feel but slightly warm to the touch; but in warm weather they are cooled a few minutes on the fifth and the time increased daily up to the eighteenth day, after which they should not be touched again. On this day they remain out fifteen or twenly minutes and sometimes, on a very warm day, for a half hour. Cooling should be done when turning the eggs at evening. Do not disturb the trays from this time until the hatch is complete. When all the chicks appear to be pretty well dried, open the machine, remove the trays and closing the door, except a minute crack for better ventilation, leave the little fellows in the egg chamber for twenty-four to forty-eight hours, gradually decreasing the temperature until the thermometer registers ninety-five at the end of twenty-four hours. As the thermometer hangs above the chicks, it is probably a Wegree less at the chicks’ heads. I have found this plan to work very satisfactorily. The chicks go into the brooder accustomed to a lower tem- perature and ready to eat anything that they can find. I believe that most machines do not furnish enough fresh air for the little chftks after they are well dried off and open the door just a little that they may be supplied. The temperature of the brooder should be fixed at nine- ty before the chicks are put in, as its complement of chicks adds two to five degrees when they are under the hover. Feeding the Little Chicks. So many different methods of feeding brooder chicks are advised by people whose experience and success entitle them to consideration, that what one man says should be taken merely as an opinion until one tries it and finds it satisfactory for his own use. For years I believed that nothing could equal the time honored corn meal cake baked hard and fed dry to the baby chicks. I doubt if anything can beat it much to-day, but the prepared chick feeds, now on the market, offer a well balanced ration of dry grains with the proper allowance of beef scrap, grit, charcoal, etc., in a convenient form and at a reasonable price. ~ I believe that chicks often get too much food when they are first placed in the brooder and that heavy losses fre- quertly occur from that cause alone. The best results have been obtained when the chicks were left in the incubator for a day and a half without food after the hatch has been com- pleted, and when placed in the brooder fed one light feed the first day, two the second and three the third. Beginning on the fourth day five feeds may be fed daily; but they 2 26 EE CEUICK i BOOK should be very light and never more than enough to satisfy the chicks for the time. Exercise Necessary for Health. Every inducement should be offered the youngsters to scratch and dig and the exercising apartment in the brooder and the adjacent pen in the house should be thickly carpeted with some good scratching material to that end. Hay chaff is one of the best things for this purpose and can be easily obtained. Any one who Stores or feeds hay has more or less of it and is usually glad to get rid of it. It contains many small seeds and bits of clover, which the little fellows make good use of and for which they will search diligently if healthy and not too well supplied by the attendant. The temperature of the brooder house should not be too high. Some will deny that it is well to heat the house at all, and many, either from preference or lack of equipment, supply no heat to the house except that which escapes from the brooders. When the chicks are small, however, I believe that a moderate degree of heat, about sixty degrees, is desir- able in cold weather in that it enables the chicks to spend More time on the floor of the pen getting up their muscle. It should be remembered that sixty degrees recorded when the thermometer is three feet above the floor is not sixty degrees down where the chicks are. Place the thermometer within a few inches of the floor. The best manner of feeding is the one that will best promote exercise. If dry food in the form of grain is given it is best, especially in cold weather, when the little birds cannot get outdoors to exercise, to mix this in the litter and compel them to scratch it out. Pure Air of First Importance. In rearing chicks pure air is a very important factor that seldom gets due recognition. Cheap as it is, and neces- sary for the vital processes concerned in maintaining and developing all forms of energy, it is not unusual to find brooder houses with no provision for any where near an adequate supply. Brooder stoves and heaters are burning out what little oxygen there is while owners and managers are wildly endeavoring to figure out some intricately bal- anced ration to reduce the frightful mortality. Provide plenty of good air under the hovers and wherever else there is a Interior View of Brooder House, with Pipe System, chick, and the science of feeding will be wonderfully sim- plified. Pure, fresh water should be always accessible if a dry grain ration is fed. Opinions differ as to the advisability of supplying water when feeding a mash ration and some poul- trymen seem to have greater success when giving water and others when withholding it. The writer’s opinion is that no water need be given for the first two or three weeks when feeding a moist mash, and that chicks will do well without it. From the Fourth to the Eighth Week. Whatever method of feeding is employed for the first three or four weeks, the scheme to be followed for a few succeeding weeks may be the same. The degree of heat will have been gradually reduced to eighty at the end of four weeks and may be further reduced to seventy at the end of six weeks, where it may remain so- long as the chicks need a hover. No more heat is needed in ih is eT iis AS ES ee Hovers on White Leghorn Poultry Yards. the house than is necessary to remove the chill in the air iu cold weather. A gradual change from the baby food of the first four weeks to the more substantial diet of mash, cracked corn and wheat should be accomplished in ten days or two weeks. This is a period of growth; and the chicks should have all the food they can make use of. More fresh air, exercise, and as much outside run as possible are potent factors in their development. Green food must be furnished. If in spring and the grass has started, fresh short grass cut in the fields when the dew is on, is the best to be had, next to that obtained by free range. But if nothing green is growing a supply of cabbage, mangel wurzels, and clover meal for the mash (one or all three) is the best that can be offered and is of substantial value. I have had success feeding a simple mash of two-thirds wheat bran, one-third corn meal, with ten per cent of beef scraps added, fed three times a day—morning, noon and night, with an allowance of wheat at mid-forenoon and of cracked corn at mid-afternoon. Grit and charcoal should be kept in the pen, preferably in a hopper where it will be clean. No more food should be given at any time than will be consumed at once and if any mash is left it should be taken, THE CHICK BOOK ay up when the attendant takes up and cleans the troughs or boards, as he ought to do after each meal. It is understood, of course, that the grain is fed in litter on the floor of the pen and of sufficient quantity to induce vigorous scratching, but no more. After the Eighth Week. From the eighth week forward different treatment must be accorded those intended for stock purposes or large roast- ers and those intended for broilers; only the broilers-to-be should remain longer in the brooder house. The others should be placed out in the field in roosting coops if the weather is warm or housed in warm (not necessarily heated) quarters if the weather is still severe. Occasionally broiler chicks may advantageously be placed outside, especially if errors or carelessness in feeding have noticeably reduced their vitality or if, in the latter part of the season, it is im- possible to maintain a temperate heat in the brooder house. Usually it is best to keep them in the house where they will take but a moderate exercise and will lay on flesh and fat withoni the toughening of the muscles which takes place when they have free range in the fields. From the eighth week to killing time plenty of green food should be supplied every morning; the grain should be fed as before and the mash materially strengthened. Three parts corn meal, cre part wheat bran and one part first quality beef scraps makes a simple and effective fattening food, which if fed to chicks in good health, supplemented by green stuff, fresh water, grit and charcoal, as directed, will make a full fleshed, fat broiler of unbeaten quality. One of the most important points to remember is that no mash nor troughs must be allowed in the pens except during the few minutes when the chicks are eating. No other than freshly mixed mash should be fed, and any that remains when the troughs are removed should be taken away and may be fed to old birds. A potent cause of trouble is overheating in the hovers. When the older chicks, from eight weeks forward, are al- lowed hovers they will frequently crowd into them at even- ing, cause a high temperature and lose in the night all the flesh they have gained in the day time. If they have access to hovers sufficient ventilation must be provided to keep down the heat. Always look through the brooders before re- tiring and arrange for the comfort of the occupants during the night. Much can be done to that end after the chicks have settled down. For chicks intended for roasters no change in composi- tion of the ration need be made except that a larger propor- tion of hard grain and less of mash should be fed and the number of meals reduced to three per day. Mash may be fed at morning and noon or only in the morning as best suits the judgment and convenience of the feeder, the re- maining feeds being of grain, principally corn, wheat and oats. When it becomes necessary to fatten roasting chickens, they may be confined in yards of moderate area and fed the same as advised for fattening broilers. Occasionally it may be advisable to place some of the quarrelsome males in a room which may be darkened except when they are eating. The hatching and raising of chickens, while requiring constant and painstaking attention, is by no means a diffi- cult proposition or one beyond the ability of the man or woman of average intelligence, and the application of com- mon sense will produce satisfactory and profitable results. H. A. NOURSE. REARING BROODER CHICKS IN FLORIDA. Good Foods, Good Brooders and Love for the Work Produce the Same Results in the South as In the North, By H. Friedlander. book points on a subject on which so much has been written, and by so able and experienced writers, but I simply wish to give an account of My success in raising chickens by artificial means. I used to raise chickens in Ohio for pleasure. Fif- teen years ago I lost my health and was given up by physi- cians as a hopeless case of consumption. But I came to Florida, aud among the pines I regained my health, and to- day I feel much better than I did fifteen or twenty years ago. Two years ago after losing my orange trees by freezes I took a notion to raise a few chickens. I started with a pen of ten hens and one cock from Ohio. That spring I raised two hundred chickens and sold twenty sittings of eggs, but I found it was such a trouble to raise them by hens that I bought a small incubator the following fall. I did not, however, depend on the incubator to hatch all my early chickens, but had some of my neighbors hatch some, and as soon as they were hatched and delivered to me, I put them in the brooders. Of course the climate here and in Illinois is quite dif- ferent, and what I did here will not do there. I kept the brooder outdoors, and at a4 temperature of 80 degrees. When l| SHALL not attempt to give the readers of this the sun was warm enough I let the chickens out in the sand, making a square yard about a foot high around the brooder. I think between incubator and brooder the latter is as im- portant as the incubator. But whatever you do in the poul- try business, incubator or brooder, you must have your whole mind on it, and love it. Many times I got up in the night to see if everything were all right, and often it was not. I feed the first day toasted and ground up bread; a few days later fine cracked corn, then some wheat. Sometimes I make bread out of cracked corn and sour milk. Occasion- ally I give them dog meat, that is, not the meat of a dog, but meat that only dogs will eat, of which we have plenty in Florida. This meat I grind up with a meat grinder. I feed as often as possible—six times a day at first. Every time I look at the chicks I give them something. I had chickens nine weeks old weighing one and one-half pounds and when I left Florida for the north (May 1) I had three hundred chicks and had not lost a single one. By May ist I had sold 2,100 eggs for hatching and 1,000 more during the summer, and all out of forty-five pullets. This year I have seventy hens and pulleis, and expect to raise at least 500 chicks on a lot 100x400 feet. H. FRIEDLANDER. BROODER CHICKS, THEIR FEED AND CARE. One Who Has Raised Flocks of Incubator Hatched Chicks Without Loss Tells How to Feed and Care for Them—Bowel Trouble a Result of Careless Feeding—Regularity In Feeding Desirable. By Mrs. Bert H. White. HERE can one make a beginning in this never \W ending, inexhaustible subject? I consider the feeding of little chicks the most important part of poultry raising. The welfare not only of the chicks themselves, but of future generations of chicks de- pends upon how we feed and care for the young. “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that moves the world” holds good in poultry as well as with humans, and the hand that has fed the little chicks and fed them right this year, is the hand that will move the poultry interest in the coming years. I raised two hatches last year, one of seventy-nine, the other of sixty-three chicks, and did not lose a single one. This fact has given me the presumption to venture tc let others know how I did it. We hatch our chicks with incu- bators and hens—when the hens will sit. I am a great friend of the incubator, and while I have just as much re- spect now for the old biddies as I ever had, I have less con- fidence in them. I feed the incubator hatched chicks just the same as I do the chicks hatched by the hen-mother. I do not think there is quite as much danger from over-feeding the chicks with the hen, as they are less liable to lack the Proper exercise. After the hatch is over I remove the chicks to the nursery brooder, which is heated and prepared for them, and feed. We read so much in the various poultry journals about not feeding chicks until they are twenty-four to thirty-six hours old. I do not believe you could make a chick eat before it is ready to eat, and that is when it is strong enough. The first food consists of hard-boiled eggs, cracker or bread crumbs, and grit, made very fine. This is in propor- tion of two parts of the crumbs to one of egg, and a little grit mixed in. There are several kinds of grit for little chicks, but I prefer the shell grit and roll it fine myself. If this food is prepared right it will be a erumbly dry mix- ture. That is always the first food, and I remove all they do not eat. This, with a little pin-head oatmeal and rolled oats, and a little millet seed sprinkled in the litter in the bottom of the brooder, is the first three or four days’ bill of fare. I give water on the second day and after that sweet milk once a day. On the fifth day I add baked corn bread to this bill of fare. And this is how I make it—two parts coarse cornmeal, one part prepared poultry food, one part bran (counting quarts as parts), a small handful of salt, and a tablespoonful of soda. I prefer to bake it in one large pan rather than several small ones, as there is not so much crust. Bake it until it is thoroughly done, and if it is just right it will be dry and crumble fine and not stick to the hand. This I always keep on hand, and it is one of the principal meals of the day until the chicks are old enough to eat wheat and cracked corn. I always mix a little grit in one of the feeds of the day. After the chicks are two weeks old I feed some coarse cornmeal moistened with sweet milk, and it can be made just moist enough so that it will be mealy. I know it is right when I take a handful and squeeze it and no moisture sticks to the hand. If it is mealy and not sloppy there will be no danger from bowel trouble. Feed this sparingly at first, as well as any other change in food. I always feed five times a day until after the third week, and then only three times a day. Great care must be exercised in order not to over-feed. I believe a great many chicks die from over-feeding, and those that do survive over-feeding are stunted. I think one must always govern the amount of food by the number of chicks in a brood, and no particular amount can be specified for each meal. All conditions being equal, just what they will clean up each time. and no more, is about the proper amount. I begin to feed a little wheat and cracked corn at the end of the third week, and when the chicks are four or five weeks old I feed wheat in the morning and cracked corn at night, with oats for variety. I think oats is a splendid food for growing chicks, but I never have dared to feed it with- out first boiling it. It takes some time to teach them to like oats, but after a time they will relish it as much as they do wheat and corn. I think that chickens of all ages are fed too much corn. Wheat and oats are the best grains for chicks. I like to feed a little millet seed wherever the chicks are in the habit of scratching. It makes a nice little lunch for them at noon—just a few handfuls sprinkled around the brooders, so that they will find it when they come back for a drink and a rest at noon. Once or twice a week I boil the wheat for their breakfast. I boil it the evening before and let it stay on the stove until morning and it is just warm enough to feed. I do not pretend to say that all this is strictly necessary for the successful rais- ing of chicks, but I have tried it and have had good results. Variety in feeding forms an important item. I never mix the grains for variety’s sake. Try feeding the same kind of grain every night for four or five nights without any change, and the chicks will not seem to care whether they eat or not. They seem to say to me—‘That old stuff again!” It may be partly imagination, but I believe that variety is necessary to keep their appetites in good condition. I al- ways keep a box of oyster shell and grit near each brooder. Hatch your chicks early, ‘the quicker the sooner,” as David Harum would say. Spring is the only nesting time for wild birds and it is the only good time for domestic breeds. If by any mischance or continued spell of damp weather, any bowel trouble may result, the feeding of boiled rice or scalded sweet milk will very soon adjust that trouble. I never. feed any condition powder, pepper or any of the poultry cures advertised, but I use plenty of prevention, and never need any cures. Regularity in feeding is a very im- portant matter in successful poultry culture. Have a regu- lar time for each meal and do not vary from it. The first meal should be at daylight, and the last as late as possible before the chicks go to roost. Chicks are early risers and should be let out of the brooder as soon as it is daylight. I always build an enclosure around each brooder, and do not let them out of the brooder, and do not let them out of this enclosure until after the dew is dried off, or on cold windy mornings I can keep them there and put them back in the brooder to keep them from getting chilled. It is a THE CHick BOOK 29 great mistake to allow too many chicks to run together in a brood. Scatter them and have brooders enough so that not over forty chicks are brooding together in the same brooder. I think thirty about the right number. Familiar- ity breeds worse than contempt with chick- ens, it breeds lice and disease. The care of the brooder is very important. I exercise great care in keeping the nursery and brooders clean. How the chicks do enjoy clean quarters, and how they always begin scratching and working, with their little song of ‘‘weeting” all the while. If that does not re- pay you, you have not that love for the work that is necessary for successful poultry culture. The first week I clean the brooder twice, and after that usually give it some attention every day. I put dry sand in the bottom of the nur- sery and brooders and cover that with chaff or cut straw, and by taking off the top each day the sand need be renewed but once a week. I like the sand in the bottom of the brooders better than chaff alone, as the chicks do not slip in it. I have had chicks lame themselves by slipping on the smooth floor of the brooder. I keep the temperature very near 90 degrees for the first three weeks. After that govern the temperature by the num- ber of chicks in the brooder and the outside temperature. Trim the lamp every evening and fill it so as to insure an even blaze ali night. Sometimes it is not necessary to keep the lamp lit all day in the outdoor brooder. On warm, sun- shiny days the lamp can be put out and lit towards even- ing. If the brooders are not new or have been used before keep an eye open for lice, for like the poor they are always with us, and it is almost impossible to keep the brooder chicks from visiting witk biddy’s chicks. After my chicks are six weeks old I remove them from the brooder and put them in a box to sleep. I get a large dry goods box, and put a tarred paper cover on what is to be the top. This prevents dampness, which is the greatest foe of little chicks. Nail a board on the top and bottom of the open side, or what is to be the front, and put on lath close enough so that the chicks cannot get through. At one end make a gate or door, whichever you wish to call it, out of lath and hang it with a piece of old leather or heavy cloth for hinges, with a hook to fasten .it. (I use screen door hooks.) Put in sand and litter, and you have a good, substantial brooder coop that will last for years. I face these boxes to the south, and if there is a south wind I put old pieces of carpet over the opening for the first few nights. My chicks sleep in these coops until they are old enough to go to roost. Sometimes they grow so they fill the original box too full, and then I have to either give them a larger box or set another right beside the first one. These box coops are moved frequently, and each one is as Just Let Out for Moraing Exercise. Subjects of Experiment at Rhode Island Experiment Station. far from the other as it is convenient to have them. They soon learn which is their very own place to roost, and I am always sure I will find each brood in its place. Of course it is work, but not trouble, and in bad weather I forget all about the work, in the satisfaction of knowing that my chicks are tucked in cozy and dry at night. Keep the drinking fountains clean. Scald them at least twice a week. If you are a close observer you know how foul they become without any one telling you. When it can be had I give all my young chickens sweet milk to drink once a day until matured. I always wash the fountain out after it has had milk in it, before putting water in it, and when the weather is warm enough to sour the milk that is left in the fountain, warm water is used to wash it out. I would just as soon eat my dinner off the same plate that I did my breakfast, without: washing it, as to put water in a drinking fountain that had had milk in, without first washing it. I do not think it a good plan to let chicks drink in the morning before they have had their morning meal. I have had the best results by giving milk for their morning drink after they have had their morning meal. When it is cold I think it is best to warm the milk, and in a continued, damp spell, sometimes scald the milk. I believe in little things, and it is the little things that count with little chicks. A little draught, a little too much food, a little neglect, cause all sorts of big evils and play havoc with the chicks. I do not believe there is a particle of excuse in poultry fanciers allowing so many chicks to die. In nearly every hatch there are one or two runts, and they will make up their minds to live or die in a few days, but atter that if I lose a chick I feel that Ihave been slack or eare- less in some way. I believe that every year the true fanciers are raising a greater per cent of chicks hatched than they did a few years ago. Of course there are people who start in the poultry business not knowing or trying to learn any- thing about the habits and nature of chickens. They fail to raise even ten per cent of the chicks they hatch, but they seldom stay in the business long enough to either help or hinder it. But the true fancier of the stick-to-it type every year will raise “better poultry and more of it.” The care of chicks does not end until they reach the breeding pen. All through the long hot months of July and August they must be under our watchful care. This is the time that is most trying to the beginner, and this is the time that they usually make up their minds to stay or with- draw. Plenty of fresh water constantly before them is very essential for growing chicks. I always want my chicks to have full crops at night, but I want them to be hungry enough through the day to be willing to look out for their dinner themselves. Twice a day is often enough to feed the early hatched chicks through the months of summer. As the cool days and nights come on in the fall, they will let you know when they need an increase of rations. Let the chicks grow lanky and leggy, you can soon put the weight on them when cool weather comes. Care for the little chicks, remember it is always the prize winners that die—that is the reason why we get so few. MRS. BERT WHITE. SUCCESS WITH BROODER CHICKS. Poultrymen Agree that the Strength of the Germ in the Egg is of First Importance—With Well Hatched Chicks, the Problem is More tban Half Solved—Raw Eggs Advised for Small Brooder Chicks. By J. W. Hodson. HEN one begins to think of raising young \W chickens, the first and mest important thing that needs attention is the fertility of the eggs. If you have good, strong, fertile eggs the battle*is half won.. To be sure, judgment must be used in the operating of the incubators and brooders. The nearer we run the machines to nature the better the results; but if the eggs are poorly fertilized, the germ being weak, the best incubator that is made, operated by the foremost expert in the land, cannot get out a good hatch, and there are nine chances out of ten that the chicks that do get out of the shel! will die before they are two weeks old, and those that do not die will never grow as they should. But if the eges have the life and kick in them you need not worry. If you give the little peepers half a chance they will soon show you that they came into the world to stay. It is in the winter when the courage of the poultryman is tested most severely. Sometimes we have filled our incu- bators with eggs in January and February and at the end of twenty-one days wished we had sold the eggs at the store. Sometimes at the end of the fifth day, when we made our first test, our hopes were high and we were telling our broth- er poultrymen what good hatches we were going to have, for we had taken only eight or ten infertile eggs out of a hundred; but by the time the fourteenth day came our as- surance began to wane, and at the end of the twenty-first day we have found that nearly all the little chicks had died in the shell, getting perhaps twelve or fifteen out of eighty- five or ninety tertile eggs. We could not blame the incubator, for it had been tested befcre. The troubie was with the eggs, and the lack of a strong life germ in them was due to some fault either in the hen or male bird, and their inability to produce well fertilized eggs was probably due to some fault of our own— either they were not properly housed or fed, or may be both. The houses may have been too cold or the chickens too fat. In either case’ you will not get many strongly fertile eggs. We keep our incubators in a cellar where the tempera- ture is about the same all the time. Outside changes make little difference in the temperature around the incubators, therefore when we once get our machines regulated we have little trouble with them, and when we go to bed we sleep and get up in the morning to find the thermometers within one degree of where we left them the evening before. Care of the Little Chicks. As soon as the little chicks are thoroughly dried we take them out of the incubators and do not allow them to remain in the temperature of 103 or 104. As long as they are damp we believe they are better off in the incubator, but no longer. We have a brooder ready to receive them that is heated to about 100 around the hover, 85 or 90 about one foot from the hover. We let them remain in the brooders thirty-six to forty-eight hours before we give them anything to eat or drink. They will show signs when hungry. We keep the bottom of the brooder covered with clover chaff or cut clo- ver, and when the iittle ones get hungry you will see them picking and hunting for something to eat. Our first feed consists of a mixture of cracked corn and wheat that has been put in the oven and parched, or roasted as they do coffee, only it is not quite so brown. To this we add a little rolled oats, grit and oyster shells. This mixture is sprinkled in the litter and they must work for what they get. When about one week old we feed once a day a soft mash, consisting of one part wheat bran, one part middlings, one part corn and oats ground together (with the oat hulls sifted out), and about five per cent of beef meal. Mix this well together and take enough raw eggs to make it stiff and crumbly. We use incubator eggs that have been tested out on the fifth day. We think this is one of the finest foods we can get and the way our chicks grow satisfies us that they have about what they need. After the chicks are one week old we feed only three times a day; when less than a week old, four times. We want to see the chicks hungry. J. W. HODSON. | ~ 7 t — Colony Houses and Some of the Piano Box Brooders on Beaver Hill Farm, Described by Charles P. Glogger. BROODING AND FEEDING CHICKS. A Large Brooder Which Can be Converted into a Roosting Coop—Plenty of Room Essential for Growth—The Correct Degree of Heat—The Food and Manner of Feeding. By Charles P, Glogger. particularly extensive, I have learned something A\ ration my experience with brooders is not about the rearing of chicks will benefit the amateur at least. A good brooder is essential. If one intends doing much of any work with brooders, they should be five and one- half feet square, or large enough to hold comforta- bly fifty chicks until twelve weeks old. No matter how large or now small the brooder is, never place more than three or four chicks to every square foot of floor space; overcrowding must be avoided. The best success I have had with young chicks has been with our piano box colony brooders. They are closely and neatly covered with heavy paper, are five and one-half feet square, five feet high in front, three feet high at the back and have a solid shed roof, with a door at the side and a window in front. We set artificially that A Flock of Promising White Leghorn Chicks. ‘them twelve inches off the ground, so that the lamp box underneath can be reached conveniently. The heating ar- Tangement is very simple; we cut a hole in the floor fourteen inches square six inches from the rear wall, making the center of this hole midway between the ends. Into this we ‘fit closely the ordinary square tin radiator, the bottom com- ing flush with the floor of the brooder and resting on pro- jecting cleats, with the fume pipe projecting through the roof of the brooder. We use a No. 3 lamp burner, which gives enough heat in cold weather. Over the radiator with a half inch air space we place a board hover twenty-six inches square so that it projects six inches beyond the ra- diator on all sides. From it are suspended the usual cotton flannel curtains. The thermometer is attached to a round stick twelve inches long which projects through a round hole at the back-of the brooder and which reaches past the middle of one end of the hover. One great advantage of this brooder is that when your chicks no longer need artifi- cial heat you can in five minutes convert it into a colony house by simply lifting out the radiator and nailing a board fourteen inches square in its place. Put in perches and thirty chicks can perch there until ready for the breeding pens. From my individual experience in raising chicks with brooders I find my greatest success is secured when I have less, rather than more, than fifty chicks together. When I do not exceed this number I have no cases of bowel trou- ble if my chicks are healthy when placed in the brooder. Warmth and Food. I start my chicks in the brooders at ninety degrees of heat and the warmth of fifty chicks will soon increase it to one hundred. This temperature, however, should not be maintained more than a week, when it should be gradually reduced to eighty by the time the chicks are three weeks old. This is my plan in the winter or early spring, but later in the season I do not get over eighty-five degrees to start with and gradually reduce to seventy degrees. My exper- ience has been that chicks coddled too much are never strong. For the first week I keep them as near the hover as possible. One cannot be too careful, and a board placed six inches from the hover will keep the little fellows within bounds and they will not become chilled. Should they feel the cold whey can easily get back under the hover again and warm up. As to the manner of feeding, I may not conform to the generally accepted order of things. In the first place I am no believer in soft food for young chicks, but am fully con- vinced that it produces more bowel trouble than any other one thing, not excepting crowding. Therefore it is very sel- dom my young chicks get mash. Forty-eight hours after hatching I sprinkle a few dry bread crumbs on the brooder floor with a little fine grit. I keep milk or water before them all the time, and the second day feed them three times a few broken crackers. The third day I start with my chick feed and I find the little fellows can pick out the small par- ticles in great shape, and how they do grow! In feeding dry food, composed mostly of grain, with the necessary quantity of meats and bone, I believe we imitate nature closer than by feeding a mash. I believe in exercise and see more real benefit in the heat produced in the body by scratching than that which is given artificially. Clover cut in about one-fourth inch lengths is light material and if cracked grain or millet is scattered in this litter, how the little fellows will work! | Another thing 1 never neglect is the use of bran to pre- vent bowel trouble. In each brooder I keep a small box of dry bran and charcoal and the quantity of bran these little fellows will.eat and the good condition of the bran fed chicks is surprising. Our early chicks are fed plenty of cabbage or appies for green food. CHARLES P. GLOGGER. CARE OF BROODER CHICKS. If Labor is an Item of Expense. then a Successful Way of Raising Chicks With One-third the Usual Labor Deserves a Fair Trial. By W. H. Bushell. 66 OW shall we best care for the brooder chicks?” We leave the chickens in the incubator twelve hours after all the chickens are hatched, which gives them strength; then we remove them to the brooder that is heated up to ninety degrees under the hover and seventy degrees outside the hover. We leave the chicks alone in the brooder twenty-four hours before feeding or watering them. The floor of the brooder is coy- ered with sand and cut clover, the clover being used to pre- vent the chicks from slipping. When the youngest chick is thirty-six hours old, we feed and water them for the first time, some of the little ones being forty-eight to sixty hours old. We give them prepared chick feed and clean water in a fountain that is made so that the chick can drink, but cannot get into the waler or soil it. The chick food consists of all kinds of seeds that grow in the fields, with some grit and beef scraps. We feed three times a day and only what the chicks will eat up clean. We feed it in the cut clover so as to force the chicks to ex- ercise. We do not have any bowel trouble nor sickly chicks; nor do we have to run out and feed them every two hours; nor do we keep the cook busy baking johnny cake and all kinds of foolish things and washing dishes; nor do we give milk to drink—it is too mussy. We simply feed the chick feed and give clean water three times a day. The work is cut down and we raise the chickens. It is seldom that we find a dead chick in the brooder. We are often asked by visiting poultry people if the chick feed is not expensive. I always reply that it is the cheapest food you can get, because it saves two-thirds of the labor and you can raise the chicks successfully on it. Besides, it is of great help in keeping the brooders clean. I know we had less trouble to raise nine hundred chicks last year than some people did who raised only one hundred. We use the hot-water, over-head pipe, continuous brood- er system and we keep from thirty to forty chicks in one pen, changing them every week to a fresh compartment. The pens are all built alike, except that some of the pipes are higher to allow for the growth of the chicks and so that the hover will be cooler. By having each pen alike the chicks do not mind the change. They know where to find their hover and they do not “‘pile up.” My house is twelve feet wide, seventy feet long, and is piped the entire length. The pens are three feet wide by nine feet long, which leaves an alley-way three feet wide in which to work. We have been very successful in raising chicks in this house and are well pleased with it. I use a little air-slaked lime on the floor and dust the hover of my brooder once a week. We clean the brooder under the hover every morning and change the straw in the pen every fifth day. I have never had a louse in my brooder house. W. H. BUSHELL. A Substantial Brooding House That Is Well Shaded in Summer—A Building for Storage, etc. (Attached) is Shown at the Right. HATCHING AND REARING CHICKS WITH HENS. The Location for Nests and Protection from Lice and Weather—Care of Hens and Newly Hatched Chicks— Cooping and Feeding the Brood. By H. A, Nourse. HE process of hatching and raising chicks by Alb natural means js simple and easy on the face of it; the hen does the work and in proof of her ability we cite a case wherein the hen steals away and in due time returns with a big brood of chicks which she raises with little or no loss. Granting that this may be the uniform result, we must give some credit to the conditions and not all to the hen. This satis- factory result does not often occur when the weather is cold, but rather when it is warm, and the hen selects a nest- ing place with natural advantages. The nest is surrounded by the pure air of nature, and the hen can leave it without danger of the eggs becoming chilled. She dusts herself thoroughly and often in the damp earth and thus keeps her plumage clean and comparatively free from lice. When the hatch is completed the chicks are not immedi- alely stuffed with food, but exercised gently and brooded frequently while gathering from the pure air oxygen for a myriad of strength giving blood corpuscles, until the nour- ishment with which nature provides all well hatched chicks is assimiiated and stronger food may be digested and made most of by a system ready for the work. But if we want early chicks we must set hens in the ccld and changeable weather of early spring. Sometimes we set them in a place poorly protected from the weather and often the hens are neither allowed a dust bath nor given any protection whatever from the irritating pests—lice. A setting hen deserves about as much protection from cold or heat as an incubator, but seldom gets it. In cold weather a well built warm room is a great advantage and in warm weather, which frequently overtakes the poultry- man before he has finished hatching, well ventilated and moderately cool quarters will be of considerable assistance. Setting the Hen. The nest should be carefully built of fine, soft hay and of such size and shape that the hen will fit nicely into it, affording perfect protection to the eggs. It should be rea- sonably flat on the bottom at hatching time or the chicks attempting to leave the shell at the bottom of the nest will often be crushed by the unhatched eggs rolling down from the sloping sides. Every means should be used to secure the absence of lice. Nothing is so likely to bring about a poor hatch of good eggs or to prevent the successful rearing of the chicks as lice. A dust bath for the sitters to dust in should be provided if practicable and each bird should be thoroughly dusted with insect powder at least once a week, the last dusting to be done three days before the hatch is due. If a pedigree record of the fowls is kept the nest should be marked with the number representing the parentage of the chicks and each chick punched as it is taken from the nest, thereby avoiding all chance of mistake and making the mark when it will hurt the chick least and be least likely to fill up. There is danger of empty shells capping unhatched eggs and imprisoning the chicks and it should be prevented by reaching under the hen and removing the shells at frequent intervals during the exclusion of the chicks, Nothing is gained by hurrying the chicks from the nest; if the hen desires te leave the nest as soon as the hatch is finished (or even while it is in progress) the nest may be covered with a light cloth (if the weather is cold) and the hen allowed to stretch, eat and drink, after which she will again seek the brood and quickly make them warm and com- fortable. It is well to give the hen a little food and water while on the nest if the chicks eome out slowly, confining her to the nest for two or three days. Caring for the Chicks. After the chicks have been out of the shell twenty-four hours it is early enough to move them to their coop. A Stolen Nest. As each chick is taken from the nest, and the identifica- tiou mark punched in the web of its foot, its head should be anointed with vaseline or lard sufficient to smooth the down closely about the skull to kill head lice. The hen should be well dusted and the action repeated once a week so long as she remains with the chicks. If small coops are used it is an advantage to be able to put them under a shed with open front to the south where the chicks will be protected from inclement weather and winds while getting plenty of exercise upon the ground; the hen remaining confined to the coop. I am much in favor of large coops, at least three feet square on the bottom, tightly built to keep out dampness, yet permitting sufficient ventilation to keep them cool in warm weather. Care of the Brood. The first day in the coop the hen should have a good ration of whole corn, but the chicks need only a very light 34 DEE ICEUCK BOOK feed of crumbled stale bread, johnny cake, or prepared chick feed. I incline toward the prepared food, because it can be bought ready to feed at a reasonable price and gives excel- lent satisfaction. The second day the little ones may have two light feeds and on the third day three. After that three, four or five feeds may be offered each day according to the time and in- clination of the feeder, but no more should be given at any time than will be eaten within a few minutes. During the first few days the hen’may be fed any large grain and the brood won’t make much effort to eat it, but after a few days the young ones will try to eat any and everything that the hen does. Cracked corn and whole wheat may safely be fed with the chick feed, the latter being gradually elimi- nated after the second week and its place taken by the cracked corn and wheat, with an occasional feed of mash at the feeder’s option. Clean water should be provided from the start and fine grit for the chicks and coarse grit for the hen should be given with the first feed and be al- ways accessible. A small proportion of animal food is desirable after the first week. Most of the prepared foods contain this in the proper proportion, but if it is supplied by the feeder, sifted beef scraps to make five per cent of each day’s rations will be found very satisfactory for the first two weeks or for four weeks if the chicks have a chance to hunt insects and worms. When the weather is warm and the birds are safe from birds and beasts of prey the hen may be given her freedom and permitted to run with the chicks after the first week. This is of great valve to the chicks, giving them wider range and providing all sorts of little seeds, bugs, worms and in- sects. which nature intended they should have. It makes the chicks self-reliant, too, and better able to take care of themselves, while making the most of their opportunities, when the ben leaves them to shift for themselves. A cropful of food coilected by the chick from nature’s resources is worth two of that fed by an attendant and con- sumed by a chick confined within a narrow enclosure. It is gathered a little here and a bit there, some vegetable and some animal, by vigorous exercise taken under conditions which cannot fail to promote a healthy action of the diges- tive organs. Thus the nourishment is absorbed and the body strengthened and properly developed. Nature’s meth- ods are always best when the work is done in nature’s season. H. A. NOURSE. THE NATURAL METHOD IS SATISFACTORY. How an Expert Hatches and Rears Winners for the Largest Shows—Making the Nests—Sitting the Hens— Cooping and Feeding the Chicks. By M. S. Gardner. chickens in incubators, and raise them in brooders, that little remains to be said upon that subject. Very little has been written, however, in regard to the other and older method of letting the hen rear her own brood. While I use incubators for hatching my earlier chickens, I still hatch the greater part of the May and June chicks under hens, and for two reasons: First, because I believe it gives the hen a rest from laying that is beneficial to her, and second, because I find that chickens hatched and reared by hens prove better foragers and grow faster for me . than those grown in brooders. To successfully raise chickens with hens, several things are absolutely necessary. First, strongly fertilized eggs from perfectly healthy and vigorous breeding stock. Second, quiet, medium sized hens, and properly constructed nests. Third, a man to care for the hens who will exercise eternal vigilance, and who can control his temper under most try- ing circumstances. Doubtless every man who raises chick- ens has a way of his own. Ido not claim that my way is the only one, or even that it is the best, but simply this, that I have been raising thoroughbred chickens for more than twenty-five years, and with success, by the method I shall describe. During the season of 1902 I raised more than five hundred chickens under hens. Although May and June were the wettest months ever known in this state, my loss from all causes did not exceed five per cent of the chickens hatched. eS MANY writers of late have told us how to hatch Setting the Hens. As March is a cold month in nerthern New York, we do not attempt to set any hens until April. When the weather moderates so that we feel sure the eggs will not chill, we prepare to set our first hens. Several pens are reserved for our sitters, from four to ten hens being placed in each pen, depending upon the size of pen and also upon how much room we can spare for this purpose. The nests are made on the floor of straw or swale hay which is held in place by two by fours placed upon the floor or else by narrow strips of board nailed to the floor and not more than four inches high. It is desirable that the hens be able to walk onto the nests, and not be compelled or allowed to fly into them. Sometimes if crowded for room these nests are not more than three feet apart. We usually set several hens at one time. When we have the required number of broody hens we take them carefully from their nests after dark at night and place them in their new quarters, having previously prepared the nests in the manner I have described. In each of these nests we have placed one or two glass eggs or possi- bly cheap hens’ eggs. By the side of each nest is a potato crate or a frame covered with wire netting. Each hen is care- fully set on the glass eggs and a potato crate placed over her. A hen that has been broody for several days and is of the proper disposition to make a good mother will at once settle down upon her new nest and go to sleep. Occasionally one will resent such treatment and proceed to kick up a rumpus. Such hens should be removed at once, as they disturb the quieter ones and seldom prove successful mothers. IT do not find more than one in ten that will refuse to sit ina nest of this kind. The first day we keep the room dark- ened and do not let the hens come off to eat. The morning of the second day the crates are removed and sufficient light let in to enable the hens to see the corn, grit and water that have been previously placed there. A large dust box is also provided for them. Sometimes two hens will fight PEE GEMICGKS BOOKS 35 when first let off the nests, if taken from different pens in the breeding houses, but this seldom proves a serious affair, as they are usually too hungry to waste any time in this manner. After eating and drinking four out of every five will go back to the nest in which we placed them. Some few will exchange nests, but it is very seldom a hen refuses to go back to one of the nests. As all of the eggs are in plain view from all parts of the pen, two hens seldom try to cecupy the same nest. In making the nests we use great care in preparing the bottom so that the eggs will not come in contact with the floor. We also make them rather flat and large enough in diameter so that the eggs can roll from under the hens’ feet as they step into the nests. My reason for making the nests upon the floor is this: Under natural conditions all fowls no doubt built upon the ground, as partridges do. When a hen can walk onto her nest she does it very care- fully and seldom breaks an egg. If compelled to fly or jump up she usually succeeds in falling into the nest and breaking one or more eggs. Another advantage in placing the nest upon the floor is that the eggs do not dry out as badly as when placed far- ther from the ground. The Eggs Require Attention. Now to return to the sitting hens. We have them fed and watered and back on ‘their nests. If one fails to go back the room is darkened, the hen is carefully caught and placed upon her nest, and the potato crate drop- ped over her. If at this time all re- main quiet the eggs for hatching are brought and placed under them. From ten to fifteen are given to a hen, the number depending upon the weather and the size of the hen. In very early spring not more than ten eggs are placed under each hen, as the outer ones may become chilled or at least get cold if more are used, then as the hen rolls them over the chilled eggs are pushed further un- der her and others are rolled to the outside to be spoiled during the next cold night. I am sat- isfied that many poor hatches in early spring are due to the fact that too many eggs are placed under the hens. We now have our hens properly started on their three weeks’ task and have only to watch them carefully and see that they have fresh water every day, with an abundant supply of grit and corn. A lousy hen never should be set. We keep a good supply of fine dry dirt for dust bath before our fowls at all times, so we have no trouble with lice. By the second day we usually remove the potato crates from over the hens and thereafter they are at liberty to come off to eat or roll in the dust bath as often as they desire. Every day when they are off each nest is inspected and if any eggs are broken the others are carefully washed, but we seldom have any trouble of this kind. I have no use for a ten pound hen as a sitter or anywhere else. For hatching purposes I prefer one weighing not more than six or seven pounds. Where it is possible to do so we set all the hens in one pen at the same time. Where some are put in later they usually disturb those that have been sitting, then when the first chicks began to hatch it makes those set later discon- tented. If the weather is very hot and dry and the eggs are drying down too much, we sprinkle the nests with warm water once or twice during the last two weeks. When the chicks begin to hatch we disturb the hens as little as possible. Sometimes if they are very quiet I run my hand very carefully under them and remove all the empty shells so they will not slip over the unhatched eggs and smother the chickens. Cooping and Feeding. Nearly all our chicken coops are dry goods boxes covered with tar paper, to keep the rain cut. These are boarded up tight about half way across the frent, and slatted the rest of the distance, so the chickens can run out and in, but the hen cannot. Into these coops the hens and chickens are removed when the chickens are about twenty-four hours old, a little brau, chaff or dry sand having previously been sprinkled upon the floor. Not more than a dozen chickens are given to one hen and we often give them only seven or eight chicks each. The coops are scattered out through the corn- fields and in other protected places so that each breed has a fresh run and plenty of grass. When the chicks are placed in the coops they ere fed dry oatmeal and hard boiled egg A Fine Place for Growing Chicks on the Farm of Gardner and Dunning. chopped up very fine. They are also given some fine grit and a cup of water, which is refilled as often as necessary and not allowed to sit in the sun where it will become warm. The second day they are fed on cooked food. Three parts cornmeal and one part “red dog” flour or wheat mid- dlings are mixed with skim milk and a sufficient amount of baking soda to make it light. It is then baked until well done. This is softened with milk or water and fed five times a day for the first ten days. At the end of ten days if the weather is suitable the hen is let out of her coop and allowed to go where she pleases. After this they are fed but three times per day. At six weeks or before we begin to feed cracked corn and wheat. Occasionally a hen fails to return to her coop the first night and we must find her and drive her in, but usually they come back without trouble. As each brood of chickens is placed in the coops they are punch marked and examined for head lice. If any are found their heads are greased with pure lard, which usually answers the purpose and a second application is seldom nec- essary. Each night every coop is shut up to keep out the rats and skunks which abound in northern New York. For this purpose a frame covered with a fine wire screen is used. This admits plenty of fresh air, which is absolutely essential to growing chickens. 36 THE CHICK BOOK Some of our hens take their broods fully a quarter of a mile from their coops every day, and in this way teach them to hustle for themselves. Nothing will develop a Barred Rock cockerel’s muscle and make his bones grow like chas- ing grasshoppers through a cornfield. It answers the same purpose as foot-ball for a boy. When the hens begin to wean their chicks, great care must be exercised to prevent crowding in the coops at night, as several broods will often be found in one box. If they are not separated, crooked tails, twisted wings and small, stunted chicks will be the result. I believe crowding and overheating in the coop or brooder to be the cause of more poor chickens, more crooked, de- formed birds, more attaeks of roup and other contagious diseases, than all other causes combined. We do not intend to allow more than ten or twelve chickens in one coop, no matter how large it may be, and as soon as possible teach them to roost, as they are less liable to crowd and pile up in a heap on the roost than in a coop. For this purpose we use a weaning coop, or colony house, set up from the ground, into which we move our growing chicks as soon as they evince a desire to fly upon the top of their small coops at nignt. M. S. GARDNER. HOW I MANAGE SITTING HENS. A Well Known Breeder Tells How He Has Reduced to a Minimum the Work of Hatching with Hens. By Dr. H, F, Ballard. least they like to have some early sitters. To have early sitters we must have early layers. To have early layers we must begin to feed for eggs early, say January 1. Then if you get a few hens to start the in- cubating fever in February you have done well. set every hen that goes to sitting early, and I do not wait for two hens to sit at a time so early in the season. I have an old shed barn in which I set all my hens, and they are never allowed outside of the barn from the day they are set until the chicks are three days old. Each hen has a nest box about eighteen inches square that can be closed in front, I generally get boxes at the grocery or drug store and nail on boards in front and use a barrel stave as a door, which can be slipped down in front when closed. The first evening the hen is placed on two or three china eggs to test her persistence as a sitter and her charac- ter as to temper. If she settles down quietly the first thing she is A No. 1. If she stands and begins to poke her head out between the boards, she is A No. 2. But do not pay any more attention to her now, just go quietly away and let her think it over. The chances are she will be sitting quietly AL O BEGIN with, breeders of Asiatics should have, or at in the morning, but whether she is or not I do not let her off the nest, but place food and water before her where she If she is can reach it, and do not disturb her otherwise. A Prize-winning Hen and Healthy Brood. I aim to. quiet the eggs can be given her the second evening, but if she is restless it is better to wait until the third evening be- fore giving her the eggs. Some hens will do better after they get a nest full of eggs. They seem to know that the china eggs are a delusion and a snare. If the hen persists in standing up and cackling and tramping over the nest regardless of the eggs, the quicker you break her up the better. For the last five years I have never seen a sitting hen that I could not break from sitting in three days, and I am breeding Cochins, a breed that are considered by many people as good for nothing but sitting. Those people simply do not know much about Cochins—that is all. I have bred Langshans, Brahmas and Plymouth Rocks, and the Cochins are no worse than any of them about sitting, while they make the best mothers of the whole list when they sit and hatch a brood. In the same building where I set my hens, I keep all my extra cocks and cockerels. These are divided up into coops of one, two, or three or more, according to their fighting propensities. Into one of these coops our contrary sitting hen—that thought she wanted to sit and would not—goes instanter. If she is a white hen, of course she is put in with a white male bird; if a Partridge, with a Partridge, and so on. Inside of three or four days he has persuaded her to give it up as all a mistake, this sitting business any- how, and you can ‘hen turn her into the regular pen again. So much for the breaking up, and it will work every time, whether your hen has been sitting three days or three weeks, To return to the sitter, providing she sits all right, on the morning of the third day, when she has been on the nest about thirty-six hours, open the door of the coop so she can come off. Do not take her off, but let her come off in her own way. She will be much more apt to go back to the nest of her own accord, but if she does not, try to gently drive her back. If she won’t go back, catch her and put her back and fasten her up again. If she goes back of her own free will you may leave her nest open, as by that time she is getting used to things and will perhaps need little further attention. Sometimes it requires two or three trials before she will go to her own nest, but she must be taught to do so, or fastened up each time until she learns it. In the house where my sitting hens are I always keep plenty of food, water, grit and ash heap to roll in. After your hen has been sitting about eight days you THE CHICK BOOK 37 should test out all the infertile eggs. All the tester I use is a common lantern and my two hands. I set my lantern on top of the box in which the hen is, any time after dark, on the eighth day, or on up to the tenth day. I take each egg between the thumb and first finger of both hands and hold it up between my eyes and the light, so I can see through. If the egg is infertile it will be a clear yellow color all over. If there is a chick started in it the embryo can be seen. Testing in this way is the simplest thing imaginable. I leave the infertile eggs in a basket until morning, when they are broken into the ground feed and fed to the laying hens. If you have a pen of hens that have taken to eatiag their eggs feed them to them without breaking them. Feed them all they will eat and they will get foundered on eggs and soon let them alone. Some writers advise setting two hens at once, and when you test out a part give what eggs are left to one hen, and set the other on fresh eggs. Do not do it. It makes the second hen have to sit too long and about the time she comes off with her chicks you may lose her. But let each hen keep her own eggs and if there are not more than eight or nine chicks when they both hatch, one hen can take all and the other, for her own good,must be broken up. Another thing that I do for my sitting hens is to sprinkle every hen once a week with some good insecticide. I make a mixture of crude carbolic acid one ounce, sulphur four pounds, and sifted coal ashes about eight or ten pounds. This dilutes the carbolie acid sufficiently, so it is not dangerous and can be sprinkled over the backs of the hens on the nests, with the bare hand. As I said in the beginning my sitting hens are among the least of my troubles, but if somebody can tell me how to The Brooder of Our Forefathers. keep my neighbors’ dogs and cats and rats and weasles and minks from killing my birds, without my getting into a racket with my neighbors, such information will be thank- fully received. H. F. BALLARD, M D. HATCHING WITH STRANGE HENS. Orange Boxes Made Very Good Double Nests—The Care of Sitting Hens that are Moved from One Farm to Another. By C. A. Dutton. seasons in managing sitting hens has given very good results, and I will attempt to explain it with the hope that some reader may glean a kernel of helpful information therefrom. I use 2 small room in the barn for sitters, partitioned off for that purpose. For nests I have found nothing better than orange boxes, which generally can be had at any gro- cery or fruit store for the asking. They are about the proper size, each box holding two hens. They are made so as to give a free circulation of air through the nests, which is very essential to the comfort of the hen in warm weather. I have a hinged door to each box to make it handy in letting the hens off and on their nests. For nest material I use straw. Being a Leghorn breeder, I have to buy sitters from the neighbors. I gather them at night and place them in the nests on china eggs. They are not let off until the second day after they are put on the nests. After this they are taken from the nests each day and fed whole corn and grit. The hens are often quite wild, but by being gentle with them they soon become quiet enough to place eggs in their care. Each day these hens are taken from the nests, fed and re- turned again in about fifteen minutes and shut up. This prevents hens from leaving their nests and fighting with ap HE plan which I have followed for the past three other hens, which generally results in broken eggs. I then darken the room aud all is quiet till the next day. By this method I have had hens hatch two sittings of eggs and come off looking well. When buying sitters it is best to make sure that each one has taken up the business in sober earnestness before they are moved to their new location. Those who sell them naturally desire to get them out of the way as soon as possible, and will often urge the buyer to remove them before they have been broody long enough to be reliable. A hen should sit three or four days before she is trans- ferred to another place. Then, if they are handled care- fully and made comfortable during the journey, they will continue to behave well in their new home, even when the surroundings are entirely different. The man who care- lessly pulls a hen off her nest, thrusts her into a sack and jolts her home on his shoulder, ought not to expect the hen to sit. But sometimes she does, for some hens can scarcely be induced ‘to change their minds by the harshest treatment. During the past three years I have bought from twenty- five to forty sitting hens a season and out of this number have had only three which positively refused to sit; and I have had an average hatch of eleven chicks per hen, the season through, by following this plan. Cc. A. DUTTON. A HOUSE FOR SITTING HENS. A Southern Poultryman Hatches With Hens and Incubators, but Prefers Hens for Brooding the Chicks— How the Hatchery is Equipped. By F. E. Winge. WILL give my way of hatching and plans of the kind of hatching houses I use. On account of oil being so ex- pensive in this locality, and for several other reasons, I consider a kind of half artificial half natural mode of conducting the hatching is the best way. Of course my “better half” gives me a hand and I don’t see how I could manage without it, because hired help down here is, to say the least, very unreliable. We have prepared for fertile eggs and vigorous chicks by selecting our best birds, keeping them in good condition, but not in any way forcing them for the sake of winter She will as a rule be waiting for this and greatly enjoy a dust bath, a good drink and a quantity of whole corn. Only one nest door being open, there is no one to fight with and she cannot make a mistake in nests, so no eggs will be broken or chilled. After the expiration of twenty minutes, during which time we are employed with something else, we again visit the hatching house, when as a rule the hens at liberty will have resumed their duty. The second hen in each pen is then liberated and after another twenty minutes the third one. Thus we must be at hand for about one hour, but the actual work in caring for all thirty hens will not take more than ten minutes. The best of it is that any one can be entrusted to do the work now and again should it be necessary. We place a couple of handfuls of mint (which grows wild here) in nest material and there is no trouble with aye a eey PLAN NO 2 SECTION OF NEST BOXES k— 3g ——— o- PLAN Nol1 eggs, and by keeping two males for each pen, placed therein on alternate days. I aim to set six hens and to start a fifty egg incubator at the same time, and as soon as the chicks are dry I divide them among the hens, so each hen gets from twelve to six- teen chicks to care for, depending on the season of year. If there are too many chicks, some of the hens waiting for eggs are made to breod them. We hatch during February, March and April, and in the fall during September and October. Hatching houses are 20x20 feet. The sills are two feet from the ground. The houses could be made any length, but we use them for curing cow-pea hay in and this size has been found most convenient. They are made entirely of 2x4 scantling and 1x12 inch rough boards. Boards on walls are left one-half inch apart and of course not battened so as to admit air for the curing of the hay. Plan 1 shows the floor plan with ten pens. I place three sitters in each pen, thus the house will accommodate thirty sitters at one time. The letter N in plan 1 shows position of nest boxes in hallway; A shows feed and grit boxes; W, water pans, and D, dust boxes. As may be understood, all work in setting and caring for hens is done from the hallway. Plan 2 shows a section of nest boxes without bottom; W is a wire used in closing front door; T top doors; P being nail used for fastening the wire of the front doors. The pens having been cleaned out, water and feed boxes filled, we begin letting out one hen in each pen at 4 p. m. SECTION PLAN No 3 Plan of House and Equipment for the Use of Sitting Hens Described by F. E. Winge. vermin. Above each nest is a piece of pasteboard tacked, with number uf sit- ting, number and kind of eggs, when due, number of chicks and punch mark. When hatch is over it is copied in the hatching record book. It should be re- membered that good accommodations for the sitting hens, not only make the work for caring for them easier, but often are of considerable assistance in securing good hatches. The poultrymen further north, who desire to set hens very early, must protect them from ‘the cold, or good hatches cannot often be obtained. The hen will generate enough heat to keep the eggs at the required temperature during very cold weather, if the building in which she sits offers sufficient protection so that her comb will not be ‘touched by frost and if the nest is deep, warm and snug. In the south we have less of the extreme cold to guard against, but late in the season we find it advisable to see to it that the sitting hens are afforded some protection from the heat. A hen is not comfortable, and will not often bring off a good hatch when she is confined in a hot-box. The building should be sufficiently well ventilated to keep it fairly cool and frequently cleaned anid disinfected to make the air fit for the hens to breath. On poultry farms .where the natural means of hatching are employed and scores, or perhaps hundreds, of sitting lens must be cared for, the time required to do this part of the routine work is considerable and any plan that prom- ises 'to decrease the time required, ana consequently the ex- pense, for “‘time is money,” is worthy of serious attention. It is not well to let off a group of ‘hens in the same apartment at one time, for they are almost sure to fight, or cause trouble in some way. ‘To take off each one sep- arately requires too much time. he house and equipment described enables the one in charge to care for the hens in the best manner and the least time. F. E. WINGE. THE SITTER AND HER BROOD. Making the Nest and Setting the Hen—Feeding and Caring for the Hen and Chicks—A Satisfactory Coop and Runway. By Mrs. S. E. Hurlbut. HE best thing I have ever found in which to set hens | is an empty barrel. Cut a hole nine inches from the bottom end. Make this hole seven inches wide and nine inches high. Put abcut three inches of dirt in the bottom, leaving it about level. Put in a double handful of tobacco stems or waste tobacco, laying it level, then put in enough fine hay or straw to make a good nest. Put a couple of china eggs in the nest and put in the hen. Stand the bar- rel on end and put a board across the top for shelter and to darken the nest, so it is more secluded. This also prevents the hen from flying upon the top where she is liable to foul the nest and eggs. If the hen is uneasy put a board or wire screen in front of the hole in the barrel so that she cannot get out for a day or so. Let her sit on the china eggs for a couple of days so that the nest will be thorougaly warm, then put the eggs under her. Keep plenty of good clean water and ground corn where she can get it and give her a chance for a dust bath. If you havea shed or vacant coop where the ground is dry the bath is assured. You can place several of these nests side by side, as the barrel gives seclusion so that the hens cannot see each other. After the hen has been sitting about a week dust her with some good lice killer, and dust again a few days before hatching time is due. The cover can be lifted from the bar- rel to do the dusting and if for any reason you wish to take the hen off the nest you can lift her out without disturbing the eggs. Leave the chicks in the nest at least twenty-four hours after they are hatched, and it is well enough to put a piece of board in front of the entrance, so that the chicks cannot fall out. It often happens that, if one of the chicks gets out and peeps loudly, the hen will leave the nest and brood the Jone chick, leaving the others to get chilled. At the proper time take the hen and put her in the coop and give her the chicks. After the chicks are a few days old turn the coop over in the evening and dust the hen with powder, which will work down through her feathers onto the chicks. I occasionally turn the coop bottom side up and sprinkle kerosene thoroughly on the inside. Runway Used With Mrs. Hurlbut’s Brood Coop. Feeding the Chicks. The first food given the chicks is usually bread and milk, and for a water dish for small chicks a low tin baking dish, not more than an inch high, is all right. The food I give after the first day is meal and middlings (equal parts by measure) mixed, with about one tablespoonful of animal meal to one quart of the food. This is thoroughly scalded and fed cool five times a day for about two weeks. After that I feed the mash three times a day and in the middle of the fore- noon and af- ternoon they are fed hulled oats and wheat screen- ings mixed. I increase the animal meal gradually un- til they are well feathered out, when I feed about one part animal meal to eight parts meal and middlings—say eight pints of food and one pint of animal meal, or that proportion. I occasionally feed chopped onions, which they always relish, and give them grit and oyster shells. I throw it into the runs and let them eat what they want of it. During the winter, when the hens have picked out the coarse shell and grit, I put the fine grit in a box and keep it to feed to the chicks in the spring. I keep the chicks in the runs until they are well feath- ered out, moving the runs as fast as they eat down the grass, in hot weather being careful fo place them in the shade. I take the hens away from the chicks when they are large enough, and that depends on the weather. In warm weather they will do without the hen younger than when it is colder. Each breeder must use his own judgment, and in fact the keynote of success is good judgment. There are no ironclad rules that fit all conditions. My yards are about fifty by one hundred feet and well shaded. I put the chicks into these yards when they are about ten weeks old. After the chicks eat off the green stuff in the yards, I feed green food once a day and gradually reduce the regular meals to three times a day. Anything I can get that is green I feed them—grass, clover, weeds, radishes, cu- cumbers, cabbage, lettuce, green corn, tomaitoes, apples, etc., all help. I have a good garden and the surplus goes to them. After the first hard frost in the fall I let them run at large and lthey have a picnic in the garden and fields until cold weather. I keep grit and shell in the boxes by them all the time ‘in the yards. I give them plenty of good clean water, keep them free from lice, give them shelter from rains and sun, and when cold weather comes good, comfortable houses. I raise Barred Plymouth Rocks and have no troub'‘e 1 y' Lp . AVM "HU Sve; Coop. 40 THE CHICK BOOK in raising spring hatched cockerels that will weigh nine pounds and over, and pullets that will weigh seven pounds and over by Christmas, Coop and Run for Hen With Chicks. I have seen many sketches of coops, runs, etc., and pres- ent herewith one that I have used for the past ten years with good success. Some of my friends have adopted this style of coop, and one man says of it, “It is the only thing with which I can have any success in the village, as cats are so A Prosperous Brood of Prospective Money thick they get all my chicks if they are allowed to run.” This coop is proof against hawks and crows as well, or any- thing that does not dig. I like the old-fashioned A coop for several reasons. The chicks can get down near the bottom of the coop under the sides, and if the hen scratches they are out of the way. They are cheap and easy to move, are water-proof and easy to free from vermin. I cut the sides thirty inches long, twenty inches wide, using ten-inch wide boards with a batten of tin or wood over the middle joint. Take three pieces of board, one by two, one for the ridge pole, and the other two for battens near the bottom. Nail these to the sides, as shown in shaded places in front of Take by three, and put across the front coop a piece, one five inches from the bottom, as shown in the sketch. Nail a piece, two and one-half inches wide, in the middle, leav- ing a space two and three-quarter inches wide at each side. Then nail the rest solid. Nail a board of matched stuff lengthwise on the back, or bevel the edges so the water will shed properly if not matched. You can leave a small hole at the top of back for ventilation if necessary. I usually cover the ridge with a strip of tin to make it water-proof. When the chicks get large enough to jump up onto the cross- piece and get out, put a piece of one-inch wire netting across the upper part of the front. To make the runs take a sixteen-foot board ten inches wide, cut in two for the sides, eight feet long. Then take another board and cut two pieces three feet ten inches long for the ends, and two pieces four feet two inches long for the cover and top board. Take four pieces ten inches long, two by two, for corner-pieces. Nail the three- foot-ten-inch pieces to them, place them ‘between the sides and nail them securely. Take one piece of the four-foot- two-inch, place it on the end of the run, lay the other piece next to it and nail it securely. Take two straps or T hinges and hang the first board to the one nailed and you have the door by which ‘to feed and water. Cover the balance of the top with one-inch mesh wire netting four feet wide. Saw a hole for the opening in one end eight inches long and five inches wide from Makers: the bottom. Move the coop up to it so ‘that the open- ing will correspond with the end of the run. On cold nights or in rainy weather put a board in front of the coop on top of the run. This is necessary during rain storms, as the rain falling on the boards will spatter into the coop and make it damp unless protected. In hot weather I put the coop and run in the shade, and move them every few days onto fresh ground. These measures are notarbitrary, as the runs can be made longer or shorter, or higher, to suit the fancy of the breeder. I am giving you a general idea. The cover and board adjoining make a-good shelter for the chicks to feed under when it rains and furnish a shade when the sun shines. MRS. S. E. HURLBUT, REARING CHICKS NATURALLY AND ARTIFICIALLY. The Difficulties and How to Avoid Them—Conditions That Affect the Health and Growth of Young Stock—Hatching and Brooding—Feeding Chicks With Hens and In Brooders—Soft Food Best to Produce Early Maturity. By H. E. Moss. HERE is such a multitude of ‘““Don’ts” associated not only with the poultry, but with every other business that to attempt to enumerate them would be an end- less task. What is often called “horse sense,” or good judgment, or brains, must determine between the right and the wrong; but many occasions will arise where ex- perience is necessary upon which to base judgment and where the experience of others can be had and applied. It is equivalent to so much time and money saved, for with- out it we must test the question ourselves and if found to be a failure it is just so much paid for experience or paid up capital. We shall, therefore endeavor to be as clear and explicit as possible, assuming that the large majority who will avail themselves of this advice are amateurs or begin- ners who are willing to profit by the experience of others, and to whom success or failure means much. We shall avoid the don’ts and write from the positive, not the nega- tive viewpoint. The rearing of domestic poultry should show a profit and will do so in proportion to the intelligence with which it is conducted precisely as in any other busness; but where the highest order of talent is employed, the profits on the capital invested will far exceed those in any other legiti- mace business. We Will Start With the Chick As it emerges from the shell. If the eggs begin to pip in the evening they should all be excluded by the next morn- ing. In cool weather compel the hen to keep her nest for twenty-four hours longer; this will permit the chicks to sleep and gain strength, which they will very rapidly, as the absorption of the yolk now begins and the new functions are fully established. Then remove her with the brood to the coop, but before doing so, dust her thoroughly with a good insect powder and apply a little grease or oil on top of the chicks’ heads and under the wings. This will pre- vent much future trouble in fighting lice. This should be repeated once a week until they are past danger and can dust themselves in soft moist earth as their instinct teaches them. Have Your Coops Ready. In severe cold weather they should be placed under shel- ter, but where they get as much direct sunshine as possible. An open shed facing south or east is preferable where the chicks can have a dry run when a late snow covers the ground. A gravel or sand floor is very desirable, and if dry, will be found very satisfactory. Your coop will require no bottom, but can be shifted its width every day, thereby insuring a clean floor. Otherwise a wooden floor is indis- pensable and should be covered with chaff, fine litter, ashes or any suitable material and renewed frequently. Food and Warmth Are now the two factors upon which success depends. The latter need not be considered here, as the hen is to brood them, and she will take care of them; but in cold weather we render it more comfortable for them by placing the coop in a sheltered location, at the same time allowing the chicks liberty to run in the sunshine during the middle of the day. Should the snow be deep, clear a place for them. They thrive better, grow faster and make stronger, hardier fowls than the later hatches that have the extreme heat of summer to contend with before they are half grown. A long protracted hot spell checks their growth in a very marked degree. Cold does iess harm than heat, provided they can run under the hen and get warm whenever they are so inclined, and if the hen or the warmth is always to be found when they want it, there is little danger of them becoming chilled. The best results will usually be had where the hen is kept in her coop until the chicks are weaned, thereby compelling her to hover the chicks when ever they demand it and avoiding the enforced excessive exercise she would often subject them to, tiring them out and making them leg weary. Scatter a shovel of sand in front of the coop, which will serve as their first grit. Have a feeding board or trough ready; also drinking fountain, which wash out daily and keep filled with pure water: After your chicks have been out of the shell thirty-six hours, give them a feed of stale bread crumbs soaked in milk and Squeezed almost dry. They wiil eat sparingly at first, as they should. They have been nourished by the yolk which was taken into the abdominal cavity just before hatching and they would not suifer from the lack of food for three days. The bread and milk does not overtax the delicate digestive organs, which as yet have been unemployed, and it cleanses the crop, gizzard, and intestinal tract and prepares it for its functions. Feed every two hours for the first three days, but only what they will eat up clean each time. Little and often is the rule for little chicks up to ten days old, then the capacity of the crop increases and the inter- vals can be lengthened. We have seen so much of the hard boiled egg nonsense and the fatality from it that it is surprising that any one should recommend it. Others will advise corn meal, johnny cake, meat stew, hash—anything. Now, it would be just as consistent to feed these things to a new born babe as to a chick. It has been done and no doubt some survived, but only because green food happened to be ac- cessible, and the chick after eating the poison, found the antidote. A dog can eat Rough on Rats and then drink a pan of milk and suffer no injury, but that does not justify me in advising it as a steady diet for dogs. Those who pre- fer the dry grain ration should after the third day use pin- head oat meal and a little millet seed until they can eat cracked wheat, finely chopped corn, and hulled oats, which latter should constitute the main food for a growing chick. Add to this a little millet or chopped sunflower seed with a little (very little) ent green bone or lean meat daily after they are ten days old, the amount depending on the season 42 : nb Chick BOOK and the number of insects and worms obtainable on range. Green food or bulky vegetable food should be fed daily and as regularly as a horse er cow is fed hay. It is just as es- sential and serves ihe same purpose in the digestive process in one case as in the other. Accustom them to eat whole wheat, buckwheat and cracked corn as soon as possible. A Preference for Soft Food. Our preference and that of many others, especially where the chicks are raised for market, is soft food, for two reasous: First, because we can combine all the necessary elements and secure the proper ratio of food constituents at each feeding. They cannot select certain seeds or parti- cles which they prefer and waste the remainder, as they will in dry feed. They usually hunt out all the millet seed first. as this is “candy” to the little chicks and a luxury even to old hens. Bury a handful under a haystack and they will leave no straw unturned until they find it. No matter how accurately we figure out our dry feed ration, we can’t force them to eat the less palatable after they have filled up on “candy” and our calculations are knocked out. Second, be- cause a soft, properly compounded food needs no accessories will be very eager for the next feed. When they are not, there is danger ahead. Never feed all they will eat up by lingering over the feed trough. They will overload their crops if permitted and where dry food is given, especially rolled oats, the swelling takes place in the crop faster than the food is passed into the gizzard and often proves fatal. An excess of bran is also dangerous. A little is necessary in some cases and desirable in others, as the husk or shell acts as a stimulant to intestinal action, but an excess causes irritation and bowel trouble. The above is comparatively an easy matter to follow, for when natural brooding is employed more than half of our anxiety is removed, and when the business is to be con- ducted on a small scale this method will answer, but where large numbers are to be hatched and grown, any but the artificial system would be entirely too laborious and out of the question. The above being fully understood, the only change to be considered is Artificial Brooding. Unless we can furnish a uniform and constant supply of heat of the right temperature trouble begins, and once begun there seems to be A Flock of Chicks That Will Grow Fast if Well Fed. except green food, which is imperative in either case, and it saves much energy which would be expended by the chicks in grinding it. Bear in mind, we are raising these chicks for profit and not «ws pets. We must, therefore, force them to the limit of their ability to eat, digest, assimilate and grow. Quick maturity is what we desire. In order to achieve this we must meet all the demands made by the growing powers for material to grow on. You can’t deceive nature. If it calls for nitrogen, carbon will not answer; if it calls for water, nitrogen will not serve, and any ration that is not balanced as it should be feeds one side and starves the other, If any system of feeding could be devised whereby we could mature a chick in four weeks, we should all quickly adopt it, and if we were raising chicks exclusively for market we should not depart from it. Again, a ration may be balanced and its ratio of protein (albuminoids) to carbohydrates, free fat, and mineral salis properly determined and yet fail, as il surely will if the protein is derived exclusively from vegetable or grain sources. The experiment stations have lately proved this fact, which some of us discovered long ago by costly experience, at that time our only teacher. A ration bearing precisely the same nutritive ratio but with a certain percentage of animal protein will be highly suc- cessful, but if lacking it they famish and die from starva- tion in the midst of apparent plenty. A chick properly fed no end. Get this one fact clearly ini your mind, that warnith is more essential than food in handling an incubator brood. They will manage ‘to live on almost any kind of food even if they do not grow and thrive, but variable heat in the brooder is fatal. The chemical and nutritive changes that food must undergo in the digestive process can only be carried on at a high temperature. This is the vital tempera- ture; below it the process ceases. This at once checks nutrition. Doctors describe health as the perfect har- mony of nutritious changes, or physiological ease. If the temperature of the body falls below the vital point, nutrition is disturbed and disease follows. If the chick is chilled before the yolk is fully absorbed, nothing will save it. The nutritive process has been checked. What food is taken afterward passes wholly or partly undigested and death soon follows. Fatal as cold is when prolonged to discomfort, it is necessary after the chick has learned where to run to hover and get warm, to allow them a little exer- cise in an outside run in moderately cold weather when they can take in the sunshine. If left to their choice, they will seek the warmth before they become chilled to the danger point, provided they know where to find it. Here is where the artificial brooder is better than many old hens, that often keep going, no matter how cold it is, while the chicks ery and beg for the warmth that is denied them. Their plaintive peep is sure sign of discomfort, and whenever it is heard it is high time they were looked after. Where chicks are to be raised by the thousands for market, arti- ficial incubating and brooding must be adopted, as it would require too much help at too great an outlay to make it profitable with hens under the natural method. Three sit- ting hens would cause me more trouble and annoyance than one incubator, and with their broods would require as much attention as a brooder house holding several thousand. THE, CHICK. BOOK. 43 The Brooder House Must be warm and dry. There are many good plans published. One that will be found very satisfactory is six- teen feet wide, four feet high in front, and six in the rear with the hip of the roof plumb with the face of the hover so as to allow head room in the passage. Divide your space into three feet at the rear for a walk; two feet for width of hover and eleven feet for pen. This building can be ex- tended any length desired. Don’t attempt to heat the hovers with lamps in any latitude north of Birmingham, Ala., or you will fail. You might be able to get the temperature under the hover high enough, but the pens would be chilly and there is where they must spend the greater part of the day if they are to thrive. Use a water jacket stove and double loop of inch and a half pipe in the hover and a single loop under the windows, of which there should be one in each pen, raised twelve inches from the floor. Make the pens four feet. wide, this with eleven feet in length outside the hoyer is sufficient to start one hundred chicks in, but they must be thinned out as they grow older. A movable lid over the pipes is all the hover consists of. They will be contented and scratch and exercise all day long and run under the pipes when they wish extra warmith. No curtains are re- quired when the building is heated as we describe. They are undesirable at best. When the hover is curtained off it cften is allewed to become filthy, and impure air and ammonia fumes are held there for the chicks § to breathe. If the hover registers too high a temperature and the pens too low, lift or lap the covers so ‘the heat from the pipes can rise more readily. Crowding works much mischief. Out- door and indoor brooders heated by lamps are frequently rated at too high a capacity. If one-half the chicks were assigned to them there would be less loss and better chicks. The action of ithe chicks is a perfect indi- cation of their feelings. Whenever they stand around humped up and chirping, they are in danger and are losing ground instead of gaining. In ordinary winter weather they should be given access to the outside runs for a few hours when the sun is bright. They are better for it and will run in and get warm when they feel inclined. Keep your supply of coarse sand and fine grit and clean drinking water constantly before them. After they are ten days old they are quite hardy and practically safe; and if properly fed and of breeds suitable for broilers they can be made to weigh one pound in forty days, one and a half pounds in fifty-five days and roasters five pounds each at four months. When reared with small yards for exercising they move about much less than when on free range, and while they have sufficient exercise to maintain good health, they have not sufficient te waste energy or flesh or toughen their muscles. They gain in weight more rapidly and make heavier, plumper broilers in a given time. Feeding Brooder Chicks. I use three distinct mixtures of food between hatching and marketing time. The first ten days I take special care of their digestive organs and prepare them for the active work demanded from the eleventh day until two weeks before marketing. I feed a narrow ration, the basis being oats in some form. [I then hasten the finishing with the best pos- sible material, adding more corn, and aim to add flesh faster than frame or feathers and to distribute what fat is deposit- ed in globules throughout the meat, making it tender and juicy instead of accumulating layers of internal fat or patches under the skin, all of which is wasted and lost in cocking and serving the fowl. A properly fattened fowl should not show any visible fat when dressed, but not one in a thousand poultry raisers knows how to put meat on a growing chick, and the only way they can turn out what might pass for a plump broiler or roaster is to work on such breeds as develop the quickest and then cover them with as much fat as possible in addition to the meat. This is all wrong. Soft, tender, juicy meat and a round, plump breast is what is wanted and the fatty delusion must stand aside. TO These Chicks are Housed in Permanent Buildings and have Large, Well-shaded Runs. No one grain has so great a tendency to deposit internal fat as corn, and this is the very last source we should go to for flesh forming food. I believe that in the near future our best markets will demand machine crammed or crate fattened poultry. They have for many years demand:d crammed ducklings. The only reason they have not been known by this name is because no machine is necessary to cram a duckling—he will stuff himself if given the food. The rations fed for any specific purpose may vary great- ly as to material, and in different localities will naturally be compounded of the most available material if suitable, but for a growing chick they should always consist of cats (minus the hulls) in some form as the base, and this forms one-half the ration. Other grains can be varied, whether cracked or ground, but five per cent of the bulk must con- sist of meat or ground bone in some form after they are ten days old as well as an abundant daily supply of succulent green food or steamed clover. If you omit the meat or green food trouble begins and shows in weak legs, naked bodies, stunted and uneven growth and blue, skinny carcasses when dressed. H. E. MOSS. BROODING, COOPING AND FEEDING CHICKS. A Writer who is Regarded as Authority Discusses Brooders and Brooding, Foods and Feeding, and Describes the Proper Care for Chicks of Different Ages. By A. F. Hunter. it is half the battle, as many a poultryman who has rejoiced in good hatches by either hens or in- cubator has afterwards learned to his sorrow. With incubator chicks raised in brooders elbow room seems to be a most important factor, and want of elbow room is one cause of great mortality in brooder chicks. It is quite nat- ural to suppose that a brooder which is three feet square (giving nine square feet of floor space), is abundant room for seventy-five or one hundred chicks, and, indeed, it is for chicks as they come out of the incubator, and if we do not want our chicks to grow it is all right to crowd into a brood- er twice as many as should be init. A point that we should keep in mind, however, is that these chicks will be fully twice as large at three weeks old and probably four times as large at five weeks old, or by the time we move them from the brooder, and that factor we should have in mind in gauging the capacity of a brooder. I have come to believe that for good results fifty chickens are as Many as should be put in any brooder; that to increase the number beyond that point is to induce crowding, which kills some and stunts others, and is extremely unfortunate if quick and profitable growth is our aim. If, as not infrequently happens, we find we have one hundred and fifty chickens in the incubator when we only expected about one hundred, and have but two brooders heated up to receive them, no harm will result in putting seventy-five chicks in each of the two brooders for a couple of days, but another brooder must be made ready at once and the one hundred and fifty chicks put into the three, which gives reasonably abundant room for all of them and they have a good chance to grow. }B\ ATCHING the chicks is but half the battle, if, indeed, We raise chickens on our farm for two purposes, first for market, second for breeding stock. The chickens for market are hatched usually from about Christmas time to the middle of March. Those intended for breeding stock are hatched from about the middle of March to the middle of May. To have chickens out by Christmas time we have an incubator started early in December, and at that time it is our custom to start one incubator a week, or, possibly, four incubators in three weeks, gradually increasing to two incubators a week through January and February, and so on. For these winter chicks we have a brooder house 1380 feet long by ten feet wide, partitioned into sixteen pens eight feet by ten feet, each pen having a door and window in front which faces the south. This brooder-house is double walled, with a four-inch air space between the inner and outer walls (it would be better still if the wall and roof spaces were packed with straw or swale hay), and the only artificial heat used in this house is in the brooders them- selves, excepting that in some severely cold weather we put a small oil stove in each pen to take the chill out of the air, in order that the chicks may be out in the pen. We use brooders which are three feet square, heated by an oil lamp with a one and one-half inch wick, the air which passes into the brooder being heated by passing over a sheet iron ceiling to the lamp chamber, and by this method of applying the heat indirectly a slight current of warmed fresh air is passing into the brooder all the time. Herein, we think, is one of the great faults with many brooders, as, for example, the hot-water pipe brooders in use in many brooder houses. Those hot-water pipes simply heat the air already within the hovers, which air is practically confined to the hovers by the felt curtain in front, which is supposed to enclose the warmth within the hovers. It does that very well, but it likewise encloses the air, which the chicks have to breathe over and over again, and in that defect I think we find a clue to not a little of the mortality and conse- quent shrinking of profits on brooder house chicks. A current of warmed fresh air Supplied to the hovers would overcome this serious difficulty, and would, in my judgment, materially re- duce the mortality of brooder chicks. ‘The brooders are set in the ground to a depth of six or seven inches, which serves a twofold purpose. The lamp chamber is enclosed so as to cut off currents of air, and the chicks run out and in upon a level. For our win- PART OF LONG BROODER HOUSE, The Foreground Shows Brooders Out of Doors, Each Brooder Enclosed in a Pen 20 Feet Square, Made of 18-inch Netting. ter chickens the brooders are set in the middle of the pens in) tthe brooder houses, or, say, about four feet back from the window, and tw@e THE CHiCK BOOK , 45 pieces of board are fitted into slots at each front corner, extending to the side of the pen, so that the chicks are kept in that warm, sunny half of the pen until they are a week to ten days old. The first day after being removed from the incubator they are usually kept confined to the brooder, the food being put on small platters placed in the corners of the brooders for them. After they are old enough to be let out they are fed and watered outside, just in front of the brooders. These winter chickens will need the warmth of the brooders until they are seven or eight weeks old, but the temperature of the hover is gradually reduced from 95 degrees at the begin- ning to 90 or thereabouts at the end of the second week, then to 85, then 80, then 75, and the last week or so that the chicks occupy the brooder the flame of the lamp is kept as low as it ean be run, to give just the least amount of warmth, 65 to 70 degrees being sufficient. The chickens that we raise for breeding stock are brooded out of doors (it being our custom to begin set- ting brooders out about April ist, the these well built coops always at hand, and as we have coops now in use which were built ten years ago, and are as good to-day as when made, the economy of well made coops will be apparent. When we say that the tougues and grooves of the roof pieces are painted before they are put together, the brooders being set in the ground, just as formerly inside the brooder house, but as we have much rainy weather in April and May, we have ‘“shel- ter boards” to serve as protection from the rain, set a little way in front of the brooders, and under which the chicks can take refuge from storms. The chicks put out of doors are kept within the brooder for about one day, then a little pen a yard square made of three pieces of board three feet long set up to the front of the brooder gives them a snug little enclosure for the few days of babyhood. Next we make a pen about twenty feet square of one-inch mesh wire net- ting tied to temporary stakes, and the chicks have the range of this pen until they are big enough to be weaned from the brouder, which, in May and June, is at about six weeks old. Then they are moved back to a grassy ridge bordering the pasture on one side and mowing field on the other. There they are colonized in “A” coops (as we call them) for five or six weeks, when it is time to separate the pullets from the cockerels, and put the pullets out in the grass fields, in roosting coops, in families of about twenty-five each, colonized about fifty yards apart. The cockerels in- tended to be raised for breeding are confined in pens about 50x100 feet, while the cockerels intended for market are taken back to the pens in the brooder house, which have small yards 10x20 outside, and there they are fed and grown for market. The coops for these chickens play a not unimportant part in chicken raising, and a brief description of them may be interesting. The “A” coops are three feet six inches by two feet three inches on the ground and two feet high at the apex of the roof. They are built throughout of half-inch tongued and grooved pine and well painted. The front is all slats, as shown in the illustration, with a slatted gate sliding in grooves to close the front. We originally built “A” coops to slope down to the ground, but found it an im- provement to have a square base four inches high, with the corners turned to an angle, to prevent the chicks from crowding back under the eaves and smothering one or two at a time. We find it a most decided advantage to have BROODERS AS USED OUT OF DOORS. The One in Foreground has a Very Small Pen for Baby Chicks. reader will realize that they are thoroughly well built. The roosting coop, which is chiefly intended for raising the pullets in, is six feet long, three feet wide, two feet high at back and three feet high in front. The roof, ends and back side are all of half-inch tongued and grooved pine, the front being laths, set a lath width apart, except that a strip of board is nailed to each corner for stiffening. Two roosts stiffen it. A coop like this will comfortably house twenty- five to thirty chickens until they are nearly grown; in fact, we sometimes have pullets begin to lay before they are brought in from those roosting coops. It is quite light and can be easily moved on a wheelbarrow, or moved its length and width to fresh ground, or it can be tipped up and drop- pings removed, and it is a perfect summer shelter. If they are to be used in the spring or fall, when the nights are cold, an improvement would be to make a front of half-inch boards, hinged at the top edge, so it could swing outward and upward and rest upon folding legs hinged at the bottom corners, which would become a roof to shelter the birds from rains. One disadvantage of this light coop is, that it may be easily tipped over by a high wind, especially when the chickens are all out of it, as during the day. ‘Io prevent it from so tipping over a flat stone should be placed on each front corner of the roof. The gate space in front of the coop gives access to the whole inside when the pullets are to be removed. The gate is made of laths nailed to two strips one inch square, the left hand ends of which are long enough to slip in behind the lath front, the right hand side being secured by one or two buttons. If one prefers, these gates can be hinged at one side or the other and secured by a hook or a button, but of two by three scantling, slightly rounded at top, run the whole length and are a foot apart, being securely nailed to a frame of furring (one by three stuff) nine inches from the ground. To this frame we nail the ends, back side and front corner boards and then fit in at the top a frame of inch-square stuff to nail the roof boards to and 46 TE (CHICK BOOK we have found it a convenience to have them wholly de- tachable, and so make them. Shelter from rain and sun is of quite as much help as a good coop io sleep in. By experimenting in different ways we learn that it would pay as well to have “shelter boards” always ready, just as are the coops; hence we make them of the half-inch, tongued and grooved pine, taking five strips three feet long by six inches wide for each shelter board. These strips are securely nailed to pieces of inch-square spruce at top and bottom, and then the weather side is well painted. We make a light frame of the inch square spruce strips and laths to fit up to the “A” coops when we want to put the shelter close to the coop, using one of the 2144x3-foot shelter boards, as shown in the illustra- tions. As the chicks get a little older we move the frame out a little, set athwart the front of coop, and put two shelter boards over it side by side, setting it so that it fur- nishes shade if the sun is shining, or protects from a driv- ing rain, of course adapting it to the direction of the wind. When we move the pullets out into the field and into the roosting coops we set upon stakes and a strip of furring, a shelving roof seven and a half feet long by three feet wide, slightly sloping to the south, about eighteen inches high in front and a foot high at the back. By these devices we more than double the available shelter from rain and sun and cor- respondingly increase the comfort of the growing chicks. Obviously, if they have to be crowded into their narrow sleeping quarters on a leng rainy day or to get away from the hot sun, they are not making good growth, and by so simple an expedient as we have here outlined we more than double the protection and by so much promote their com- fort. The A Coop. Foods and Feeding. As we stated at the beginning of this article, we raise two kinds of chicks, chickens for market and chickens for breeding stock. The food for the first month or six weeks is practically the same for each class, but at the end of six weeks we begin to feed the market chicks a richer and more fattening food, they of course being kept separate from the chicks intended for breeding stock. Feed often and feed but a little at a time is the rule for young chicks. We feed five times a day until they are about six weeks old. It is important that no food be left standing for tne chicks to trample dirt into or to get sour in the sun; if they have not eaten it all in twenty minutes to half an hour, remove it. Nothing causes more bowel looseness and dysentery than sour food. Our chief foods for the first six weeks are coarsest oatmeal, slightly moistened with sweet milk if we- have it; if not, with water, and waste bread ground to rather coarse crumbs in a bone mill. This also is moistened with sweet milk or water,—slightly moistened so that it is still crumbly and not “pasty.” The oatmeal is just such as is cooked for a breakfast dish on our table; in other words, it is oat meats ground very coarse. This we buy of wholesale grocers, by the barrel, at a cost of about two cents a pound. The waste bread is the broken pieces, part-loaves, rolls, corn cakes, ete., from hotels and restau- rants and costs about a cent and a half a pound. This Roosting Coops for Large Chicks. bread we buy by the hundred weight and spread on the barn loft to dry; when thoroughly dry it is ground into coarse crumbs in a bone mill. The first food early in the morning is the bread crumbs, slightly moistened with sweet milk or water; the second, about nine o’clock in the morning, is oatmeal, slightly moistened a little before noon, bread crumbs again, about half past two oatmeal again and abcut 5 o’clock a little cracked wheat or finely cracked corn. Twice a week a little lean meat is boiled, chopped fine and mixed with one of the bread or oatmeal feeds, or the infertile eggs (clear eggs) from the incubators are boiled hard, chopped fine, shells and all, and mixed with the bread crumbs or oatmeal. It is very important that the chicks have grit to grind their food, and as baby chicks are hardly to be trusted to supply themselves with good grit, we sprinkle a pinch of fine grit (or coarse sand) upon the small tin plates once a day just before feeding, or, if preferred, it can be mixed into the foced. Grit in the gizzard to grind the food is a most important factor in preventing indigestion and loose- ness of the bowels. Green food is another important aid to good health. If the chicks are cooped upon fresh grass the problem is easily solved, because they will help themselves. Obviously, the January, February and March hatched chicks cannot have access te fresh grass, neither can the larger chickens shut up to be fatted for market, hence a supply of green food must be provided. Cabbages, onions, lettuce and onion tops all make a good green food supply, and the same can be said of weeds from the garden, which are easily obtained. It is a comparatively easy matter to supply the green food if one has the wiil. We are well aware that many readers cannot get waste bread from hotels and restaurants,and to such we recommend the making of “johnny cake” of mixed meals, baked very thoroughly, and we will give also the rule for “Excelsior Meal bread” as recommended by Mr. I. K. Felch. “Grind into a fine meal in the following proportions: Twenty pounds corn, fifteen pounds oats, ten pounds barley, ten pounds wheat bran. Make the cakes by taking one quart sour milk (or buttermilk), adding a little salt and molasses, one guart of water in which a large heaping teaspoonful of saleratus has been dissolved. Then thicken all to a little stiffer batter than your wife makes for corn cakes. Bake in shallow pens until thoroughly cooked. We believe a well- appointed kitchen and brick oven pays, for in the baking of this food enough for a week can be cooked at a time.” It is very certain that a cooked food of this kind is a decided help to good growth in chicks, and as we on our farm want a good growth, we study to promote it by feeding a good food. Not a few farmers and poultrymen think that oatmeal as a food for chicks is a luxury. Wright’s ‘Practical Poul- try Keeper” says: ‘With regard to feeding, if the question be asked what is the best food for chickens, irrespective of price, the answer must decidedly be, ‘oatmeal.’ After the first meal of bread crumbs and egg no food is equal to it, if coarsely ground, and only moistened so much as to remain crumbly. The pric2 of oatmeal is, however, so high as to forbid its use in general except for valuable birds; but we should still advise it for the first week in order to lay a good foundation.” As a Shelter from Sun. THE CHICK BOOK 47 We are obliged to differ from Mr. Wright as to oatmeal being an expensive food for chicks. It may look expensive to pay $4 a barrel (two cents a pound) for oatmeal for chick- en food; but it goes so far we have found it a decidedly economical food. We use perhaps fifty dollars’ worth of oat- meal a year and it makes about one-fifth of our chicks’ food ration for the first three months of their life. Considered simply as a food ration it is economical, but when we con- sider that is a good foundation for the future usefulness of the birds, and that a good foundation for chicks means eggs in the basket next fall and winter—then we realize that oatmeal is a cheap food 1n the best sense of the term. By the time the chicks are six to eight weeks old the principal dangers of chickenhood are past and the two dif- ferent methods of feeding are inaugurated. The chickens intended to be raised for breeding stock are put out in the fields, where they have a grass run and a free range. The chickens intended for market are kept confined in the brooder house pens and yards and fed a slightly different grade of food. The principal difference is in increasing the amount of cracked corn and corn meal of the market chicks and cutting off the oatmeal, of course the green food being plentifully supplied and grit being constantly accessible. The chicks in the field intended for laying and breeding stock must have a liberal supply of nourishing, strengthen- ing food, which will build up a strong, healthy and vigorous body. with stores of strength to lean upon when maturity shall come. The breakfast is bread crumbs, continued usually until the chicks are about ten weeks old, when they are graduated into a morning mash of cooked vegetables (which makes about one-third of the whole) and mixed meals, being equal parts by weight of corn meal, ground oats, fancy middlings and bran (or shorts); this is salted about as it would be if it were food for the table. The vegetables are potatoes, beets, turnips, carrots, onions—anything in the vegetable line, thoroughly cooked and mashed fine, the mixed meals being stirred in until it is stiff as a strong arm can make it. The breakfast in the morning is this mash; in the middle of the forenoon a light feed of coarse oatmeal, moistened; just after dinner a light feed of cracked wheat and about five o'clock whole wheat or cracked corn, one one day the other the next. About twice a week we have fresh meat (butch- er’s trimmings), which are boiled and then chopped fine. This we mix with the oatmeal (about half and half) for the second feeding. We have also a bone cutter and twice a week the chicks have a good time wrestling and trampling over each other in their eagerness to get the fresh cut bone. Cut bone, if perfectly fresh and sweet, is one of the best animal food sup- plies that we have, but, if this is not available, meat meal or beef scraps should be mixed in- to the morning mash, about one- quarter ounce per bird per day, for young birds, increasing to about one-half ounce per day as they approach maturity. We vary the food ration continually within the range here described. For instance, one day the food will be mash, pread crumbs, cracked wheat and cracked corn; next day, mash, oatmeal and chopped meat, cracked corn, and whole wheat; the next day bread crumbs, cut bone, oatmeal,cracked As ® Shelter from Rain. day, morning, noon and corn and so on. The intention is to feed only what the chicks will eat up clean and quickly; but we break the rule so far as the last feed is concerned and the boy goes around a second time twenty or thirty minutes after feeding, and if the food is all eaten up clean three or four handfuls more are put down so that all shall have a chance to “fill up” for the night. If a handful is left uneaten it quickly disappears in the morning, and as it is always dry grain it does not sour and there is no danger from leaving it out. We have = said nothing about fresh water because it goes without saying that fresh, clean water must always me accessible to the chickens. We water them three times a A Shed-Roof Shelter. late afternoon; sometimes going around between whiles if it is hot weather and the chickens are likely to drink a good deal. The water dishes are care- fully rinsed once a day and water which is fresh and cool is always accessible to them. Grit to grind the food is an- other necessity, a pan of which is placed near each food trough out in the field, or a small box of it in each pen in the brooder house. We have personally noted that chickens when let out of the coops in the morning would go to the grit dish for two or three bits of grit before going to join their mates at the food trough. Thus far we have been writing about chicks raised for breeding stock. When the market chicks are six to eight weeks old we cut off the oatmeal (or ground oats) from the food ration, double the quantity of corn meal and cracked corn, feeding also on wheat or barley, feeding them occa- sionally, say once a week, a feed of whole oats for a change, The corn meal and meat meal are gradually increased and a week to ten days before the chickens are to be marketed a very little gluten meal is added to the ration and the meat meal practically doubled in quantity until we are feeding a full ounce per bird per day. With this decidedly fattening ration the birds should go to market in first-class condition and bring top prices for market chicks. The chicks intended for breeding stock have free range and can roam over the fields at will in search of insects, worms, etc., the exercise of ranging promoting growth and good health. We study to promote the comfort and well being of the chicks, believing that it pays to do so. The coops are kept scrupulously clean by being moved to fresh ground every other day, and every reasonable pains is taken to insure steady, continuous growth. It is the full egg bas- ket in November, December and January, when eggs bring top prices and pay the creamy profits, that is being planned for and worked for in this good care and good feeding, and we have abundantly proved on our farm that this good care and good feeding pay richly. We cannot get a valuable thing for nothing; the good things in this world come by working for them, and the good profits that are to be gained in poultry raising have got to be worked for. With us the problem is early hatched pullets kept growing so that they shall come to laying maturity in October, and then kept lay- ing. Our pullets are kept growing, and after they reach laying maturity are kept laying, by good care and good food, A. F. HUNTER, JUNE HATCHED CHICKS. Mr. Sewell Recalls Prominent Winners That Were Hatched in June—To Produce Them One Must Study Nature’s Whims and Prepare Alike for Rain and Shine. By F. L. Sewell. E BELIEVE chicks come into the world with the WW best conditions for rapid growth at the time of fruit blossoming. That is about the middle of May in this latitude—but in seasons so backward as some are, June is not a bad month in which to start. Rearers of pheasants look to this month as their best season for hatching—when the season is well settled and rains are not too frequent. The haying season is the time when the quail hatches her first broods. The June hatched Mediterraneans, Games, Hamburgs and some others will re- quire no special urging to bring them into fine form and feather for the early winter shows. Our ambitious fanciers June Hatched and Vigorous. who are not content with any but the very large breeds, weighing eight to twelve pounds, must remember that they are handling races developed through artful selection and most advaniageous environments. The fancier who sets out to win in the present day com- petition at our best shows and reap the high prices that are paid for the prize-takers will keep in mind that every day must bring gain in growth to his June chicks; he will see that they have everything that adds to their comfort and are well protected from all that retards their growth or spoils their general condition and plumage. No doubt at the winter show you have stood admiring some splendid specimen in the American classes or even of the grand Asiatics and a proud owner assured you that the bird was “only a baby—a June hatched chick,” and you wondered how he produced such freshness of feather—such perfection of bloom; and a question brought the reply, “Why he has not had time to lose it—he just seemed to grow every day from the time he was hatched until now.” Therein lies success—not an hour’s neglect when natural, healthful development could lag. Many of the finest show birds we have seen at the great eastern shows of New York and Bos- ton we have known to be June hatched. It is an old saying among the fanciers that pullets appear at their finest just the few weeks prior to laying their first egg, and if the show birds can just reach maturity on show week they will ap- pear in the pink of condition—with vigor at its height and the plumage at its finest. We mentioned the settled condition of June weather as being favorable; however, a protracted dry season may be far from beneficial, when a liberal supply of green and insect food cannot be obtained. No birds can grow well without them. Between a season of continued droughts and exces- sive rains we would choose a season where the birds had proper protection—dry coops and covered runs attached for wet days. Between showers the birds will find abundance of green food, insects and worms, while in the season of drought they are apt to lack for both these. It is always a safe provision to have a patch of young clover or some good crop for green food. We know of nothing better than a small field of white clover that can be watered and kept green (a part to be cut for winter use) for the birds to for- age over.. During continued dry weather when the surface of the soil seems to present no insects or worms a strip can be occasionally plowed up, giving a fair supply of worms and bugs. A pile of small chips and partially decayed leaves will afford excellent scratching, especially if partially in the shade. Insects are constantly gathering in such a place. The perfectly clean swept poultry yard may look to some eyes most tidy, but to the chicks that hanker for a hunting ground where they may stir up bugs or worms such a place without its rubbish pile is a mockery to their nature. A few wagonlcads of old rotten wood and leaves from the forest present a constant picnic to the chicks in summer. Place the pile partly in the shade. The frequent visits to it by the chicks will prove their appreciation for it. The exercise taken in scratching for the insects will in- duce thrift and add to the strength of the birds. Have you not frequently received among your purchases, birds seem- ingly lacking in all thrifty habits actually spoiled in their bringing up? Some breeds, notably those nearest the orig- inal type of the wild Bankiva fowl, hunt all day, turning over the leaves as they search about, while others seem to care for nothing beyond the dooryard and the granary. This disposition and habit can be largely due to the methods em- ployed in feeding while the chicks are growing up. A cer- tain amount of range, encouraging the chicks to hunt and scratch for at least a part of their food, will add value to the birds in health and thrifty foraging habits. 'These last remarks apply especially to chicks leaving the brooder or hen in a dry season when the natural food may be scarce and the temptation strongest to depend entirely upon the feed bucket. We learned through sad experience not to allow chicks Ee CEM Ces © @ikx 49 to nestle or roost upon the bare ground. There should always be a board platform raised a few inches above the earth, keeping the birds dry under foot at all seasons. We note that small, movable coops for weaned chicks are rapidly growing popular, a number of very practical patterns now being made to take down and ship in a small space. We know that the value of these movable coops can hardly be estimated. With such well planned and conven- ient coops the chicks can be constantly on clean, fres. ground and with the movable covered runs attached the long rainy days are not nearly as much to be dreaded by those ambitious to see their birds growing every day. Much of the failure to succeed with young turkeys and pheasants during the last two seasons is due to the lack of this kind of protection. The fine young chicks can be weathered through many a wet week to our entire satisfaction and the coops made to pay their way many times over in the saving they will be to young stock, among which we look for our next winter’s prize winners. With vigorous parent stock we always expect to pro- duce rapid growing chicks, and with constant attention to securing for them the best foods and giving them protection from vermin and ill weather we look for many of the most perfectly conditioned show birds to come out of these June hatched broods. FRANKLANE L. SEWELL. JUNE HATCHED BIRDS FOR WINTER SHOWS. The Season Naturally Favorable to Growth—Free Range for Hens with Chicks—A Shaded Location for Coops and Brooders—Green Food and Clean Water Important. By H. A. Nourse. able conditions usually prevailing and chicks hatched this month will often make bone and muscle faster than those of earlier hatches. This is especially true when the owner is without facilities for properly housing the chicks during the chilling storms which April and May some times furnish. In June not much protection is neces- sary. The brood may be out in the fields where the requisi- tien of fresh air, exercise and green grass will build strong bodies, able to take care of all the food that the chicks can eat. No conditions are more favorable for securing good growth at the least expense for labor and food. | | UNE is a month of growth if most is made of the favor- Some of the winners at the largest shows in recent years were hatched in June. In the Plymouth Rock, Wyan- dotte and Leghorn classes June hatched birds are frequently awarded the ribbons and a successful breeder of Buff Coch- ins, asserts that some of the best January show pullets he ever raised were hatched in June and July. Chicks With Hens. The man who broods his chicks with hens, and has a range of fair area, can make the most of his chances by con- fining the hen to the coop only at night and in bad weather. At other times she should be out with the chicks teaching them to find the natural food intended for them and protect- ing them from their natural enemies. Such a course not only strengthens them physically, but makes them self- reliant and able to take good care of themselves when they are deserted by the hen. This freedom also allows the hen to dust frequently in the cool, moist earth, keeping her feathers clean and assisting to rid herself of lice, which in- crease faster in warm weather and must be kept down. To this end, hen and chicks must be treated for body lice and head lice. If the hen is confined most of the time, a roomy coop and good ventilation should be furnished. In warm weather coops should be located in the shade, or if this is impossible, they should face toward the north. If the hen is free she will find a cool place, but if confined, she is likely to suffer from the heat and the chicks remaining near her while young, will suffer also and fail to prosper. Brooder Chicks. Chicks in brooders are supposed to be, and should be, free from lice. No chick that has had a chance to get a louse on it should be put in the brooders or in a brooder house and, if that is looked to, brooder chicks have an ad- vantage over chicks with hens. Most of the June brooder chicks are housed in outdoor brooders and the shade ques- tion becomes one of major importance. A brooder placed in the sun, however well it may be ventilated, will reach a high temperature during a hot day and cool rapidly at night, making it necessary to extinguish the lamp during the day and start it again at nightfall. This does no particular harm if the chicks are old enough to take care of themselves and can find shade during the day; but it is unfortunate for little chicks as the temperature will vary widely. Under a group of shade trees or in an orchard is the best place for a brooder at this season, the shade tempering the heat of the sun. If the cover of the brooder is raised, there will be no difficulty in keeping the heat under the hover within bounds. To place a brooder where it will be exposed to the midday sun and confine the chicks in a smail yard also without protection is nothing less than cruelty, and good results are impossible. Feeding and Watering. The feeding of June chicks need not be different from that advocated for those hatched earlier. The green food should be young, tender blades of grass gathered by the chicks themselves; if the young ones must beconfined to yards, fine lawn clippings or the delicate leaves and stalks of new clover, rape or alfalfa should be handed out liberally every morning while they are still fresh from the night’s dew. Cool. fresh water constantly accessible is a decided advantage and far more difficult to provide than in cool weather. The supply should be renewed with fresh water three times each day and the fountains cleaned and disin- fected frequently, for germs multiply rapidly in tepid water. The need of being thus careful is obvious when we under- stand that the germs of diseases affecting the lungs, throat and head find drinking water a ready means for distribution. Prevention is not difficult and is better than cure. Take care of the June chicks and they will take care of you. H. A. NOURSE. JUNE HATCHED CHICKS. Leading Breeders Give Their Experiences With Late Hatched Chicks—Evidence That With Care and Correct Treat- ment Chicks Hatched in June Make Winners in December, January and February. [The following short articles from experienced and well known breeders will encourage those who, from any cause, do not have as many early chicks on hand as they need and instruct beginners in the care and feeding of late hatched chicks, By studying the methods advocated by the best author- ities the reader can readily determine how to make the most of the natural advantages within his reach and how to avoid the mistakes that spoil the profits. Opinion among these experienced breeders is practically unanimous that food, water, shade and lice are the main considerations, and that with the exercise of care in raising the birds many a June hatched chick will win fame for its owner at next winter's shows. ] RAISED UNDER SUITABLE CONDITIONS, JUNE HATCHED CHICKS ARE UP TO WEIGHT FOR WINTER SHOWS. HILE IT is true that early chicks do better, still a \AWY great many good birds can be, with proper care and feeding, raised from chicks hatched in that month. We have had June Barred Rock pullets laying in January and February, and continue laying until late in the spring before becoming broody. The cull cockerels can be sold early in the fall, when they make excellent fries, The others should be separated, cockerels from pullets, put in light, dry, warm coops, and kept for the spring trade. They must be made to scratch for their grain, and positively must have grit, green food and a dust box to insure steady growth through the winter, One of the greatest difficulties in raising June chicks is the extreme heat. Shade and plenty of fresh water are in- dispensable. An orchard or a berry patch makes excellent shade, or rape seed sown early in May makes good shade, and green food, too. Sometimes on the lawn we drive stakes in the ground forming a square, and fasten burlap to them, making a shelter about two feet high, which breaks the sun, but allows a free circulation of air. Our chicks are free to roam at all times. We do not think the wet grass, early in the morning, hurts them in the least, but rather believe it toughens them and speeds their growth. We feed rolled cats and whole wheat; it makes bone ‘and muscle and they thrive on it. They get but little corn. Feed June chicks sparingly during the hot months of July and August, keep them a little hungry and they will forage better, cat more grass and green stuff, find more bugs and worms, and you won’t know what a sick chick looks like. You can force their growth more when the cool nights of September come by giving them all they want to eat for supper of a good mash food, composed principally of bran, shorts and chop feed, with a handful of salt occasionally. We use open front, shed roof coops, without any floor, about four by six feet on the ground, which can be easily moved, thus keeping them clean and wholesome. If the chicks want to roost on the ridge, or on a brush heap, or in the trees, we let them; it makes them tough. Keep them as near natural conditions as possible and a great many June chicks will be up to weight for the winter shows and for winter layers. W. S. PEASE. CARE, CLEANLINESS AND VARIED FOODS CAUSE CHICKS HATCHED IN JUNE TO WIN IN DE- CEMBER, JANUARY AND FEBRUARY. I will give you my views on the raising of June hatched chicks for exhibition purposes. Chicks hatched before June 15th can be virtually ma- tured by January 1st following, by close attention to feed- ing. wide range and sanitary, well ventilated cooping. Food for first two weeks should be given every two or three hours, dry mixed cracked grains, hulled oats, wheat, millet and corn. Fresh milk twice daily and pure water and grit at all times. After the second week and up to four weeks of age a little chopped fresh meat daily. When one month old allow free range, shaded. Provide a dusting box made up of equal parts of fine lake sand and road dust, with a little powdered sulphur added, and place where it will keep dry. This will keep them free from lice. Do not crowd the roosting coop. Young chickens must have plenty of room in order to thrive. Separate the cockerels from pullets at fourteen weeks. Have your winter quarters ready by October 25th. After this time provide fresh ground bone and vegetables daily in addition to the oats, wheat and corn. Clean, well ventilated houses are particularly essential. I remove the droppings daily. Chicks raised in this manner will be ready for the De- cember shows and will be of standard weight. The first prize White Wyandotte Cleveland cockerel, December, 1902, was hatched June 10th. A full brother hatched the same date headed the second prize pen at Pittsburg show in Feb- ruary, 1903. At the Painesville show in January, 1904, the pullets I exhibited in the first prize pen were hatched the first week in June, and all were standard weight or over. So do not be discouraged over the late spring and de- layed hatches, but redouble your care and you will be up in front when the winter show season arrives. DR. WM. H. HUMISTON. JUNE SAID TO BE “ONE OF THE BEST” MONTHS FOR HATCHING WINTER SHOW BIRDS. As a matter of fact I have always considered June a splendid month to get out “Ringlet’’ Barred Rocks and have hatched a great many winning show birds as late as July. Every bird in one of my New York first prize exhibition pens was hatched in July. Some of my first prize pullets at New York were hatched August 10th. Birds hatched in June are ready to show in January and THE, CHICK BOOK 51 July chicks, if well cared for, are ready to show in January and February. I have had July pullets lay in January. Many breeders calculate to get out their January and Feb- ruary show birds in June so the birds will be ‘fon edge’”’ or in the pink of condition at show time and not be past their beauty pericd. I care for June hatched chickens just the same as those of any of the spring and summer months. My chicks have all the shade they want as well as sunshine, and sunshine is as necessary as shade. While I do not say June is the best month to hatch in, I know that it is one of the best and I get out several hun- dred “Ringlets’’ every June and have done so for years. I feed chicks the same in June and July as in April and May. E. B. THOMPSON. JUNE HATCHED CHICKS REACH MATURITY EARLY ENOUGH TO LAY WHEN PRICES OF EGGS ARE AT THEIR HEIGHT. Chicks hatched in June can be made profitable both as layers and show birds, if raised under conditions to promote a healthy growth. Their treatment The greatest objections to raising late hatched chicks are lack of shade, improper attention to drinking vessels and crowding one hundred chicks where only fifty should be quartered, but these objections are easily overcome, and where they are, June hatched chicks are profitable. Cc. BRICAULT, M. D. V. SATISFACTORY EGG PRODUCTION BY JUNE HATCHED CHICKS. Year after year we generally have more or less chicks come off in June. This year, owing to the long and severe winter and backward spring, we expect to hatch between 200 and 300 during that month. The main object with us is eggs. We want pullets to lay early and lay lots of eggs. We have, in most cases, found June hatched chicks profit- able; the pullets especially. June hatched White Wyandotte pullets have begun to lay with us in October or November, just before cold weather, and have continued to lay all winter. We place the brooders, or hens with chicks, in a cool, shady place under the trees and arrange the yards in such differs but little from that which is given the early ones; the difference can be summed up in a few words, namely, plenty of shade and cool, clean water to drink at all times. Up to four years ago | shared in the belief that late hatched chicks were undesirable, but after giving the matter a thorough test 1 find that White Wyandotte pullets hatched in June reach laying maturity in less time than the early hatched ones, and many experienced breeders are of the same opinion, Our late chicks are fed the same as the early ones up to a certain age, then they are fed differently. A pre pared chick food is fed until they are six weeks old, three times a day the first week and five times a day up to the seventh week. They are then changed gradually to hulled oats, whole wheat and cracked corn. This is fed four times a day, Several boxes containing ground oats, bran and beef scraps (equal parts) are placed at different points on the range and trom these they help themselves at will. It is astonish- ing the amount of this mixture they will consume between their regular meals. Being housed on a good grass range, they have all the green food needed. About the middle of September I begin to feed a mash to the pullets, and this is where the difference in feeding occurs, the late pullets being fed this mash at an earlier age than the early ones, for at this season all are fed alike. The mash is composed as fol- lows: Ground oats 50 per cent, bran 25 per cent, middlings 15 per cent, corn meal 10 per cent. It is mixed with boiling water at noon and left to cook in its own heat until 5 p. m., when it is cool enough to feed. It is fed in several long troughs so that every pullet has its share. No crowd- ing at this meal is allowed, and the whole grain is scattered so well that crowding is not necessary; all get their share. Pullets hatched June 20th and treated as above began laying December 27th and were persistent layers for months. If I were forced to delay hatching till June I would follow the above method and have eggs for market when prices are highest. Many of our best layers were hatched in June, and I shal] never again hesitate to hatch chicks in that month. Where Chichs Grow Rapidly on the Plant of Mrs. H. W. Hand. a fashion that the chicks may have a little sunshine. Our method of feeding late hatched chicks does not vary very much from that pursued in feeding earlier chicks; the only difference being that we increase the beef scraps a little after the chicks are four or five weeks old. We have tried in the past the dry feeding method for small chicks, but have given it up for the mash and dry grain combination. We can in this way get our birds to mature quicker and lay earlier, without affecting their size. We are using this spring one of the widely advertised chick foods, twice a day, with cracked wheat, hominy grits, pin head oatmea! and a little cracked corn. These small grains are fed dry three times a day for the first week and twice a day for the second and third weeks. After that time we begin to feed a little hulled oats and whole wheat and a little cracked corn once a day. We have lost less chicks this year, up to the present time, than we ever did before when dry food was used exclusively. We are careful in raising late hatched chicks to give the little fellows plenty of shade, good pure drinking water and to keep them free from lice. Our chicks when old enough to leave the brooders have the range of a meadow and a piece of woodland, where they have plenty of shade. We use colony houses 6x8 with shed roof, and four feet high at the back and seven feet in front, with door and window, which are replaced through the summer by screens. HAITZ POULTRY FARM. or te LICE, FOUL RUNS AND WANT OF FRESH AIR THE MAIN OBSTACLES TO SUCCESS WITH JUNE HATCHED CHICKS. Some people claim that June hatched chicks do not grow as quickly as those which are hatched earlier. The reason, perhaps, is that the millions of lice and mites that have been incubating and brooding through rain and shine of the early spring are not kept in check when the warm weather comes. For this pest the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station rec- ommends coal oil emulsion. The next disadvantage is a swarm of chicks have pre- ceded the late hatch, the runs are befouled by the earlier chicks and the old fowls, and the little fellows suffer for pure air day and night and are tramped on and crowded to death. Besides this the weeds, berries, ete., claim our atten- tion and the late chicks are not as well cared for as the earlier ones. Nature teaches and my experience proves that May and June are the months to hatch birds, and with the same care they should do as well or better than the earlier birds, for insect food is more plentiful and sunshine more abund- ant; but now we must provide shelter from the hot sun in- stead of from cold winds; also good, roomy, well ventilated coops or brooders. If brooders are used they must be constructed so that the chicks can have free access to heat or fresh air as they prefer. Both coops and brooders must have at least one side made of screen wire netting; a few holes in a box 18 not sufficient ventilation; a damp, perspiring chick turned out in the cold morning dew to chill might as well have its head snipped off at once. A chick can eat almost anything any time of year, if it is not over-heated or chilled, but a chilled chick will have bowel trouble and no brand of food will cure it. MRS. S. P. ROGERS. MUCH DEPENDS UPON THE CARE LATE HATCHED CHICKS RECEIVE. I have had good results with last of May and early June hatches. For late December and January shows there is no better time to get them out than May 25th to June 15th, as they mature after the weather becomes cool, and the plumage is bright at show time. My winners, both eockerels and pullets, at the late Peoria, Ill., show and at late Illinois State Show, all up to weight, were hatched from May 25th to June 1lvth. This is ample evi- dence that June hatched chicks will make show birds. A Group of June Chicks Ready to be Fatted for Market. THE CHICK BOOK Unless one is well fixed to handle these late ones I wouldn’t advise getting out too many of them, but a few will prove what I am stating is true. The great trouble in handling late hatched chicks by many is they lose interest in them. Warly in the spring the hen fever is up to 95 or higher, but it gradually cools off as the weather gets warm and the chicks are neglected. I would brood at that time with a hen. Place coop, which should be of sufficient size to give ample room and fresh air through the hot nights, in a dense shade—a large apple tree or north side of a building is the best for June hatched chicks. Feed mostly dry food at this time. Pro- vide fresh water often, and afler chicks are a few days old give the hen her liberty, and all the chicks have to do is to grow. I have for several years raised a few late hatched birds, even as late as July Ist. This season I will be compelled to get out even more than usual owing to the lateness of the spring and the immense early egg trade. To those who are prejudiced against late hatched chicks I will say that a sitting or two of eggs at this time will prove that what I am saying is true, provided you do your part in caring for them. Oo. L. KING. ADVOCATING JUNE HATCHED CHICKS OF THE LIGHTER BREEDS FOR WINTER SHOWS. I have hatched many S. C. White Leghorns in.June with great success for both market and exhibition. I have raised many winners of both sexes which were hatched in June and won in December. They were fully developed and weighed from four to six pounds, and as all Leghorn breeders know, that is good weight for them. I always feed young chickens for the first five weeks with prepared chick food. Have used this for several years. I have not known of a single case of bowel trouble in feed- ing this food. After the chicks are four or five weeks old I commence feeding them cracked ccrn and wheat; keep fresh water before them all the while, also oyster shell and grit. One must have a good shelter for them and protect them from drafts which give them colds. Do not crowd and over- heat them; this will affect their health. Give them just enough food so they will eat it up clean and not have any left. Keep the vermin down. I use lice killing powder on the chickens, and kerosene on the roosts. It never pays to half raise a chicken or any kind of an animal. If I were starting in the poultry business and were de- layed in getting eggs on account of the cold spring, that would not prevent me getting eggs in June. I would get some eggs from some reliable breeder who has the breed I like best. Everybody has his favorite breed. After the chickens were hatched [I would do my utmost to feed them right and keep them free from lice and colds. When fall arrived I would have a fine lot of choice chickens, especially if of the lighter breeds, which will mature in four and one- half to six months and commence laying in five or six months and lay about two hundred eggs per year on about one-half the feed that it takes for a larger breed. R. C. COLLIN. HAS NO EXTRA TROUBLE RAISING JUNE CHICKS. T will give you my method in hatching and raising June chickens. I give the hen a nest free from chiggers, lice, and mites, and set her where no laying hens can bother her. THE CHICK BOOK 53 I keep the eggs and nest clean. When the chicks are hatch- ing I take the shells out of the nest to give the chicks room. I leave the chicks in the nest twenty-four hours to give them strength. Chicks don’t need food for thirty-six hours after hatch- ing. The first food is oatmeal, dry, mixed with fine grit or prepared chick feed. Give them cold water and very little at a time when yuung. Take the hen and chicks off the nest and put them under a good shade tree. Make a coop for hen and chicks two feet long, eighteen inches wide, twelve inches high. Don't nail the top—leave it loose so you can look in at the chicks from the top. Make a slat coop four feet long, two and one-half feet wide and fifteen inches high to put in front of the coop. Let the hen and chicks out in the slat coop so the chicks can run around. Keep the hen in the siat coop for a week, until the chicks get strong and learn the hen’s cluck. Let the hen and chicks run out over the farm to hunt bugs and other insects. The exercise makes them strong, and gives plenty of muscle. Feed June chicks by themselves. I don’t have any more trouble rais- ing June chicks than I do raising April hatched chicks. JOHN W. TANNER. PUT THE LATE HATCHED CHICKS IN A CORN- FIELD AND RAISE THE BEST COLORED BIRDS OF THE SEASON. I have often wondered why there were not more eggs set and chicks hatched during the month of June. To be sure it takes some precaution to successfully rear chicks hatched in the months of June and July, but not nearly so much troubie and expense as is needed in the months of January and February. To readers of this book who have no brooder houses I will give you my plan for successfully rearing late hatched chicks. Supposing you are aware of the fact that you must not take the chicks off the nest or out of the incubator until fully forty-eight hours old, it is unnecessary to go over that part of my method. If you have a small poultry house or an outhouse where rats cannot get at the chicks place the brood in this building, keeping them in it for three or four weeks. This gives the chicks size and strength enough to withstand the hot sun and small grass lice. When you move them from the building put them, if possible, in a shady place. If you can do so, by all means place them in a cornfield, for there is no place where a late hatched chick will grow as fast as in a field of corn well up, as it affords them plenty of shade, keeps them off the dewey grass and the fresh cultivated ground gives them plenty of insects, worms, etc. I feed my chicks while in the brooder, or say for the first six weeks, a chick food composed of wheat, kaffir corn, hog millet and rice, mixed and cracked, the greater portion of the food being wheat. To this I add a little pin head oats (very little), hard boiled eggs, some green cut bone, ete. Keep granulated charcoal by them all the time, as well as fresh water. Do not feed too much, but often. Make the little fellows work all you can. After you take them from the building they will find plenty to do and require little food. After they are six weeks old change the food to a mixture of rolled oats, cracked corn and whole wheat, feeding three times a day, or better yet, hopper feed- ing, which I believe to be the best way to feed chicks from six weeks of age until matured. The White Rock cockerel which won first at Chicago and for which I refused $400 was a June hatched chick. { There is no use arguing the question, the best colored specimens in nearly all breeds are late hatched chicks. The difference in caring for late hatched chicks and early hatched ones is in keeping one cool and the others warm. U. R. FISHEL. A Shaded Yard for Growing Chicks. INSECT LIFE SURROUNDS THE JUNE HATCHED CHICK WITH DELICACIES ITS EARLIER HATCHED RELATIVE CANNOT ENJOY, AND HELPS TO MAKE IT A WINNER. To all those interested we most heartily commend the June hatched chicks, for various reasons. Many people think, and especially amateurs, that they must hatch a chick in February or March if they wish to get a prize winner, but with our experience nothing is farther from the truth. A truly healthy chicken and one that can successfully combat the pests and diseases that afflict it must start on the voyage of life with all conditions as fav- orable as possible, and there is nothing so conducive to vig- orous growth and good health as warm sunshine; the sun’s rays also have a wonderful influence in bringing out and beautifying the plumage, especially in a two or more colored fowl. Another advantage that the June hatched chick has, and one of very material worth to him, is the warmth com- ing from mother earth at that time of the year. Warm feet are a great incentive to rapid growth, but the greatest bless- ing that can probably come to this bird in his race for maturity with his older brother is his opportunity to prey on insect life in his pillage for food. From the very first day that he emerges from the place of his birth to comfort- able quarters on some grassy plot he begins to enjoy his existence in the warm sunshine and to prey on the little worms, spiders and flies, and as he grows older and larger and his courage comes to him he becomes a bold hunter and wanders farther from home, making conquests on larger game, like the cricket, and eventually as his strength and endurance come to him he is able to capture that greatest of delicacies to the chicken appetite, the grasshopper. These advantages the earlier hatched bird does not have. At the time of his advent into the world, in March or April, when the atmosphere is usually damp, and there are more or less cold winds and a great deal of cloudy weather; consequently the chicken hatched at that time of the year has to be shel- tered, carefully fed and supplied with artificial heat, which except in brooders cannot be kept at an even temperature. These difficulties make the raising of early chicks not only very troublesome, but also very expensive. One of the greatest obstacles, perhaps, in raising late hatched chicks comes in the extremely hot and dry weather 54 THE (CHICK BOOK of August and September. The birds raise themselves, so to speak, so easily up to this time that breeders are apt to become careless and allow their shelter to become foul, and a coop that was plenty large enough six weeks before is wholly inadequate now, and they crowd and pack themselves together during hot and sultry nights until some are smoth- ered, and mites and lice kill many more. We receive some inquiries asking if one is unable to pro- duce a prize winner from chicks hatched in June. To such we tell what we have noticed by observation and personal experience. That some of our best show birds have been late hatched, and it is the personal experience of one mem- ber of this firm, who is also interested in the firm of J. M. Williams & Co., that the Buff Orpington cockerel that won first at Chicago in 1902 was hatched in July and weighed eight and one-half pounds in the show room in January. These facts, together with others we might cite,-if time and space would allow, prove to our own satisfaction that June hatched chicks are just as profitable to raise as those hatched earlier, for every purpose except broiler raising. FILLIO, WILLIAMS & CO. A CAUTION TO WATCH FOR LICE AND GIVE THE CHICKS RANGE, AND SO MAKE WINNERS OF THE JUNE HATCHED BIRDS. Where most peuple have trouble in raising June hatched chicks is in letting the hen run loose as soon as she gets through hatching and sometimes neither she nor the chicks have shelter. The little chicks should have a dry place to sleep. Those who do not watch for lice find this a great drawback to the June hatched chicks. You should look at your chicks about every four weeks and dust them. A June hatched chick should have plenty of that good free range. There are prize winners hatched in June as well as in the carlier months. At Indianapolis in February two of the pullets in our first prize Buff Rock pen, also our third prize pullet, were hatched in June and there was not a larger boned pullet in the class than the third prize bird. When we take the hen from the nest with her chicks or take them from the incubator we let them run out on a dry floor and give them a fine chick grit. In about twenty-four to thirty-six hours after we feed them a,little chick food. Do not feed too much, but just keep them hungry. We feed the chick food for about four to six weeks and then we feed them wheat and cracked corn till they get large enough to swallow a whole grain of corn. We have sold on the market in January chickens that were hatched in June. They weighed five to eight pounds each and have showed pullets that weighed from six to seven and one-half pounds and cockerels that weighed seven to eight and one-half pounds. In raising late hatched chicks one of the main things is to get them started right and then keep them on the right road. I have given the method of feeding, but the main thing is to fight the lice and give them plenty of range; that is what makes them grow. Lice will take the strength from the chicks and often will kill them and people say it was the cholera when it is nothing but the lice. Sometimes too many chickens are crowded in one house and this will give them colds and stop their growth. If I was starting in the poultry business the month of June would suit me just as well if not better than the other months. I find the Buff Rock chicks have a better color in June, better wings and tails than the earlier chicks and if you watch the lice and give them plenty of range they will get. as large as the early hatched ones. If you are feeding a drove of hogs let them run with them and they will get the size and will have that large bone we want. W. REESE PAETZEL. PROOFS THAT CORRECT CARE AND FEEDING DE- VELOP JUNE HATCHED CHICKS INTO WIN- NERS AND WEIGHTY SPECIMENS. In regard to late hatched chicks, especially those hatched in June: are they profitable? I say most emphati- cally: Yes! Such birds make good winter layers, especially the Wyandottes, and (barring the early fall shows) make excellent exhibition specimens. Partridge Wyandotte pullets commence to lay when about six months old, and it is generally conceded that such birds as a rule are in their best condition to show just after having laid their first egg; therefore a pullet hatched the 20th day of June should commence to lay about the 20th day of December, at which time she should be in the best con- dition. The majority of our largest shows are held during the months of December and January, and late hatched birds have an equal chance of winning in competition with many of those which were hatched much earlier. One season I hatched chicks as late as the first day of August with good results; and it may be of interest to many to know that some of the very best cockerels and pullets . that I raised were hatched the 20th day of July, among them being the first prize pullet at North Abington, which show was held the 25th day of December. The same pullet also took third prize at Madison Square Garden, New York, Jan- uary 5th, and another of the same age and in fact out of the same brood took fifth prize at that show. It will be seen that the pullet which won first at North Abington was just five months and five days old when exhibited, and the two when sbown at the New York show were just five and one-half months old. These two birds were exactly stand- ara weight when shipped to the New York show, and the third prize pullet had laid her first egg. The fifth prize pullet then had many chicken feathers and was not filled out and finished, but was penciled all over with good open penciling and gave promise of developing into one of the most beautiful birds that I ever raised. The manner in which this bird develcped during the following month was something surprising, and had she been hatched June 20th instead of July 20tn, she would in all probability have been placed much higher at that show. She is to-day one of my most valuable specimens and lays a large, brown, well- shaped egg. I have seventeen pullets that were hatched last July, that are up in weight and all are high scoring birds, and as hens some of them will in all probability be a trifle over weight next fall when in show condition, which rather dis- counts the idea of many that late hatched birds are always small and stunted. One of the first questions naturally asked is, How were these birds fed? For the first three weeks they were fed entirely upon a chick food, which was fed to them every two hours; for the next three months they were fed upon prepared chick food. beef scrars and what little scraps I had to give them that came from the kitchen. During this period they were fed four times a day. After they were four months old they were given a mash in the morning consisting of chick food and beef scraps mixed; at noon they were given oats and wheat, and at night they were given wheat and cracked corn; besides this they were often given cabbage, lettuce THE CHICK BOOK 55 and dainty bits of anything that I was able to get which I thought would induce them to grow. There are many reasons why we should recommend the setting of eggs all through the month of June, and especially to those who are just starting in the business of raising ‘poultry. My experience has been that during the month of June eggs as a rule are very fertile, and a large percentage of them hatch, in many instances, every egg put under a hen. Weather conditions during this time of the year are generally such that both eggs and chicks will stand more hardship and neglect than is the case during the early hatching season. Fanciers (myself among them) who ad- vertise to replace all infertile eggs occasionally have to replace many that were shipped during the early part of the season, even when we know by repeated tests that at least 85 per cent of them were fertile. Such conditions prove to my mind that the manner and place where eggs are set (especially early ones) and the way hens sit upon them, or the manner in which they may be manipulated in an incu- bator, combined with weather conditions, cause many poor hatches, which not only is a loss to the fancier to the ex- tent of the infertile eggs returned, but often discourages customers who have had but little, if any, experience in the business. If an equal number of eggs had been ordered later in the season a greater number of chicks would have been hatched and both parties would have been better satisfied. lt is also claimed that a larger per cent of late hatched chicks are pullets, which is desirable to most purchasers. The main question to be considered in raising late hatehed chicks is to get them far enough advanced before Movable House to Serve as a Roosting Coop or to Protect Small Chicks in Bad Weather. the cold weather sets in, that they will not be stunted there- by. I have proved to my own satisfaction that it can be done, and birds raised to full standard weight from eggs that were set the last days of June. J. B. HADAWAY. Dry Feeding and Unlimited Range. Make Large, Healthy Chicks. By C. B. Bristol. HATCH all chicks with hens, but as soon as they are hatched I take them from the hens and put them in brooders, which I believe is the only way to rear chicks satisfactorily. You have them where you can watch them at all times. I use indoor brooders and believe them to be far superior to outdoor machines that are used with- out shelter. The outdoor brooder works well and is fairly corvenient to use when the weather is fair, but when it is stormy, or there is a high wind, it is neither convenient nor agreeable to attend to the lamp. When it rains hard, it is almost impossible to open and clean the brooder and the chicks suffer from being confined in very small quarters and from breathing the impure air of a dirty brooder. If the brooder is in a building, the chicks can have the run of ‘the floor, when the weather is not fit for them to be outside. An open shed built over an outdoor brooder for shade and protection from rain and keavy winds is consid- erable advantage, for it protects one when he fills and trims the lamp, or adjusts the flame, and when he feeds and cares for the chicks. If such a shed is provided with a muslin curtain to be let down in front when the weather requires it, it makes a good exercising room for the chicks, when they would otherwise have to be confined ‘in the brooder. I do not feed anything until the chicks are twenty-four hours old; then I feed hard boiled eggs. For the first week I feed corn meal bread that is baked until it will crumble. This 1 feed as often as they eat it up clean. After the first week I feed cracker crumbs and stale bread which can be purchased of bakers very cheaply. As soon as the chicks will eat whcle wheat and cracked corn I feed it. I also feed beef scraps twice a week, and keep plenty of grit in the brooder. This is very necessary, as it aids digestion. I am aware that some poultrymen, who have reason to know, advise against the use of hard boiled eggs, but I have never found anything equal to it for the first meal. The corn bread is an excellent food, but must not be de- pended upon after the first week, because it is too much trouble to bake it and because it is not by any means a complete and well balanced ration. I keep the chicks in the brooder until they are a week old before I let them out in the brooder house. After they are four weeks old I have small coops, which are set in different parts of the place, so they will be by themselves, and all of the same age then are together. The smaller ones are not crowded by the larger ones. This is a point worth noting and acting upon, for if small chicks crowd into ‘the same coop with larger ones, the former are frequently overheated at night and pre- vented from getting their fair share of food in the day time. This prevents growth and arrests development, and the chick never makes so good a fowl as it wouid if it had a better chance. Those of one age should be fed separate from the other flocks, or the younger ones will be crowded away from the food by their larger brothers, and will not get enough to properly nourish their bodies. My chicks have unlimited range at all times. I breed Barred Plymouth Rocks and the above mode of feeding and earing for them has been very satisfactory to me, as I hardly ever have a sick chicken and I have pullets hatched late last year that weigh eight pounds. I feed grain entirely to all my fowls, and no ground feed except cracked corn. My first hatch this season, the 15th of March, was ten chicks from thirteen eggs; from eggs laid in February, the coldest month we had this year. C. B. BRISTOL. FEEDING CHICKENS BALANCED RATIONS. From Hatching Time to Maturity—Suitable Foods and Quantities for the Different Periods of Growth—Feeding the Newly Hatched Chick—Balancing the Rations—Ration for Growthy Youngsters—Forcing Late Hatched Chicks for Show—Analysis of Food in Common Use by Poultrymen. By Robert H. Essex. tured fowls-—a ration containing considerable ani- mal food, and this is one of the points I wish to impress upon readers. Experience has caused me to realize its importance. In the early days of Buff Ply- mouth Rocks, their combs were too large, and knowing that meat, even in small quantities, tended to increase the size of the combs, I avoided its use as much as possible. By this course the size of the combs was governed to a certain extent, but what a difference was visible in the growth of the young birds which were supplied with animal food and those which were deprived of it. We all like to experiment, and it took me a few years to find out that not only do chicks need animal food, but they need it in liberal quantities. It has long been demonstrated that some meat is necessary, but in the case of young chicks it is not generally fed in sufficient quantitics. Feeding the Newly Hatched Chicks. Study nature. Wild birds in feeding their young have preferences, even in the selection of vegetable foods. Some prefer weed seeds, others the young buds of trees; many are partial to fruit and other vegetables, but a very large ma- jority gather in the flies, bugs, beetles and worms that ven- ture within their range, and upon these the young warblers thrive, grow fat and feathers, and are in a very short time in show condition. Have you ever noticed the quills on the nestlings? How fast they grow. Seldom do we see a chick feather so fast. The food that produces feathers rapidly is the best food for chickens, and they should be well supplied with it, at least until they are through their first molt. Such food will be chiefly animal food and will compose a very narrow ration. It is well known that the yolk of the egg is absorbed by the chick before and after hatching. That is nature’s food and must be good. [s it a wide or narrow ration? It is extremely narrow. One part protein to three parts fat is considered very narrow, but this first food of a chicken is even more so. It is composed of one part protein to about two parts fat (15.7:33.3), and please remember it is about @ HICKENS need a far narrower ration than do ma- a ee FEEDING THE c ae HICKS: - “‘A’* Coops and Runways for Young Chicks. one-half water—one-half water. Milk is another natural food for the young, and just as good for chickens as for babes. How is it proportioned—3.3 protein to 4 fat. Add the starchy contents, and approximately it reaches the pro- portion of 1:2. Quite narrow, is it not? Yet the young live and thrive upon it. Nature teaches us, therefore, that the food of young chickens should contain about one part protein to two parts carbohydrates and fat. This is from two to three parts narrower than is generally advocated, but it has given bet- ter results than any other I have tried and my experiments have been not a few. Then, too, as we have shown nature upholds it. Do not feed hard boiled eggs in large quantities. Such food may be balanced correctly, but it is indigestible for the very young chicks, and remember that of all foods only the portion digested provides nutriment. If you must feed it, let it be well broken. Let the particles be thoroughly seperated by the use of stale bread crumbs, then nearly the whole of it will be digested. It is far better, however, to use uncooked eggs. Mix them with bread crumbs, shorts, cornmeal or all of these, so that the food shall not be sticky or pasty. Use some bran if you choose, but not too much, and if you are tempted to add a little clear sand, don’t be timid about it. The shorts or middlings may be found too sticky; bread crumbs are best for the purpose and if you have only a few chicks it will be well to separate the yolk from the white of egg, using only the former and so avoid mixing toc much at a time. This refers, of course, to the first week. After that the chicks will take care of it all. Steei cut or granulated oats make a good food for the sec- ond week, also millet seed. As the chicks become older—say from two weeks of age, beef scraps, dried blood, animal meal or fine ground green bone may be used with benefit. These foods contain in large proportion the protein we want, and their use en- ables the feeder to make a ration suitable for chicks. Care must be taken that too much of this is not fed at first. Some of these foods are too strong for young chicks, and I use them at this age only when I can’t get fresh meat—liver, etc., ete. Without the aid of beef scraps or one of the other ani- mal foods mentioned the eastern duck growers would never have been able to place ducklings upon the market in such desirable condition as they do.Their growth would not be so fast, their flesh would be less tender and the ducklings less plump. This means that demand would decrease and prices would be lower. Just so with young chickens. If intended for market as broilers they must have animal food to hasten growth and keep them in health. The forcing to which they are subject would run them off their legs in a short time if their food consisted exclusively of grain either whole or ground. A most desirable feature of these animal foods is that their protein contents produce flesh without an excess of fat. The breeder of exhibition stock will ap- preciate the importance of this fact, especially if the cock- erels which he has been forcing for early fall shows give signs of leg weakness. The food they have been getting THE CHICK BOOK 3) has produced too much fat and not enough muscle and flesh. A change of food—the addition of animal protein to the ration—goes to the root of the trouble and in a short time the birds are again “on their feet.” Animal protein works wonders with fowls, and while it is so plentiful in green bone, dried blood, animal meal and beef scraps, etc., and considering that these foods are so easily obtainable, no breeder of fowls can afford to be with- out a supply. In animal meal and beef scraps there is nearly as much protein as there are carbohydrates and fat. In green bone there is about half as much, and in dried blood there is little else than protein. How chickens delight in a little crisp lettuce, grass or clover. Provide it if possible; otherwise cook some carrots, cabbage, turnips, beets or mangels for them, or let them pick away at the raw roots, or a few raw potatoes. Clover is now sold in such convenient forms (both cut and ground) that no breeder should be without it if he has any difficulty in providing green food. Lettuce and clover contain a large proportion of protein. Let your chicks have enough food, but do not stuff them. Little chicks will begin to cry for you when they dis- cover that you are their attendant, and if you are at all soft hearted it will be hard to refuse the continued stuffing they ery for. Feed little and often. Chicks are never so happy as when scratching in shallow litter for little crumbs or seeds. Will they do this if overfed? No. Limit the food and keep them singing, but let them have enough to repay them for their work. Some breeders keep one variety of food continually be- fore their chicks and a number of them are successful poul- try raisers. This seems contradictory following immedi- ately after the suggestion to feed little and often, but it is not so strange as it appears at first glance. If one kind of food is kept continually before them, the chicks partake of it only occasionally as they need it. If they have been fed on the plan first suggested—little and often, it is likely they will gorge themselves when first allowed access to large quantities of food, but if they have been used to it, they simply nibble and run, and although their crops are never empty, neither are they overloaded. If such a method be adopted the food to be kept before them must always be of the same variety. Cracked corn is generally used. A change from corn to wheat would be an inducement to over- feed. It would tempt their appetites and induce them to overload their crops. We do not advocate this method of feeding, but if it is adopted, as it sometimes is for a time- saver, the other food supply should be made up largely of protein. Balancing the Rations for Chicks. The reader has now been duly impressed wich the value of protein and its use in the ration, and we will give an example of balancing the ration so that anybody with any foods will know how to go about it. Following along the lines of our argument the ration shall possess about one part protein to two parts carbohy- drates and fat, ani is intended for newly hatched chicks. Our first chick food is egg, both white and yolk well beaten. In this the proportion of protein and carbohy- drates is about equal. This we mix with bread so as to render it comparatively dry. We will assume that we have a flock of chicks that require about a pound of dry matter each meal. Dry mat- ter is the total bulk of food less water or moisture. In one pound of eggs, that is the edible portion, there is twenty- seven per cent of dry matter that is made up of thirteen ‘ per cent protein and twelve per cent fat, in addition to ash, ~ etc. In a pound of bread crumbs we find eighty-eight per ceut of dry matter made up of eleven per cent protein, seventy-five per cent fat, etc. If we add the total amount of protein and fat contained in the eggs and bread, we find we have twenty-four parts protein and eighty-seven parts fat; that is, about three and a haif times as much fat as The nutritive ratio To make the ration nar- protein, the actual figures being 3:6. of this mixture would be 1:3.6. A Shelter That Can be Gpened or Closed, as the Weather Requires. rower we might reduce the bread crumbs to three-quarters of a pound, but that would make the mixture too “pasty.” We will therefore leave it as before and instead of securing the narrower ration by that means we feed in addition a little meat. Take beef scraps for instance. These on an average contain about ninety-three per cent dry matter, of which forty-five per cent is protein and forty-seven per cent is carbohydrates. The protein and carbohydrates being about equal it will need only a little beef scraps to bring the nutritive ratio down to 1:2, the ration we have sug- gested before as being a desirable one for chicks. We do not advise the use of beef scraps at this early age, but having the analysis before us, we used it as an example. Fresh meat will analyze much the same, so far as protein contents are concerned, and should be used in preference. If a little more bread is necessary to mix with the egg, it may be used. After the chickens are one or two weeks old the egg food will become scarcer or perhaps too expensive and it becomes necessary to have a substitute. We wish to make the change of food without making too great a change in the ratio. In looking around for a suitable food we think of cracked wheat. One pound of cracked wheat contains about eighty-nine per cent dry matter, of which .075 is pro- tein and .700 carbohydrates. Once more we take beef scraps to be fed in conjunction with it. We have given the amount of protein and carbohydrates in beef scraps. Now add the total to that contained in wheat and we have .525 protein and 1.170 carbohydrates and fats. Dividing the latter by Finely cracked corn may be substituted for the wheat. In which case the following result would be attained: Dry Matter. Protein. Carbohydrates, One pounds COMNN as nwa- «oe es ls .89 .062 152 One pound beef scraps ........ .93 45 AT .o12 1.222 INUErIdimesre bly rater atcteters: «1st baleen fe e's (arse b's Slane 1:2.4. 58 THE CHICK BOOK By the time the chickens have been fed this way for another week we reduce the proportion of beef scraps to one-half, which, in connection with cracked wheat, gives us a nutritive ratio of 1:3.2. This is a very satisfactory ration until the chickens are three weeks old. As far back as we can remember we have known eggs and bread crumbs to be a first food for cage birds and for chicks, and now having examined the composition of these articles of tood, what does it prove? Simply that the “old woman’s nonsense” of eggs and bread crumbs is scientifi- cally and naturally correct and that, knowingly or unknow- ingly, our grandmothers have been following nature’s way as closely as possible. Jf it is not desirable to go to the trouble of figuring out a ration, the easier way is to choose from the list such a variety of foods as will give a ration near enough for general purposes. It should be remembered that the larger the pro- portion of carbohydrates and fat, the wider the ration. If you wish to make the ration narrower take a food that pos- sesses little carbohydrates and fat; bran, for instance, is one of the best of foods, but too bulky and idigestible for use except with a more concentrated food. In this connection we must warn the reader to use very little, if any, cottonseed meal. We have before informed readers that it is very indigestible. Linseed meal is more easily digested, but it, too, should be used sparingly. Remember to give the chickens all the green food they need. There is nothing better for them than clover, lettuce or cabbage. : From the age of three weeks or a month to the age of two months, nearly any grain may be fed that is suitable in size; that is, anything except whole corn. I generally feed hulled oats, finely cracked corn, millet and wheat, the greater the variety the better. If the fowls are on a good sized range they will provide themselves with nearly enough animal food. At this period the basis of the ration is wheat, I feed as much wheat as all the other grains combined. Ration for Growthy Youngsters. Early hatched birds cause little worry, little trouble, and it is a pleasure to see them grow. An extensive run where shade is available is desirable. A grass run, an alfalfa patch, a clover or cornfield are alike ideal poultry runs and provide an abundance of insects that coax the rangy youngsters to exercise while furnishing them with a substitute for meat. Chickens from two to five months old gain size and health under such conditions. If they are on a farm where range is unlimited they need only a little additional food morning and evening, the variety depending upon what the fields afford. Where the range is less extensive it provides fewer insects and little or no grain. We wili assume that green food is plentiful. Of what then shall the ration consist? Such foods as ‘promote the formation of muscle and bone,—that means ‘size; flesh and fat—that means vigor. What shall the foundation of the ration be now? Oats. “But oais are so seldom fed,’ you say, “particularly in sections where corn is plentifully grown.” Where oats have been tried they are seldom discarded. They are the best grain I know to put size on a fowl, and they have formed the foundation of my ration for growing stock for many years, and my strain is noted for its size. To form feathers which are continually being renewed in fowls of this age we require more animal matter than can ‘be secured on the range. It is better to give more rather ‘than less at such a stage and a ration of about one part pro- ‘tein to four parts carbohydrates is none too narrow. It may be composed of the following each day: One feed of oats, one feed of wheat and one of meat or cut bone and corn. For the purpose of forming the ration we will take one pound of each with exception of meat and corn, of which we give half pound each. More or less than these quantities may be used, depending upon the number of fowls to be fed, but the proportion will be the same. Upon examination of the list of foods given herewith we find that in a pound of oats there is .092 protein and .532 carbohydrates and fat; in a pound of wheat .075 and .700 re- spectively; in a half pound of corn .035 and .392, and in a half pound of beef scraps .225 and .235 respectively. To illustrate, we will add these quantities: Carbohydrates Protein. and Fats. Onenpoundyoataeeerrritcractielscissteniente .092 532 One poundswhealtinqema- fercls cece selec eile .075 -700 One-half Pound COGN s. 65 5..2)5 ois: sie v0) sols 0 .035 1392 One-half pound beef scraps.............. .225 -235 427 1.859 Upon dividing the carbohydrates and fat by the protein we find the proportion of these important constituents to be one part protein to 4.35 parts carbohydrates and fat. This is a little wider than we intended, but it is near enough for all practical purposes, even if we did not consider the green food and insects secured in the run during the day. The addition of these will bring the ration down to the desired point. The foods composing the ration will be changed fre- quently with the exception of the oats. We will use oats every day. Sometimes we may substitute buckwheat for wheat or corn, at other times barley, etc., etc. Occasionally we feed a mash in which we use considerable bran. This will assist in keeping the daily ration narrow even though we may feel it wise to give a feed of peas or barley or an extra supply of corn (these grains containing large propor- tions of carbohydrates and fat). With the example and analysis of foods here given there will be no difficulty forming a ration from such foods as are plentiful. Prices vary, as we have said, and the variation should be accepted as a hint to change the food. The fowls will not object. During the month immediately preceding a show the birds may be fed as suggested for late hatched chickens, but unless they are under weight there will be no necessity for feeding them after the usual evening meal, which is given before sundown. Forcing Late Hatched Chicks for Show. Both the fancier and the breeder of poultry for market are well on the way to successful feeding when they have realized that different fogds produce different conditions and have decided to select such foods as will aid them in secur- ing the condition desired. It is clear that a change of food is necessary when the chick merges from its babyhood, takes on a new suit of feathers and becomes a full-fledged young- ster. Every poultryman we believe sees the necessity for a change of food at that period, but the majority are governed simply by the knowledge that the chicken is then equipped with better means of digestion and can do with less costly and more bulky food. True it is that in most cases the breeder desires rapid growth and generally provides, or at least intends to provide, that which will induce it. Is it not in addition necessary to consider what requirement the fowl is intended to fulfill? Take the exhibitor, for instance. His fowls are destined for the show rooms, yet this does not mean that they shall all be fed alike or in equal quantities. Some must be prepared for the early fall and winter shows; others for the later winter shows. If the exhibitor is blessed with THE CHICK BOOK 59 incubators te hatch early chicks, brooders to accommodate them, and experience that enables him to carry them health- ily through the early spring when conditions are unnatural, then indeed he will feed his fall exhibits as he will his later show birds, because there is little or no necessity for forcing them; but if his chicks are late hatched, he must adopt heroic measures to “bring them along’ if he would gain a place among the successful exhibitors. These late hatched, forced youngsters seldom attain the size of those which are fed for growth and vigor and allowed to develop size before putting on the gloss and finish for the show room. What method of feeding is practiced to hurry these young candidates along? A ration composed of animal matter supplemented by fat forming foods; and during the closing stage the addition of foods known to contain considerable oil. The first is in- tended to hasten maturity; the second to put on weight, and the third to put on the finishing touches—the gloss to the feathers. Bulky vegetable food is added to keep the diges- tive organs in good working order, and frequently condi- ments are given to coax the fowl to eat more and more of the concentrated food. Frequent change of food is neces- sary so that the fowi shall not go “off its feed.”” Few foods are too expensive to be procured at this season, for winning in the fall means sales for the winter shows. In the days when the writer was exhibiting—where the winters stole well into the spring and the big fall show seemed to advance to meet the summer—the principal event being held in August—many were the rations tried, and feeding sometimes extended well into the evening hours. “Little and often’’ was found to be a good motto, and only at the last meal (about 9 p. m) were the fowls coaxed to eat more than they wanted, then they got the tempting tit-bits which had been saved for the last moment—scraps of meat, green cut bone, bits of bread, oatmeal porridge (well sugared), cooked rice, cooked potatoes—fed by lamplight. Result: Winners at the fall shows; delicate birds later on. These fowls were not allowed extensive range. They were confined in yards about eight by fifty feet, in flocks of eight or ten. Their roosting pens were kept scrupulously clean; wooden floors well sprinkled with sand every week, and droppings raked every day. They were confined to the house during inclement weather. Tame? Sure! A little training in good sized coops built upon the walls above the roosts—handling every day— } Wa Whi A she A Closed Roosting Coop for Cool Weather. induced a confidence in their attendants that made all the difference during show week. The daily food during these forcing days consisted of mash early in the morning (a small amount), wheat, oats or barley or buckwheat in litter at about ten a. m. and two p. m. and corn at six p.m. Sunflower seeds were frequently given in place of the barley, wheat or oats, and during the two weeks precediug the show, hemp seed was provided, or linseed meal mixed with the mash. Cabbage was hung in the pens continually; grit of course always before them—some- times put in their mash; and they had all the milk they could drink. wi |__.AIMTT = An Open Roosting Coop for Warm Weather. We are enabled to present analyses of foods that have been made by experiment stations throughout the country. First it must be understood that analyses differ slightly be- cause the foods analyzed differ in composition. It would be extremely difficult to procure two samples of wheat that contain exactly equal proportions of protein, carbohydrates and fat; similarly with regard to other vegetable formation. This applies also to animal matter. The quantities given therefore are usually average AME, yet are sufficiently exact for practical purposes. Proportion of Protein and Carbohydrates and Fat in Foods Used by Poultrymen. Digestible Matter in One Pound. (Parentheses are used where 3 ee the digestibility is estimated Re < ie & 5 from that of other similar feed- | 22 g rae s 22 é s ao 5 eae Io) Bait ing stuffs.) eee! & ear =] =u oo a Cow Z, a Os GRAINS: Wheat..... RORRadeMosteareocoun|) ck: (.075) | (.700) 775. | (1:9.3) (COTE essen a aatele |e 070 - 184 854 1:11 2 Oats Bananty ess Hiaseie eee 092 532 -024 1:5.8 Bagleveracn occ eoer ost 087 +962 +179 1:8.0 Buckwheat.... ( 078) | (.548) | (.626) | (1:7.0) RE teseae te. ; (.064) | (.703) | (.767) |(1:11.0) Pease t -188 -535 23 1;2.8 Sorghum Seed... (.054) | (.668) | (.722) |(1:13.3) BRANS, MIDDLINGS AND MEALS. BL AT (WHeat) sl Smeets cis eee 881 120 454 574 1:3.8 Bran (rye).. AL Aton .-.| -884 | (.115) | (.488) | ( 603) | (1:4.2) Middlings (wheat) .. Sqacnsdebeass.caa z 128 -609 «737 1:48 Middlings (buckwheat) nobel hed (.237) | (.505) | (.742) | (1:2 1) Shorts (wheat) ..... 122 -586 708 1:48 Corn Meal. 33 055 -711 7 1:12.9 Corn and Cob Mea 044 +665 709 nicola t Barley Meal.... O74 668 762 1:9.3 Pea Meal ; 168 -531 699 1:3.2 Linseed Meal.... 5 .289 9 738 1:1.6 Cotton Seed Meal oi. cece. ce cers 372 437 -809 1:1.2 MANUFACTURED FEEDS, Gluten Feed 194 +633 +827 Wes) Gluten Meal.. 323 -7125 | 1.048 ete Hominy Chop (.071) | (.795) | (.866) |(1:11.2) Brewers’ Grains (dried) 168 471 639 1:2.8 Brewers’ Grains 2 alee 043 128 171 1:3.0 Malt Sprouts.. 186 403 589 1:2.2 BULKY VEGETABLE FOODS, POLALOCS war neiete 2/0 cies taiiaetel ais [ee Lk 009 157 -166 1:17 4 Garrots ee. 114 | (.009) | ( 089) | (.098) 1:9:9 Beets (Sugar) 135 | 016 -109 125 1:6.8 Mangel-Wurz 091 | .O11 O54 -065 ep Rutabagas 114 010 -085 -095 1:8.5 Turnips.... 095 -010 O77 087 rss dieti Red Clover. 280 | (.028) | (.153) | (.181) | (1:5.5) Alfalfa asccldcnD 916 104 -430 534 1:4.1 DAIRY PRODUCTS. 082 028 050 -078 1:1.8 127 031 Bley! 168 1:4.4 095 035 057 -092 1:16 070 008 -059 -067 1:7.4 ROBT. H. ESSEX. CARE OF THE GROWING STOCK. Successful Poultry Raisers Give Their Favorite Methods of Caring for and Managing Chicks from Six Weeks to Six Months of Age--Original Plans of Roosting Coops—Range for the Youngsters— What and How to Feed. [In line with the symposium on ‘‘Feeding Brooder Chicks,’ and “Care of June Chicks,’’ we present the following additional methods in use among prominent breeders for bringing their growing stock to a vigorous maturity. The advice here given is of great value, as it is the result of experiment and observation by men whose successes qualify them to take rank among the foremost producers of good poultry.—Ep1ToR}. COLONY COOP FOR GROWING FOWLS—GRASS RUNS AND SHADE—CONDITIONS AND FOOD THAT PRODUCE BIG COCHINS. UR chicks (Cochins) are hatched by both hens and in- © cubators. We use outdoor brooders, called 200- chick size, and place from forty to fifty in each brooder. When the chicks are about six weeks old and are nicely feathered we divide them into lots of twelve each, keeping the cockerels and pullets separate. They are then placed in weaning coops, which are 5x6 feet, ground plan, and three feet high in front and two feet at the rear. (Fig. 1.) These coops are provided with frame doors hinged on the inside and covered with one-fourth inch mesh screen. On the outside a sol- id wood door is hinged at the top. This door can be raised or lowered or closed entirely, las the state of weather may re- quire. On warm summer nights the screen door is closed and the wood door is lowered and propped to provide shelter in case of a windstorm or hard rain. This arrange- ment gives the chicks plenty of fresh air, and at the same time protects them from vermin and night prowling animals. Fig. 1—Coop with Double Doors Used by A. W. Rudy & Son. Having an abundance of green grass and shade, these weaning coops are almost constantly on the move. This re- duces to a minimum the possibility of disease arising from accumulated filth, as is almost sure to occur if the chicks are compelled to live on ground saturated with poisonous excre- ments. During these stages of development they are given a thorough dusting of Persian insect powder once a week. This treatment we consider to be very important, as we have found by experience that lice cause more trouble than all other ailments combined. From the ages of six weeks to six months the chicks are fed cracked corn, pure ciean wheat, hulled oats, and at noon are given a mash feed of some good poultry food, and once a week we add to this ration, fresh ground green bone. We never use any drugs or condiments and have no se- cret method of getting our Cochins so large, as we have found that if fresh pure food is used, combined with a little brains while using it, and the chicks are kept under condi- tions that will enable them to assimilate what is given them, their growth will be rapid and their development perfect. We are very careful when selecting the chicks to make up a colony, to see that they are all of the same size and of equal development. If any show a tendency to going back, or slow development, they are immediately removed and placed with a younger fiock, where they will have at least a fighting chance to keep up with the procession. When six months old they are placed in larger houses, the floors of which are covered with a thick bed of straw. Cochins have no nse for roosts till they are at least one year old. A. W. RUDY & SON. RAISED IN AN ORCHARD—ALLOWED TO “HAVE THEIR OWN WAY’—VARIETY OF FOOD. In regard to our care and management of chicks from six weeks to six months old, we have a large apple orchard near the house which has been fenced in and made into four large yards. A brooder house, or ‘summer home’’ for chicks has been placed on the dividing line between the yards, so that at this age we are able to separate the young pullets and cockerels, giving them separate yards and roosting places in the buildings. We have low, flat, movable roosts standing on four legs, which are placed in the buildings soon after the brooders are removed, and here you will find our chicks at night until they are from one-half to two-thirds grown. Some of them prefer the low branches of the trees which are so conveniently near by, and as we find it means con stant warfare to compel them to seek the buildings, while they dwell in the orchards, we allow them to “have their own way” until the unpleasant fall weather sets in, when they are removed to winter quarters and sheltered at night. We have a “cornfield” adjoining the yard in which the pul- lets are allowed to roam one day, and the cockerels the next. They always come home to roost and be fed. We usually put about as many in each yard as we can get of the same age and sex, varying from forty to seventy-five to the yard. In the morning we feed a mash composed of equal parts of cornmeal, ground oats and wheat bran, with a little meat scraps added, also a very little salt. Have sometimes used a prepared poultry food in place of this mash. The mash we scald with equal parts of sweet milk and water, and feed while just a little warm. The chicks are given all the fresh skim milk and water they will drink, and a basin of “dutch cheese” is sometimes added to the mash. A little fresh cut green bone is fed once or twice a week if we can get it. At noon oats, wheat or buckwheat is scattered in the yards for them to hunt for, and at night they are fed all the wheat or THE CHICK BOOK 61 corn they will pick up. They of course help themselves to apples in the late summer and early fall, and we occasionally give them cabbage and tomatoes to pick at after the grass gets dry, or any little “‘treat’’ we happen to have for them, to give variety. C. W. JEROME & CO. PLENTY OF RUNWAY AND YARD ROOM—LEAN- TO COOP. I use both incubator and hens for hatching. If the hens are slow in laying, requiring too long a time to supply a suf- ficient number of eggs for an incubator, I put the first two or three broody hens that I can find to work. I never set one hen singly. If the hens lay wel I set tthe incuba- tor. I much pre- fer ‘ineubators and brooders, es- pecially the brooder. I have hatehed out chicks) by hens raised them in J = brooders without Fig. 2—Style of Lean-to Coop Used by Mr. any loss of chicks John Hettich. to speak of and with much less trouble than watching the old hen. I never use outside coops, even for broods with hens. I have on the south side of a main building a lean-to shed six by fourteen feet with a glass front. (See Fig. 2.) This shed I use for my young chicks. I have movable partitions and can divide it into from three to five compartments, de- pending on the number and the size of broods, each com- partment containing a brood of chicks. From this they can run cn the outside in good weather either with the hen, or with the hen confined on the inside, so the chicks can run in and out at will. In this coop they remain until they are weaned, which is from six to ten weeks. Of course this coop must be cleaned three or four times a week, with plenty of litter or chaff on the floor, with dry food fed in litter to make them work, and plenty of fresh water. They grow and thrive from the very start. After chicks are weaned they are moved from this lean-to coop into the main room adjoining, which is 12x14. In this room they are put to roost, while other youngsters take their piace in the first or young chick coop. The last lot of chicks I allow to grow up in this shed, while the first lot remain in the main room of the big building until about October 1, when the cockerels are separated from the pullets. My cockerel house is in another part of the yard, with plenty of runway and yard room. Pullets go into my main hen house. which is 12x15, divided into two parts, with plenty of vard room to each part. I do not allow my hens and pullets to run together. I find hens get too fat on a ration that would keep a pullet starving hungry. As to feeding chicks I find little trouble to keep them growing from the time they are six weeks to six months old on pvienty of sound small grain, wheat and chopped corn be- ing my main ration. Twice a week I feed them a full mess of wheat bran, middlings and oil-mea! well mixed. I be- lieve that oil-meal has a splendid effect in producing fine, glossy plumage. Of course, we all know that plenty of grit and fresh water are two essentials. It is the little chicks that give most trouble in getting them up to six weeks old. I am always making a fight on lice, both on fowls and in buildings. Lice kill more chicks and grown fowls, for that matter, than all other diseases combined. JOHN HETTICH. MOVABLE COOPS IN BLUE GRASS PASTURE— METHOD OF FEEDING—CORNFIELD AND CLOVER FOR RANGE. I do not have any particular style of coop—a good roof and bottom of boards always, made so that it can be conven- iently cleaned. Twenty chicks to a hen I think about right. The coops are placed near the house for convenience while the chicks are young, moving them further away as they grow older. At about five or six weeks they are located near a blue grass pasture, with a number of apple trees for shade. Here they have range until cold weather drives them into winter quarters. My first food for little chicks is dry wheat bread, moist- ened with sweet milk. This is good enough for the first day; the second day, oatmeal and millet seed are given, with good grit. They get water from the start. Up to four weeks old their food is bread, moistened in milk, millet seed, oatmeal cornbread, baked as for the table, and cracked wheat. After they are four weeks old I discontinue the cat- meal and bread and milk, and feed millet seed, whole wheat and cracked corn, with cornbread for breakfast, baked the day before. After the chicks are two months old I feed a bran mash, consisting of one-third each of ground oats, corn and wheat bran, moistened with milk, clabber or sour milk preferred. This I feed in the evening, all they will eat. I follow this method of feeding the old fowls, believing the evening the proper time for soft food. For late hatched broods (say the last of June or first of July hatches) I know of no place better for cooping than a near cornfield, with a clover meadow neac by. The corn furnishes plenty of shade through the warm days, and the clover field supplies grass- hoppers. I Lave had good results from late broods raised in this manner. O. L. KING. ROOSTING COOP FOR YOUNG STOCK—THREE FEEDS A DAY AND PLENTY OF RANGE AND WORK. In raising chicks, if they have been fed and cared for as they should, are free from mites and diseases until weaning time, or unti! they are large enough to be taken from the brooder to the roosting coop, I find that the greatest work and care of the season is over. After my chicks are six to eight weeks old I give them their liberty all through the day, except when the weather is too bad to let them run. I feed them three times a day and make them work for it all except the morning feed. For a roosting place I use coops with a floor space two and one-half feet square. (Fig. 3.) I also use these coops with a run attached for the hen and brood when I let the chicks run with the hen instead of using a brood- er, so when the chicks are wean- ed they will con- tinue to go home to roost. These coops are made of seven- eighthsinch matched lumber, well seasoned. The sides can be made of lumber taken from dry goods boxes. oo me : Fig. 3—Roosting Coops for Young Stock Rec- ommended by Mr. G. E. Read. The front should be two feet high, the back sixteen inches high. This gives sufficient slant to the top to run the water off when it rains. The back is left open and has slats nailed across to keep the hen in and to allow the chicks to pass out. This open side adinits plenty of fresh air at all times. The top should pro- ject over about eight inches at back of coop to prevent the 62 THE CHICK BOOK rain from blowing in. In the front there is a door twelve inches wide. There is a bottom made by nailing boards to- gether on two cleats, made so that the coop will slip down over the floor onto the ground. This prevents the rain from blowing under and wetting the floor. The cleats keep the bottom from resting flat on the ground. The coop should be given two coats of paint. This kind of a roosting place is very easily cleaned or whitewashed by lifting it off the floor. When the ground is dry and warm the floor is not necessary, simply move the coop to a new spot when it begins to get foul. Twenty-five or thirty chicks can, without being crowded, roost in a place of this kind until they are three or four months old. When the chicks are raised in a brooder I prefer a roosting coop large enough to accommodate fifty. This number is as many as should be put in one flock until three or four months old. I then move them to a large roosting house, where they continue to roost on a floor until five or six months old. Sometimes I put as many as one hundred in a place of this kind. From here they go to their permanent roosting place, which is on perches made of two-by-four- inch scantling, with the top rounded a little. Whatever kind of place chicks have to roost in, it should be kept clean and free from mites. Unless you do this you will surely fail. IT have no mechanical arrangement or fixed method for feeding chicks. I always feed what I think the time and occasion demand. J believe that as much depends on the way food is prepared and manner of feeding, as on the ma- terial. For the mcrning meal I usually give a light feed of cornbread baked just the same as for table use, or a mash composed of bran and middlings. They will still be a little hungry, and will start out hunting what they can find to pick up. Along toward noon I scatter wheat among the leaves and litter in a large part of their range. This gives them something to do that greatly interests them until along in the afternoon. When the sun is about one hour high I scatter cracked corn, and perhaps some millet seed or wheat in some litter. This will keep them busy until about sundown, and by this time their crops are full, they have done a good day’s work and are ready to go to their coop and enjoy a good night’s rest. There is always plenty of fresh water and grit where they can go to it whenever they choose. G. E. READ. RAT AND STORM PROOF ROOSTING COOP. The brood coop I have had most success with is made as follows: Length, twenty-four inches; height, in front, twenty inches; rear, twelve inches; width, eighteen inches (inside measurements). I make the coop of matched pine, with board floor, ‘the cleats on the outside, so as to raise the Coop off thie ground. The top projects three inches at the sides and four finches at the rear. I make a closed front (boards the same as the coop), the front being hinged to the top, and the top and front mitered, so as to close tight when down. The coop front is kept in place by cleats on the inside, these cleats allow- ing about seven-eighths of an inch space on both sides for ventilation when the door is down. The front has iron strips with three or four holes fast- Fig. 4—Coop with Adjustable Hood Front. and repay for their cost many times over. ened about the center for the purpose of forming a hood to the coop, which can be set at different angles by placing screw eyes to the sides of the coop. This feature of the coop is grand, as by the hood the hot sun can be kept out as well as driving rains. These coops save me many chicks each season. They are rat proof and storm proof. The hen is kept in by a lath front fastened just at the edge of coop. By painting these coops and storing when not in use, they last a long time When the chicks are older 1 utilize dry goods boxes, cut down to about the same shape, only I make a hood of the lower eighteen inches only REV. C. A. SMITH. ROOSTING COOP FOR STOCK UNTIL READY FOR WINTER QUARTERS—MAKING THE MASH— GRAIN FOOD. As soon as the hen weans the chicks (or if raised in a brooder, as soon as they are large enough to take care of themselves) they are removed to roosting coops made and used exclusively fur this purpose. These coops are scat- tered along a hedge fence fac- ing a large orch- ard, where they can get range and shade at all times. The coops are made from cheap lumber, but are strong and tight. We have them from six to ten feet long, but prefer them ten feet long, two feet high at back, three and one-half feet in front, the roof projecting over the front to keep out rain. Ends and back are boarded tight, and there is also a tight floor. Front is of wire netting nailed to the frame just fitting, and hinged at the top, so as to be closed at night and to shut the chicks in when getting them used to new quarters. The coops have roosting poles lengthwise the whole length of coop. We do not find so many crooked breast bones from roosting on these poles as are found by chicks roosting on the floor. The coops must be kept far enough apart so the different flocks will not try to crawl into one coop. If possible we put pul- lets in different quarters from the cockerels. We have kept chicks in these coops until snow flies. We feed only three times a day when chicks are this age. The morning and noon ration consists of corn meal (ground fine) two parts, bran one part, middlings two parts, thoroughly mixed. To this we add salt and to a peck we add cne quart of meat meal. This is placed in a light ves- sel, boiling water poured over it and mixed to a stiff dough. We use a grain sack to cover the vessel, and pack very tightly to keep in all the steam. Let the mixture cook in its steam and feed only when cool. They are fed all they will eat up clean. At night they are fed corn, wheat and oats—very little oats, however, as we have had poor success with oats. The grains are fed alternately so they will not get tired of either grain. F. E. MOW. ce a Fig. 5—Mr. F. E. Mow’s Roosting Coop. EXCELLENT CONDITIONS FOR GROWING HEALTHY BIRDS. Living as we do on a farm, we have plenty of range, grass and shade. We have a large apple, plum and cherry orchard, also raspberry and blackberry patches, which af- ford fine range for young chicks. As for food, we use only such grains as we raise on the farm. When the chicks are about six weeks old we put them in flocks of fifteen to twen- ty-five, each flock roosting at night in a large coop having a movable bottom, so as to make it easy to clean out. There THE CHICK BOOK 63 is a wire screen door in front, so as to give plenty of air, also to make it vermin-proof at night. As to our method of feeding, we give corn ground rather coarse, so the chicks will have something to pick at. Each morning we take what corn meal we want for a day and moisten it with milk that has been heated to the boiling point, being careful to mix thoroughly so all the meal is scalded, thus preventing danger of bowel trouble. We feed three times a day just what they will eat up clean each time. When they are about three months old we omit the corn meal and give whole oats in the morning and noon, and whole corn at night. We let them forage through the day for bugs, grass, etc., which they need to keep in good grow- ing condition. There is plenty of good clean water for them to drink at all times. This is one of the most important parts in raising healthy chicks. H. TIBBETTS. BEST OF CARE— PLENTY OF FOOD—WELL VENTI- LATED COOPS. We give our chicks farm range (farm consists of 269 acres) and plenty of fresh well water, also a variety of food consisting of eracked corn, wheat screenings, eorn bread, pota- toes, ete, and plenty of natural grit from a grav- el bank. In au- tumn their range : affords a good Fig. 6—Coop Used by Simon Lynch & Son. supply of grass- hoppers. Wesweepthe feeding space each day, scald and clean the drinking vessels, and try to keep the chicks as free from lice as possible by keeping the floor of the roosting houses clean and the walls, etc., whitewashed frequently. We aim to give at all times the best of care and plenty of food. We keep our fowls well sheltered at night in well ventilated roosting houses, ranging in size from four by eight feet to six by twelve feet. The illustration (Fig. 6) shows a build- ing six by twelve feet; front, six feet six inches; rear, four feet. The roof projects one foot to _ protect ventilators from rain. The door (D) is two by six feet. C C are doors twelve inches, hinged at bottom, to be opened for light and thorough ventilation. Above this door is a wire screen six inches wide (B) for ventilation at night or when other doors are closed. Above the door, running full length of house, is a board four inches wide to give support to roof. SIMON LYNCH & SON. FARM RANGE—PLENTY OF GREEN FOOD—ROOMY QUARTERS. We have never aimed to raise over four or five hundred chickens a year, as we raise geese and turkeys and eannot accommodate a much larger flock. The young have good comfortable coops, with board floors, closed up according to the weather, with the brood hen confined accordingly. They have farm range, an abundance of grass, good water at all times and plenty of grit. Our coops are too small to accommodate them after they are quite large, SO aS Soon as they begin to think about roosting on top of coops or a limb of the nearest tree, we put them in our large buildings, where the most of them are to be kept through the winter. Most of our old stock, kept for sitting, laying, etc., has been marketed by this tire. Our buildings are ciean and free from vermin. The youngsters, if they like, can use the perches, which are two inches wide and have rounded edges; or they can roost on the floor, which is earth, thickly covered with straw. There is plenty of room either place, with no crowding (chicks won't crowd if comfortable). When the cold rains and win- ter snows come unexpectedly they are comfortable. They are free from colds, nor do they have crooked breasts as some might think, for they do not have to go on the perches till they want to. We have had to put as many as one hun- dred and fifty in a large room, but that is too many; fifty to seventy-five are better. These chicks are taught to roam and scratch when quite young, and are not over-fed on grain too easily gotten. When past their chick food they are fed twice a day with a mash consisting of corn meal, middlings and bran, about equal parts, scalded and salted. A third meal, the night one, consists of cracked corn, wheat or screenings, fed in the straw so that they have to work for it. A little meat in some form is fed every few days, and they are given any- thing in the form of vegetables, cooked or raw, that they will eat that we happen to have, and we usually have some- thing of the kind. Our large orchard and grove furnish an abundance of shade, sometimes too much when it is a little cool. We never neglect the young, nor feed them more or less in quantity than they require, which varies according to age and weather, and no one but the feeder can tell how much. We used to overfeed, which is easily done, though some people actually starve their poultry and of course have “pad luck,’’ while the real cause is death from neglect. We do not expect to raise every chick, but are satisfied with a good per cent. We lose but few after they are placed in the large buildings, and those are by accident. This season we expect to keep many of the incubator chicks in the brooder houses till late fall or winter. The flocks spoken of were raised by hens. B. F. HISLOP. A COOL AND SAFE COOP FOR FORTY YOUNG FOWLS. —MOVED TO FRESH GROUND WEEKLY. I have several coops for young chickens that are two- and one-half feet high at back, three and one-half feet in front, three and one-half feet wide and from six to eight feet long, with heavy water-proof paper on top of roof. I try to set from three to five hens at one time and put all the chicks with two or three of them in one of these coops. When the chicks are about a week old, if the weather is good, I let them out. They will return at night and when weaned will roost in these coops of their own accord. Then I make a frame in front (two feet wide) cov-— ering it with = poultry netting (small mesh). I leave an opening in the back eight inches above the roosts and cover with wire netting The fowls are then safe from minks, rats, or any other animals, and still have a circula- tion of fresh air. The roosts in coop are about a foot from the ground, I clean the coops once a week and set them on fresh ground. These coops will accommodate about forty chicks. Late in the fall I line them with paper to prevent drafts, and when cold weather comes the chicks are in fine shape to. go into the houses. As to food, I am feeding small shrunken wheat from the mill. Of course fresh water is before them. at all times. D. F. PALMER. . F. Palmer’s Movable Coop for Forty Chicks. Fig. 7—Mr. Ot THE CHICK BOOK FEEDING THE CHICKS. We have had experience in raising chicks in brooders for many years and we have been successful. We never put more than seventy-five chicks in a lot and we use the dry food method entirely. Some years ago we found that it was not possible for us to give the chicks the time neces- Sary to success, as our fruit business at times claims almost ali our atiention. We therefore dropped the brooders, re- taining our incubators and giving the chicks to broody hens, placing the hens in the house formerly used for brooders until the weather allowed us to put them outdoors. The method of feeding which we employ for chicks after being ted for a week or so on crumbs, boiled rice, etc., is for morning: One quart sifted cereals, ground fine, one pint wheat bran, two ounces meat meal and moisten just enough to adhere slightly together. Noon, feed cracked corn, barley, hulled oats. Feed just what they will eat up quickly. At night we feed cracked corn, hulled oats, wheat, and a mixture of any small grain we may have. We find that the meat meal ‘has been a great help, and all our chicks made splendid growth in bone, and we have not the propor- tion of puny birds that are so common in nearly every flock. We prefer hen-raised chicks for many reasons, and we wi!l name some of them. First, you do not get so many crowded in a bunch; second, the hens exercise them hunt- ing bugs and teach them to hunt for something to eat in- stead of lying around waiting for the feeder to come; third, our hens will average ten chicks each and thirty hens will raise us three hundred chicks, which is as many as we wish for our present quar- ters. We give Game hens Game chicks, as. they will hover them until full feath- ered and raise nearly all given them. White Wy- andottes leave them in six or seven weeks to do for them- selves, and they get colds and the attendant diseases and die off. We would rather raise one well developed chick than twelve poor ones, and by our method we have few culls. 5: D & J. W. RILEY. SSSSSSSSSSSESSSSSSSSSSS Sas Fig. 10—Slatted Front Coop with Door at Side. TAIN cael Nal i, Or elbow room be given the growing stock and a number of the three hundred and sixty-five broad acres which Mr. Jor- dan owns be added to the yards now used in caring for the birds after they leave the brooder house. We suggest also that they be allowed to pick their own clover instead of bringing it to them. Good grazing land is, in our opinion, as important to the successful and cheap growing of poultry as to that of any other class of stock. Good birds have no opportunity to develop on a sand bank, and should not pe forced to exist there. Bugs and worms make up a large part of their living and these are not to be found without plenty of good grass for them to grow among. PROFITABLE ROASTING CHICKENS. How Large, Soft-Meated Chickens Are Produced for the Season of High Prices—The Advantage of the Balanced Ration—Caponizing the Males to Be Sold as Roasters—A Profitable Adjunct on the Farm. By A, F, Hunter. HAT there is a goodly profit in growing soft roasting ap chickens for market is very evident to the student of poultry conditions, and there are many poultry growers who maintain that the turning of eggs into chickens and growing them to soft-roaster size is not only the most profitable, but is the most satisfactory line of poul- try work. When talking one time with Mr. Rankin about the profitableness of poultry work, we stated that we could make three dollars profit in a year from a pullet that came to lay- ing maturity in October, laid one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy-five eggs within a year, and then was sold to market. ‘‘Yes,’’ said Mr. Rankin, “and I can make for- ty dollars a year profit from the same bird, by turning her eggs into chickens and growing them to market size.” As ex- perienced growers estimate that there is a hundred per cent profit in the business, it would need that eighty chickens be grown to roaster size and average to sell at a dollar each to give the forty dollars profit Mr. Rankin said he could make, and as an experienced poultry grower recently told me he planned to raise about two thousand chickens a year, and that they cleaned up about one thousand dollars a year profit, apparently Mr. Rankin’s forty dollars a year profit per hen, if her eggs are turned into chickens and the chick- ens grown to soft-rcasters, is reasonable. Obviously the price at which the chickens are sold has not a litile to do with the amount of profit in the business, and as soft-roasting chickens are highest in price in May and June, with March, April, July and August giving good prices, it is the chickens raised especially for marketing during those months that pay the best profits. In the an- nual circular of Messrs. Rudd & Son, of Boston, the prices for roasters were given as follows: Month, Prices ATUL AN Ve eepetevayarere tore patersteree een etapercisieressyecajelare 15 to 20c GDI UAT Vaue crete taiernicns Ma Soe ciere area cislaerace 20 to 22c IMiamCHigatetka-rels actosciateoieves ste cleakorare 20 to 25c¢ ANTOVEO "gg ether BR eee EC Rec 20 to 25¢ II TiethygmretnmeR eves poh et ce sera cual’ Sj ctrs etoiciuss sarees 25 to 30c ‘WUNG | OotlO mee COROT ABST Ee nae 30 to 40c LUG? 6 5 do SERA ORCI CITI CEERI, cee 36 to 25¢ AUER: deat cad NOCH AAI: Aeon rae 20 to 28c OMLEMUD ET Rotate ed ccei oc Seon, 14 to 20c October, November and December.... 12 to 18c It takes four or five months to grow a chicken to from four to six pounds weight, and with May and June giving the highest prices, it is evident that the chickens should be hatched in January and February to be grown for market- Ing in the months of highest prices. As a matter of fact, we find soft-roaster growers hatching their chickens all through the late fall and winter, as the supply of hatchable eges permits, and they are marketing the chickens all along from March to July, as the demand of the market and the condition of the chickens warrants. In a great poultry growing section of South Jersey there are chickens hatched late, say in June and July, and grown to an average size of about six pounds, or as large as they can be grown and still retain the “soft’’ condition of flesh, then dressed for market; if the market conditions do not warrant their being sold at once they are put in cold- storage and held until wanted. An illustration of this I saw at the poultry shipping depot of Mr. Thomas Allen, in Feb- ruary, 1902. Mr. Allen’s teams had brought in about two tons of soft-roasting chickens that day, and they were being packed in barrels to go into cold-storage to await the market demand. Mr. Allen told me he had paid one man that day forty dollars for thirty-three birds, an average of about one dollar and twenty cents apiece, and he said those birds were prcbably hatched in July, which would make them about seven months old when killed for market. Visiting the great poultry section south of Boston last November I found poultrymen with one to two thousand chickens already out, started on the read to become soft- roasters. The Messrs. #arrar Brothers, of Assinippi, had over two thousand chickens then, and were going on to about forty-five hundred, which is their usual number: the Jordan Farm had then over a thousand growing and were hatching right along. T'he Messrs. Farrar get their chickens to from four to six pounds weight, and report their highest price last season as thirty-two cents, with an average for the whole season of about twenty-five cents a pound. At that average price their birds sold for one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents apiece, with a mean price of one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece, and something like fifty per cent of that may be fairly estimated as profit; in other words, 16 THE CHICK BOOK they make about one huadred per cent on the cost of hatch- ing and raising a four to six pound soft-roasting chicken. The Breeds Preferred. In nearly all cases it is found that the Asiatic, or crosses of Asiatic and American varieties are used to make these extra fine soft-roasters. In the poultry section south of Boston from which so many roasters come to market the Light Brahma is the breed used; in south Jersey it is gener- ally a cross of Light Brahma-Partridge Cochin, or of Light Brahma-Plymouth Rock. It is necessary that the birds be of great size normally, then they will attain the desired large size while still having the essential ‘“‘soft” flesh of the young chicken. A change in conditions is gradually coming about, however, partly due to the farmers of south Jersey taking thought of the profitableness of the egg side of the business, which is bringing the better laying American varie- ’ ties into favor. Then, too, the introduction of improved meth- ods of feeding, making it possible to grow a Plymouth Rock chicken (for example) to as great size and more quickly than an Asiatic, is causing a gradual change in front, even in the great stronghold of the Brahmas south of Boston. In a recent number of Reliable Poultry Journal is an illustration of a pair of soft-roasters that made the astonishing growth to twenty-three pounds, alive, at six months old, and the larger one weighed eleven pounds dressed. Those chickens were Barred Plymouth Rocks, and that wonderful growth in six months is an eye-opener. Those chickens were grown by one of those south-shore poultry growers and dressed for market by the great market poultrymen of that section, Messrs. J. H. Curtiss & Brother. The change of front in that section was indicated by a remark made to me by Mr. Cur- tiss a few days ago, when he emphatically stated that he con- sidered the White Plymouth Rock to be the best all-around variety of fowls in the world. When we remember that he is a life-long lover of the Light Brahmas, and has always considered them the best market poultry variety, we may well be surprised at such a change. The explanation lies in the simple fact of the quicker growth of the Rocks by the improved method of feeding the prepared (and accurately balanced) ration. The Males Are Caponized. All the males are caponized by these south-shore poul- try growers, even though almost all of them are sold as soft- roasters; but very, very few of them go to market as capons. They are caponized at about three months old, and the gain is in the fact of their more peaceful disposition. The unca- ponized cockerel is of a most pugnacious and quarrelsome disposition, and his quarreling hinders his growth, besides the greater activity promoting the hardening of the flesh. As it is essential that the flesh be ‘“‘soft,” it is easy to under- stand that caponizing is necessary to the keeping of the right condition. In the south-shore section of which we have been writing there are many thousand chickens raised each year, and Mr. J. H. Curtiss, who is an expert caponizer, caponizes the males for scores of the poultrymen. For this service he charges four dollars per hundred chickens, and is much in demand among his neighbors. The influence of such a man as Mr. Curtiss, in promoting the growing of “better poultry and more of it,” is beyond estimating. With- in a half dozen miles of his home there are from thirty to fifty thousand chickens grown for market each year, all fine soft-roasters and capons, and the importance of that small section of country as a poultry center is made manifest by its having given a name to a superior quality of chickens grown there; “south-shore” chickens are quoted as the highest standard for quality! As a Farm-Product. The poultry growing above described is chiefly in the hauds of those who make a specialty of growing fine soft- roasters for market, but that the business is highly profit- able to farmers, who make the growing of two or three or four hundred chickens for market annually an adjunct of their regular farm work, there is ample evidence. In the south Jersey section of which I wrote the chickens are al- most entirely grown by farmers. In the Reliable Pou!try Journal not long ago, I described these south Jersey poultry growers as follows: “It may not be quite fair to speak of these poultry growers as ‘poultrymen,’ because, as a rule, the birds are grown on the farms as a branch of farm work, and are mostly grown by the women of the farms, while the men are engaged in the regular farm occupations; two or three hundred up to five hundred would be the usual yearly product of a farm. It needs but a little arithmetic to dem- onstrate that a branch of farm work which produces three hundred (or even two hundred) roasting chickens which bring one dollar to one dollar and twenty-five cents apiece when sold is a quite important department of the farm; we doubt whether any other one department produces so much cash income for the amount of labor and capital expended! “Comparatively few of these poultry growers use incu- bators; the bulk of the chickens are hen-hatched. Incuba- tors were attempted here and there some years ago, but the generally poor results discouraged their use; latterly, since a better class of incubators is being put out, they are com- ing to be used more. It is interesting, too, to know that these choicest chickens are not artificially fattened—no cramming machine is used. They are put into large coops, that are four feet wide by six to ten feet long, witha trough along the front to hold the food. The food is a corn meal mash, mixed up with skim-milk when it can be ob- tained. Sometimes the milk supply is not equal to the demand and then water is used. The fattening takes from four to six weeks. That the profit is not all for the grower of winter chick- ens is also evident. I have before me the account of a poul- try buyer, which shows the figures of the poultry sales of a small farmer in Worcester county, Mass. These chickens were hatched in the late winter, and sold alive during May and June as soft-roasters of about four pounds weight. The farmer said that branch of his farm work had paid him over fifty dollars a month net profit for the six months’ work. The figures of the sales, taken from the buyer’s book, are as follows: No, of Chickens. Sum Paid, Nl sdesbiasodvonodvans00 Sboondoosoddodane $ 52.90 BP) RabpcodundnendeLdccndoncanbsocoacoone 48.95 UWE srocmmdesnaosse acodounosopdcodoDesnee 94.87 BO Gi tereke eleyevetetelst=)eferarelotorelareisicletoiateretstetersretetenete 95.04 IND ang coo ouvaddouddo du ded dds ad boncoonee 98.72 iD seater colons: suetalataralsietene: stetclole)«) catatei-totsrete testes 69.96 (EU GEis Bono Caado OndoDbonoabaDecdno0 dour 51.10 (e¥ ogoamogcagucdus cusp choos ooDnod Condos 58.50 AD eae eleleloiaie es eteseteretelesekersiaietetceral tetteteretererareres 39.12 Mili pppabooBDbosOOno neon poooKonEcdoonagce 27.79 ZIT) ray elatehoias Sieisvete toreyeikorevelel tetas Semi tate terete $636.95 This is an average of about ninety cents per chicken, aud as the grower claimed that they cost to raise not far from forty-five cents apiece and sold for just about double that, he made about one hundred per cent profit on them. He dces not keep a hard and fast account with his chickens; he knows they pay him a very substantial profit, and that satisfies him! DHE, CHICK BOOK The Demand Is Greater Than the Supply. The market is never over supplied with the best quality of poultry products, and this seems especially true of fine soft-roasters. Marketmen tell us they can never get enough of them to supply the demand, and such commonplace re- marks as: “I could sell twice as many, if I could only get them,” is the answer to a question as to there being too many of them grown. We all know the reply Webster made to the man who asked if the legal profession wasn’t over- crowded,—‘‘There is plenty room at the top.’”’ This applies with especial aptness to the best soft-roasters we have been describing. There may be an over-supply of a cheaper grade, but of the best there is never enough to meet the The increase of wealth end population has result- demand. ~2 ~> It is a truism to say the best pays the best; we all know that. And not only does it pay the best, but there is the most satisfaction in growing the best! Here is a double reward. We not only get the greater profit which comes of producing the best, but we get the satisfaction of being producers of a high-class article of food that is always in demand in the market. It is the plump, full-breasted, fine meated birds that the consumers want and are willing to pay a good price for,—and if we but produce that article our reward is sure. A considerable study of the soft-roasting chicken re- veals several surprises, and one of them is the almost in- numerable methods of feeding employed. In fact, it is with- in the bounds of truth to say, there is no one “method” of Interior of a Brooding House on the Jordan Poultry Plant, Showing Pipes for Warming the House. ed in a steadily increasing demand for the best products of the pouliryman’s art. Wealthy families, leading clubs, hotels and high-class restaurants, all compete for the gilt- edged soft-roasters of the expert poultrymen, and they are willing to pay almost any price, within reason, if the desired quality is presented. In fact, they will pay what they have to pay in order to get what they want. Poultrymen should study the market requirements, and then strive to meet them. The well-known fruit grower, Mr. J. H. Hale, of Connecticut, in an address in which he urged fruit growers to study the market conditions so as to know what the peo- ple want, said: ‘The fine appearance opens the customer’s pocketbook, and then quality keeps it open.” There is a most important economic principle completely stated in “those few words. The fine appearance of an article induces a customer to buy, and good quality in the article keeps him buying. Lio feeding; each poultryman feeds what he esteems to be a good growing ration, and, indeed, this is the one essential thing. The great point to be aimed at is a steady, con- tinuous growth till market maturity is reached, then market in the best condition. Within the past two or three years prepared chick foods have come into very general use, and have given such excellent results they are likely to be still more generally used. The method is to feed them exclusively for the first five or six weeks, adding a little beef scraps or meat meal, and after about six weeks adding cracked cern to the ration. The essential thing is the increase of the meat food and cracked corn until, the last half of the period, half the ration is of those two foods. With this ration a continuous and rapid growth is secured, and the birds are in fine, fat condition all the time, and are ready to market any time wanted. Of course such a rich ration would not de for laying-breeding stock. Birds grown upon A is DEH (CHICK BOOK it would be soft, and wholly lacking in stamina, or con- stitution. Where the birds are to be marketed by the time they are four to seven months old the constitution need not be considered, if the birds have sufficient to stand heavy feeding and continue putting on good, fatted flesh. The important thing is that growth shall be continuous and rapid, and the best quality of flesh attained. Marketing Soft-Roasters. The chickens above described are all dry picked, and as a rule are marketed by special dealers. In the south shore section the birds are generally sold alive, to such dealers as Messrs. J. H. Curtiss & Brother, or Mr. Farrar, and picked by their men. In the south Jersey section the birds are visible under the skin of the breast. That discolored ap- pearance of those two chickens distinctly marred their otherwise fine appearance, and cheapened them. Experi- enced caterers know that the juices of the meat are less fine and not as pleasing to the palate where that decaying bunch of food is left in the crops and gizzards, and refuse to buy such chickens if better are getable. The seller has sold a few more ounces of weight in each dozen birds, but had lowered the price several times the gain in weight. Lowering the quality invariably lowers the price of chicken meat, just as of everything else in the world! There is no one thing that poultry growers so much need to learn as that good appearance and fine quality are most important factors in their profits. aie aw 4 Interior View of a Brooding House, where no Hovers are Used, on the Jordan Poultry Plant. mostly picked by the farmers, and bought up by such deal- ers as Allen of Glassboro, who packs and ships them to New York, Boston or Philadelphia, as the markets in those cities warrant. It is of the greatest importance that the work of pick- ing be nicely done. The tender, “soft’’ skin may be so torn and marred that a decidedly lower price will be returned for the birds. The importance of a good appearance cannot be too frequently urged. It is safe to say that thousands of dollars are lost to poultry growers each year because cf their ignoring this point. Take the one simple matter of the birds being starved (literally not fed or watered) for twenty-four to thirty-six hours so that the crop and gizzard shall be entirely empty at time of killing. Only yesterday we stopped at a marketman’s window in Boston to look at a display of fine roasters. Two of them had not been starved before killing and there was a small greenish crop Many poultry growers cannot understand that it is the “condition” in which stock arrives in the market that deter- mines its value, and seem to think that because it was good stuff when they sent it they should have the highest market price for it. A shipper who sends chickens into the market that show the effects of the soft weather will not receive the price of that which is marketed bright and fresh An amusing case of this kind came up in Boston a few years ago. A farmer sent a case containing two dozen luecks on a Saturday morning in summer, and they lay in the express office over Sunday. When they reached the commission dealer on Monday morning they were so “soft” they were practically unfit for numan food. Just as the dealer got them cpen the keeper of an Italian boarding house came in, looking for special bargains, and the dealer called his attention to the ducks. The boarding house man iurned them over, felt of them, and then said EEE CruGh BOOK ras) he’d give ten cents a pound for them. The oifer was ac- cepted joyfully; the case quickly nailed up and delivered to the buyer; and a letter written to the shipper detailing the facts and enclosing a check for the full amount received; the dealer was so glad to get them out of his place before the food inspector got a whiff from them and condemned them to the garbage cart he didn’t say anything about com- mission on the sale. The farmer came right in, raving; said ducks were quoted at twenty-three cents a pound the day he shipped them, thai his ducks were as good as Blank’s that the dealer had returned twenty-three cents for, and he’d have the full price for those ducks or he’d sue the dealer. denounce him as a cheat, etc., etc. He didn’t sue, the dealer never saw or heard from him again, but that poor farmer probably still thinks (if he is living) that the commission A reader in Sandy Point, Maine, writes: “We have been much interested in your articles in regard to the ship- ments of eggs and poultry to Boston. We had an experience which leads us to desire a little more information. We have made a specialty of growing large roasters for our local market, and up to last fall were unable to fully supply the demand. The birds most desired are those weighing six to eight pounds apiece, as the people say they have something to cut from (instead of picking bones) with birds of that weight; but last fall the mills were obliged to close, throw- ing many people out of employment, and the poultry market here collapsed. We accordingly sent a portion of our sur- plus to our egg commission merchants at Boston. The birds were hatched late in May and the first shipment made October 27th weighed sixty-five pounds to the dozen; the Bird’s-eye View of a Part of the Jordan Poultry Plant. dealer is a fraud and cheat, and put in his own pocket the difference between ten and twenty-three cents a pound for that lot of ducks! The old, old saw: ‘Water always finds its level,” ap- plies with great force to poultry sent to market. If it is stuff of the best quality be assured you will get the price of the best; if it is only second, or third, or fourth rate stuff be assured you will not get the price of the best. If you send poultry to market and get only the price of second or third quality stuff, don’t sit down and swear that the commission man is a’cheat and fraud. Write him and ask why he didn’t give you the higher price, and then go to work to improve tlie quality of your stuff until you can send the best. Grow the best standard-breds, ship them to mar- ket in the pink of condition, and you will have no worries about the price! second, made November 12th, weighed sixty-seven pounds per dozen, and the third, made December 9th, weighed sev- enty-two pounds per dozen. The first two lots sold at eigh- teen cents a pound, then practically the top price, but the third brought only sixteen cents a pound. Now in our local market the last would have been regarded as the best, but the Boston commission men wrote us they were “large, but coarse and staggy,” and they could not obtain the highest price; that ‘‘soft-roasters’” were wanted. These birds were all of the same age, but the interval between Novmber 12th and December 9th, while adding to the weight, placed them in a lower class. What we would like to know is: First—When the soft-roaster becomes a stag? Second—Did we not grow our birds fast enough, when at five to five and one-half months old they dressed five and AY 15 1905 80 THE CHICK BOOK one-half to six pounds, or don’t they want birds of that size? Third—Should we have shipped them at four io five pounds weight? We want to meet conditions which will give us top prices; it is easy to get bottom prices any time.” Replying to these questions: First—Cockerels of different varieties become “‘staggy”’ at different ages, and as you fail to mention the variety you raise’ we are in the dark. As most of the stock raised in Maine is either Barred Plymouth Rocks, R. I. Reds or White Wyandottes, we will assume that yours are of one of the American varieties, and cockerels of those varieties begin to get staggy when about six or seven months old, depending on the treatment. The method of feeding has an influence in hastening or retarding maturity. Why didn’t you ship your birds all in at once, and so be rid of them? ‘The dozen shipped November 12th brought you twelve dollars and six cents, while the dozen sent in December 9th brought you but eleven dollars and fifty-two cents; you had fed them about four weeks longer and then got less money for them. This is one of the commonest mistakes of farmers, they don’t market their stuff when it is ready for market, but carry it along at a loss of the food consumed and at the risk of getting a lower price. Second—We think you didn’t grow the birds fast enough, when they only got to five and one-half to six pounds at five to five and one-half months old, and they would have been of a better quality of flesh,—would have been “softer,” if fed a quicker growing ration and brought along earlier. That is another point on which many poul- try raisers do not discriminate; they raise all the birds alike, feeding them the same foods, whether they are to be killed for market or raised for laying-breeding stock. Then, too, the amount of range allowed them is a factor. Free range encourages the growth of muscle, and muscle 1s “hard” flesh. If you want to grow fine, “‘soft’’ chickens do not let them run all over the farm,—keep them confined to moderate yards, and feed them more heavily of corn’ meal and beef scraps (or meat meal). You would probably have done better to have shipped the birds at four to five pounds weight. The great bulk of the trade prefers chickens weighing eight to ten pounds the pair although there is a good sale for larger birds, and in the spring (say in March), the larger birds sell more read- ily. If your local trade prefers large birds you should caponize the cockerels, and then they are “‘soft’”’ ever after, and will grow to eight to ten pounds without becoming “staggy.” You are not obliged to sell them as capons be- cause you have caponized them. The popular ‘‘south shore” chickens of which you have been reading are caponized, but dressed and sold as soft-roasters. Caponizing is so easily done, and is so great a benefit in many ways, it is surprising that more poultry growers do not adopt it. A set of special tools can be bought of poultry supply dealers for about three dollars, and with it the nagging, scrappy cockerels are easily turned into docile, tractable birds, that have nothing to do but eat and grow. They remain “soft,’’ and their flesh doesn’t harden into muscle, as the cockerels do when they turn “‘staggy.” Capon- ize all the males not wanted for breeding birds. A. F. HUNTER. Shey are filled with the writings of cetnchily successful itrymen—the r x- in the subjects they deal with; Sthey é€xplain clearly how to epalace every braitch of the poul- busitiess successfully; they giv: é the m , the schemes and the latest ideas in actual use by “} the foremost poultrymen’ of the words Every detail.is described so minutely that you can adapt _it'to your own busiiiess with slight trouble or expense. ~ SUCCESS WITH POULTR “contains the successful: methods of feedin youalnis and mating fowls, hatching;rearing pt marketing chickens, ducks, Becee and turk 3 on by the most Lp poul- —_—_—— trymen,. No other work on the ntility or stanidard-bred business gives such practical, reli= ~ able and’ ‘money -making information. e A trustworthy guide for every poultryman.. Fifth Edition, llo pages, xe $1 00 illustrations etree ee > TPO teen AO Oe code aaee aw ee See meee nee POOP ERP aweniases sete BOS OOOH eede res wenn aeesene Peep eRe en ene wadeteoeeens . 1th b i Loo = INCUBATING AND 8ROODING ings SEN San CLOT : ate incubators and brooders, w the greatest percentage of C ens, build incubator cellars, brooder Houses, brooder end Chick shelters, etc. 2 Pages results gained from _ (practical experience, ‘An indispensible work, Second Edition, 71 itlustrations. ...sscisseipisicevevacsnse ccc cpbeenennee 50c. BARRED, WHITE AND BUFF PLYMOUTH ROCKS u:s