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Purdue University j LIBRARY. _. JLAFAYETTE, IND1 VOL. LIX. INDIANAPOLIS, MAY 21, 1904. NO 21. CARE OF CHICKENS FROM HATCHING TO MATURITY. Cleanliness Is the Key to Success. lst Premium.—As soon as chicks are hatched and dried, they should be taken from the hen, and kept in a warm, dry place till hen is through hatching. An old felt hat makes an excellent nest. Young chicks should not be fed for 24 hours after hatching, but kept quiet until all are hatched aad dried. Then remove hen from nest carefully and examine for lice. If any lice are there, she should be well greased with salty grease, and chicks should also be well looked over to see that there are none of the lice on them. Should there be any, they should be carefully picked off. Do not grease chicks. If hen is well greased on head, throat, wings, knees, and breast, there will not be any lice leflt to bother chicks, and seldom any "nits." The best, plan I have ever tried it to put the hen and chicks in nice, clean, roomy boxes, with clover chaff, or any other fine litter, thickly covering the bottom of box. Put the box in a dark, quiet place, and keep hen and i chicks in it until 3 or 4 days old. Then, if weather is warm and sunny, they may be let out in yard during the warm part of the day, but carefully housed again at night. In feeding young chicks, I always have first Heed of hard boiled eggs, mixed with, dry bread crumbs and fine sand. I also add pepper and a very little salt, hut have an abundance of sand for grit. This to some may seem rather cranky, but grit they must have or give up the ghost. For 2 or 3 days I also warm their drinking water, and am very careful to feed and water often. As soon as chicks have eaten I take water from box, so chicks cannot get wet or chilled. I feed very sparingly at first, gradually increasing the amount of food as they grow older. More chicks are killed by over-feeding than by underfeeding. A very common, disease among young chickens is bowel trouble, and I find whenever they have it they have lice also. It is well to keep all soft or sloppy food from them until relieved. If chicks are cleansed and well dried, then greased with fresh lard, or vaseline, they can bo saved every time, if tended to soon enough. I have never lost one yet when treated in this way. Cleanliness then, I might say, is the key to success in poultry raising. You can no more raise strong, healthy chicks in dirty, lousy coops, or yards, with filthy, sour drinking vessels than -you can raise crops without sunshine. I always have shallow drinking vessels, usually earthen plates, as they are so easily scalded and cleaned. I feed only what I think the chicks will eat up clean, and try to be careful to have a clean place to feed. Chickens should be examined at least every two weeks for lice, for they just will get on them unless carefully watched. I grease young chicks after four weeks old and until large enough to fry. By doing this they have all their time to hunt,' eat and grow fat, as they are not compelled to scratch and peck themselves to get relief from the nibblings of the unwelcome parasites. I feed chicks a variety of food, never feed one thing alone for even a single day. When they are two weeks old, I begin feeding meat scraps, cooked and raw vegetables, wheat, millet seed, sunflower seed, cane seed, pop com .and anything else they will eat. I make cheese from clabber milk and feed it well seasoned with black pepper, but never feed sour milk. Gapes, that much dreaded diselse among chickens, is supposed to be caused by their eating some kind of worm. Anyhow, I have learned that where chicks are kept in clean, comfortable quarters, free from lice, and fed right, they ar,e also free from gapes. If also kept out of the wet grass, and at night kept in- well ventilated, vermin proof coops, and furnished with liberal quantities of wholesome food, there is no reason why poultry raising cannot be the money maker it is claimed to be. After chicks have chaff, and they are of a good size for the first picking. This grit and chaff, with a little water, will be enough feed for another day. Tho best grit is obtained by sifting the ground oyster shell, used for grown chickens, through a colander. This fine grit should be before the chicks at all times. If they are given it as one of the first feeds, they eat it without trouble, and it keeps the food from becoming clogged at the start of growth. Small chicks are very fond of oatmeal, and if fed sparingly with grit nnd chaff, it makes a good feed, but too much seems to create a thirst, and when little chicks fill up on oatmeal and stand over the Plowing With a 32 Horsepower Traction'Engine. grown enough to be able to distinguish sex and probable quality, they should be sorted and separated. Those wanted for laying and breeding purposes should be put away from culls, or those intended for market, and fed to make bone and body; and those for market should be fed for fattening. I find to fatten fast all sloppy foods should be withheld. Feed only grain, and mostly corn at that. For building boneand for laying qualities, feed should consist of milk, cereals of all kinds, oyster shells or any good grit, plenty of good, clean water, and good forage is always indispensable for a perfectly grown fowl. To raise chicks from hatching to maturity then, must depend on care aud perfect cleanliness, first, last and always. A Subscriber. Shelby Co. Keep Them Crowing All tht Time. 2d Premium.—When the brood is hatched, they should be removed to a dry coop, where they should hover under the hen at least forty-eight hours. The coops should be made rain-proof, and that object can be obtained by making the roof slanting. Old barrels on, their sides, with stakes driven into the grouud, are the makeshifts of many, but when a barrel does leak it makes a fine receptacle for water, and little chicks are often found drowned after a rain. The hen should be given corn and water, so she will be contented to sit quietly while the chicks are gaining their first strength. The first feed should consist of fine grit, scattered in chaff. I have used timothy chaff this season with good success. There are many seeds in tho water cup drinking all they want, bowel trouble generally results. The first two weeks of the chick's life is the time requiring the most care, for if they are taken beyond that period they nearly always grow to maturity, unless some accident happens. Bread crumbs, bread soaked in milk, cottage cheese, mashed potato, with cooked beets cut fine and fine ground corn fed dry, make the variety needed in the spring before there is much green stuff to be picked. After the rains, many worms will be rising to the surface of the ground, and "the chicks enjoy picking them by the time they i.re five weeks old. Early hatched chicks that are kept growing without any back set should ba a good size for market by tlie time they are ten or twelve weeks old. Charcoal makes a good grit if pounded fine. The partly burned wood can be taken from the stove, water poured upon it, and the charcoal is ready to be pounded. Ashes sprinkled under tho coops once a week helps to keep down Kce. By the chicks roosting on the ground among the ashes, the lice do not get such a good chance at the chick while it sleeps. Young chickens should never be allowed to roost upon a pole until they aro three months old, as their doing so causes the breast bone to grow crooked. As soon as the chicks are large enough to get out of the way of stray cats or rats, they should be given free range, but while they are small the hen can be confined in roomy quarters, and the chicks will run in and out at their free will. They should be shut up at night so they cannot be astir so early in the morning, and wheu they are released from the coop for the day it should always be left raised, so the hen and her brood may find shelter in case of a sudden storm. Failure to do this has caused many chicks to bo drowned. The main feature in successful chicken raising is to keep the chick growing from the time it is hatched until it has its Hull growth. This cannot be accomplished if the chick is chilled, overheated, overfed, underfed, or if lice are sapping its strength. If the chickens have comfortable quarters j, the food taken tends to growth instead of just keeping the chick alive. There is no standing still in chicken raising, as there often is in plant growth—no dormant state. It has to be either forward or backward. I have no luck in curing sick chickens, so try to keep them healthy from the start to tho finish. However, it is sometimes a strange tiling to consider that one flock will thrive on a certain treatment, and another, seemingly treated in the same manner, will droop and amouut to nothing. There is a reason, if we were always able to locate it. Sometimes the hatching process varies, and the chick does not start with a fair chance, although it may appear at first to be all right. I have a fine flock of GO Barred riymouth Rocks, seven weeks old, that in a month from now should be large enough to market the young roosters and push the pullets for autumn aud winter layers. These chicks were hatched in an incubator, and kept until three weeks old in their brooder, until it was wanted for another brood. When the men cleaned tlieir oats for planting, all the screenings were* saved for the chicks, and they did enjoy picking those weed seeds. I gave them the treatment I have described above, and still feed them all the small potatoes aud beets, cooked and cut fine, with meat scraps from the table. Everything must be fine; chunks will cause trouble with crop-bound chicks, ns at this stage they are greedy eaters. Illinois. p. V. L. In Feeding, Give a Variety. 3d Premiums.—The feeding of chickens seems so familiar to everybody that any instructions on the subject are by many considered superfluous. Chickens should never be disturbed for 24 hours after leaving the shell. They should be then taken, one by one, and their little bills dipped in fresh, warm milk, until they are seen to swallow, which they will soon do. Each chick, as soon as Observed to drink, should be placed in a dry pen, where ther© is feed for them. The first feed should consist of hard boiled eggs, chopped fine and mixed with very fine pepper, about the size of a moderate pinch of snuff to flour eggs. After the third day, an equal amount of eggs and grated stale wheat bread may be given, until they aro a week old. By this time, the eggs may he dispensed with. This is more especially for valuable fowls. The hardier breeds will thrive and do well on grated bread and a little pepper. Don't forget to use pepper, because it helps to make the chicks stronger, and will keep cholera .off. Each must have a little milk or water, once or twice .a day, placed within reach in shallow saucers or tin plates. Be sure and keep the drinking vessels clean. In the pan where the water is placed, it would be a good idea to keep a small piece of iron, as it will help to keep the Continued on page IC.
Object Description
Title | Indiana farmer, 1904, v. 59, no. 21 (May 21) |
Purdue Identification Number | INFA5921 |
Date of Original | 1904 |
Subjects (LCSH) |
Agriculture Farm management Horticulture Agricultural machinery |
Subjects (NALT) |
agriculture farm management horticulture agricultural machinery and equipment |
Genre | Periodical |
Call Number of Original | 630.5 In2 |
Location of Original | Hicks Repository |
Coverage | United States - Indiana |
Type | text |
Format | JP2 |
Language | eng |
Collection Title | Indiana Farmer |
Rights Statement | Content in the Indiana Farmer Collection is in the public domain (published before 1923) or lacks a known copyright holder. Digital images in the collection may be used for educational, non-commercial, or not-for-profit purposes. |
Repository | Purdue University Libraries |
Date Digitized | 2010-11-22 |
Digitization Information | Original scanned at 300 ppi on a Bookeye 3 scanner using internal software. Display images generated in CONTENTdm as JP2000s; file format for archival copy is uncompressed TIF format. |
Description
Title | Page 1 |
Subjects (LCSH) |
Agriculture Farm management Horticulture Agricultural machinery |
Subjects (NALT) |
agriculture farm management horticulture agricultural machinery and equipment |
Genre | Periodical |
Call Number of Original | 630.5 In2 |
Location of Original | Hicks Repository |
Coverage | Indiana |
Type | text |
Format | JP2 |
Language | eng |
Collection Title | Indiana Farmer |
Rights Statement | Content in the Indiana Farmer Collection is in the public domain (published before 1923) or lacks a known copyright holder. Digital images in the collection may be used for educational, non-commercial, or non-for-profit purposes. |
Repository | Purdue University Libraries |
Digitization Information | Orignal scanned at 300 ppi on a Bookeye 3 scanner using internal software. Display images generated in CONTENTdm as JP2000s; file format for archival copy is uncompressed TIF format. |
Transcript | Purdue University j LIBRARY. _. JLAFAYETTE, IND1 VOL. LIX. INDIANAPOLIS, MAY 21, 1904. NO 21. CARE OF CHICKENS FROM HATCHING TO MATURITY. Cleanliness Is the Key to Success. lst Premium.—As soon as chicks are hatched and dried, they should be taken from the hen, and kept in a warm, dry place till hen is through hatching. An old felt hat makes an excellent nest. Young chicks should not be fed for 24 hours after hatching, but kept quiet until all are hatched aad dried. Then remove hen from nest carefully and examine for lice. If any lice are there, she should be well greased with salty grease, and chicks should also be well looked over to see that there are none of the lice on them. Should there be any, they should be carefully picked off. Do not grease chicks. If hen is well greased on head, throat, wings, knees, and breast, there will not be any lice leflt to bother chicks, and seldom any "nits." The best, plan I have ever tried it to put the hen and chicks in nice, clean, roomy boxes, with clover chaff, or any other fine litter, thickly covering the bottom of box. Put the box in a dark, quiet place, and keep hen and i chicks in it until 3 or 4 days old. Then, if weather is warm and sunny, they may be let out in yard during the warm part of the day, but carefully housed again at night. In feeding young chicks, I always have first Heed of hard boiled eggs, mixed with, dry bread crumbs and fine sand. I also add pepper and a very little salt, hut have an abundance of sand for grit. This to some may seem rather cranky, but grit they must have or give up the ghost. For 2 or 3 days I also warm their drinking water, and am very careful to feed and water often. As soon as chicks have eaten I take water from box, so chicks cannot get wet or chilled. I feed very sparingly at first, gradually increasing the amount of food as they grow older. More chicks are killed by over-feeding than by underfeeding. A very common, disease among young chickens is bowel trouble, and I find whenever they have it they have lice also. It is well to keep all soft or sloppy food from them until relieved. If chicks are cleansed and well dried, then greased with fresh lard, or vaseline, they can bo saved every time, if tended to soon enough. I have never lost one yet when treated in this way. Cleanliness then, I might say, is the key to success in poultry raising. You can no more raise strong, healthy chicks in dirty, lousy coops, or yards, with filthy, sour drinking vessels than -you can raise crops without sunshine. I always have shallow drinking vessels, usually earthen plates, as they are so easily scalded and cleaned. I feed only what I think the chicks will eat up clean, and try to be careful to have a clean place to feed. Chickens should be examined at least every two weeks for lice, for they just will get on them unless carefully watched. I grease young chicks after four weeks old and until large enough to fry. By doing this they have all their time to hunt,' eat and grow fat, as they are not compelled to scratch and peck themselves to get relief from the nibblings of the unwelcome parasites. I feed chicks a variety of food, never feed one thing alone for even a single day. When they are two weeks old, I begin feeding meat scraps, cooked and raw vegetables, wheat, millet seed, sunflower seed, cane seed, pop com .and anything else they will eat. I make cheese from clabber milk and feed it well seasoned with black pepper, but never feed sour milk. Gapes, that much dreaded diselse among chickens, is supposed to be caused by their eating some kind of worm. Anyhow, I have learned that where chicks are kept in clean, comfortable quarters, free from lice, and fed right, they ar,e also free from gapes. If also kept out of the wet grass, and at night kept in- well ventilated, vermin proof coops, and furnished with liberal quantities of wholesome food, there is no reason why poultry raising cannot be the money maker it is claimed to be. After chicks have chaff, and they are of a good size for the first picking. This grit and chaff, with a little water, will be enough feed for another day. Tho best grit is obtained by sifting the ground oyster shell, used for grown chickens, through a colander. This fine grit should be before the chicks at all times. If they are given it as one of the first feeds, they eat it without trouble, and it keeps the food from becoming clogged at the start of growth. Small chicks are very fond of oatmeal, and if fed sparingly with grit nnd chaff, it makes a good feed, but too much seems to create a thirst, and when little chicks fill up on oatmeal and stand over the Plowing With a 32 Horsepower Traction'Engine. grown enough to be able to distinguish sex and probable quality, they should be sorted and separated. Those wanted for laying and breeding purposes should be put away from culls, or those intended for market, and fed to make bone and body; and those for market should be fed for fattening. I find to fatten fast all sloppy foods should be withheld. Feed only grain, and mostly corn at that. For building boneand for laying qualities, feed should consist of milk, cereals of all kinds, oyster shells or any good grit, plenty of good, clean water, and good forage is always indispensable for a perfectly grown fowl. To raise chicks from hatching to maturity then, must depend on care aud perfect cleanliness, first, last and always. A Subscriber. Shelby Co. Keep Them Crowing All tht Time. 2d Premium.—When the brood is hatched, they should be removed to a dry coop, where they should hover under the hen at least forty-eight hours. The coops should be made rain-proof, and that object can be obtained by making the roof slanting. Old barrels on, their sides, with stakes driven into the grouud, are the makeshifts of many, but when a barrel does leak it makes a fine receptacle for water, and little chicks are often found drowned after a rain. The hen should be given corn and water, so she will be contented to sit quietly while the chicks are gaining their first strength. The first feed should consist of fine grit, scattered in chaff. I have used timothy chaff this season with good success. There are many seeds in tho water cup drinking all they want, bowel trouble generally results. The first two weeks of the chick's life is the time requiring the most care, for if they are taken beyond that period they nearly always grow to maturity, unless some accident happens. Bread crumbs, bread soaked in milk, cottage cheese, mashed potato, with cooked beets cut fine and fine ground corn fed dry, make the variety needed in the spring before there is much green stuff to be picked. After the rains, many worms will be rising to the surface of the ground, and "the chicks enjoy picking them by the time they i.re five weeks old. Early hatched chicks that are kept growing without any back set should ba a good size for market by tlie time they are ten or twelve weeks old. Charcoal makes a good grit if pounded fine. The partly burned wood can be taken from the stove, water poured upon it, and the charcoal is ready to be pounded. Ashes sprinkled under tho coops once a week helps to keep down Kce. By the chicks roosting on the ground among the ashes, the lice do not get such a good chance at the chick while it sleeps. Young chickens should never be allowed to roost upon a pole until they aro three months old, as their doing so causes the breast bone to grow crooked. As soon as the chicks are large enough to get out of the way of stray cats or rats, they should be given free range, but while they are small the hen can be confined in roomy quarters, and the chicks will run in and out at their free will. They should be shut up at night so they cannot be astir so early in the morning, and wheu they are released from the coop for the day it should always be left raised, so the hen and her brood may find shelter in case of a sudden storm. Failure to do this has caused many chicks to bo drowned. The main feature in successful chicken raising is to keep the chick growing from the time it is hatched until it has its Hull growth. This cannot be accomplished if the chick is chilled, overheated, overfed, underfed, or if lice are sapping its strength. If the chickens have comfortable quarters j, the food taken tends to growth instead of just keeping the chick alive. There is no standing still in chicken raising, as there often is in plant growth—no dormant state. It has to be either forward or backward. I have no luck in curing sick chickens, so try to keep them healthy from the start to tho finish. However, it is sometimes a strange tiling to consider that one flock will thrive on a certain treatment, and another, seemingly treated in the same manner, will droop and amouut to nothing. There is a reason, if we were always able to locate it. Sometimes the hatching process varies, and the chick does not start with a fair chance, although it may appear at first to be all right. I have a fine flock of GO Barred riymouth Rocks, seven weeks old, that in a month from now should be large enough to market the young roosters and push the pullets for autumn aud winter layers. These chicks were hatched in an incubator, and kept until three weeks old in their brooder, until it was wanted for another brood. When the men cleaned tlieir oats for planting, all the screenings were* saved for the chicks, and they did enjoy picking those weed seeds. I gave them the treatment I have described above, and still feed them all the small potatoes aud beets, cooked and cut fine, with meat scraps from the table. Everything must be fine; chunks will cause trouble with crop-bound chicks, ns at this stage they are greedy eaters. Illinois. p. V. L. In Feeding, Give a Variety. 3d Premiums.—The feeding of chickens seems so familiar to everybody that any instructions on the subject are by many considered superfluous. Chickens should never be disturbed for 24 hours after leaving the shell. They should be then taken, one by one, and their little bills dipped in fresh, warm milk, until they are seen to swallow, which they will soon do. Each chick, as soon as Observed to drink, should be placed in a dry pen, where ther© is feed for them. The first feed should consist of hard boiled eggs, chopped fine and mixed with very fine pepper, about the size of a moderate pinch of snuff to flour eggs. After the third day, an equal amount of eggs and grated stale wheat bread may be given, until they aro a week old. By this time, the eggs may he dispensed with. This is more especially for valuable fowls. The hardier breeds will thrive and do well on grated bread and a little pepper. Don't forget to use pepper, because it helps to make the chicks stronger, and will keep cholera .off. Each must have a little milk or water, once or twice .a day, placed within reach in shallow saucers or tin plates. Be sure and keep the drinking vessels clean. In the pan where the water is placed, it would be a good idea to keep a small piece of iron, as it will help to keep the Continued on page IC. |
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