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
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