Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1914 — PLAN FOR HATCHING AND RAISING CHICKS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PLAN FOR HATCHING AND RAISING CHICKS

(By H. W. JACKSON.)

When bens are used for hatching. It is desirable to keep them in separate rooms, protected from disturbance. The room should be rat proof. Hens should be moved at night to the setting room, placed upon nests carefully prepared beforehand, and given a few Infertile eggs until they have become accustomed to the surroundings. All setting nests should be of the same pattern and conveniently placed in sets of two and three, located around the walls of the room in tiers, one above the other. From fifty to one hundred hens may be set in one room by this method, and if carefully handled will do as well as if there were only a few. When a considerable number of hens are setting, tbey should be fed and watered In groups of six to twelve, returned to their nests after a sufficient time, and another group let off. Except when hens are off for exercise once a. day, the nests are kept closed. The room should be darkened and, in warm weather, kept as cool as possible. Cracked corn, green feed, grit, a crock of water and a dust bath are all that need be provided. The sitting hens should be dusted with Insect powder or lice killer when set, and again two or three days before hatching. In cold weather, thirteen eggs are sufficient for even a large hen. In warm weather, the number may be increased. When chicks are hatched in large numbers and where non-sitting breeds are kept. Incubators are indispensable. There are many different types of

incubators on the market, most of which will give excellent results under oertain conditions, but there is no way of determining which type is best suited to different localities and individuals. It is desirable, if possible, to buy incubators on trial. The instructions accompanying incubators should be thoroughly mastered and carefully followed. When chicks are raised with bens, a brood coop will be found very convenient. This coop should be 2% feet by 3 feet and 2 feet high in front. It should have a hinged top, providing easy access to the Interior. The coops should have covered runs, in which the chicks may be kept during the first few weeks. These runs protect the chickens from straying and being caught in storms, and also from their many enemies. Chicks will do as well in these runs at first as on range. Brood coops with board floors and runs are specially valuable where there is danger of gapes. The coop and run should, however, be shifted to new ground frequently. Young chicks are raised on all kinds and combinations of feeds and success is more a matter of care than feed. The common practice of using cornmeal dough, while comparatively successful sometimes, is not to be recommended, and its use is not likely to secure the best or most rapid growth and development of the chicks. PTobably the most satisfactory ration meals, is bread moistened with milk or water and squeezed dry. A small amount of grit or sharp sand may be mixed with the bread. An ample supply of chick grit is always desirable in feeding young chicks. It may be mixed with the feed or spread on the floor of the coop or run. After the first few days the bread may be omitted and a mash, somewhat similar to the mash fed to the laying hens, may be given morning and evening, wjth two or three feds of finely cracked grains or chick feed during the day. Cracked corn, cracked wheat tnd pin-head oats, mixed in equal proportions, makes a fairly satisfactory grain mixture. Much ' care must be exercised in feeding young chicks the first few days. At least ,one-half of the ration should be small grains scattered in straw or chaff so that the chicks may secure some exercise. Green feed should be supplied daily. For this purpose, lettuce, chopped onion tops, green clover or grass are excellent, and when these are not available mangles or potatoes will give good results. After the chicks are weaned and turned out on the range, hopper feeding may be adopted with good results. Nothing 1b gained by stinting growing chicks. They should have all the feed that they can be induced to eat. Hoppers or low boxes, divided Into compartments and supplied with

mash, cracked wheat dr corn, meat scraps or grit, may be kept before them after tbey have reached six er eight weeks of age, with perfect safety. In addition to the feed In the boxes, It is often desirable to give one feed of wet mash a day and poaslblr a feed of some kind of grain otter than that kept in the hoppers. Care should be taken that the chicks do not become crowded ta brooders or coops, and aa they grow larger coops should be provided er the size of the flocks reduced from time to time. Many flocte of young chickens are delayed in maturity or stunted in growth from crowding in coops or brooders at nigbt. With the exception of leghorns, there is no particular gain in separating the sexes of the growing flocks until the male birds are to be fattened for market. At this time a separation should be made as It is not desirable to give the same ration to growing pullets and market Btock. By far the most important trouble affecting young chicks Is diarrhoea. This is not, strictly speaking, a dieease but a symptom accompanying several disorders. In a general way anything that unfavorably affects tbe health and vigor of the chicks will produce it. Diseased breeding stock, improper methods of incubation and brooding, improper feeding, too much or too little heat or insufficient ex--1 ercise may produce! it The best preventive is careful attention to these details. Incubators, nests, coops and brooders should be thoroughly disinfected. Frequently It Is possible to relieve the trouble and check its spread by feeding boiled rice and scalded milk. Gapes is caused by the presence of gape worms in the windpipe of the chicken. Infection is from the ground, and when any location is known to be Infected It is unwise to attempt, to raise chickens upon It- Either a new location should be secured where there is no infection, or chicks should be kept on board floors until danger is past. Probably more Infection occurs through the fish-worm than any other source. To correct a general misapprehension It should be explained that flshworms do not cause gapes until they come from infected soil. ■_ It is desirable to use lime and other disinfectants about coops and runs, but as far as Is known there Is no way of exterminating the gape worm after the soil has become Infected, except by keeping the chicks off of It entirely for a year or two. For affected chicks, a twisted horsehair or some similar contrivance for extricating tbe worms is probably most effective. Rubbing tbe outside of tbe throat with lard and tnrpentine and dropping a little creolin into tbe windpipe sometimes effects cures.

Interior of Poultry House Showing Platform on Which is Placed All Food and Drinking Vessels and Raised Roosts and Trap Neats on Wall.

Nests for Setting Hens, Showing Method of Arranging Them, in Tiers to Economize Room.