Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1878 — Why Chicks Die. [ARTICLE]

Why Chicks Die.

A subscribe* writes to us asking why his chicks die off so rapidly, rarely living more than two or three weeks. He does not tell us the treatment they receive, but in the following from the Massachusetts Ploughman, ne will probably find his answer. In our own poultry yard we have been very successful with youngehicks, and have fed broken rice alternately with the cracked corn, giving an occasional feed of potatoes By way of a treat. “ The great point in raising chickens ia to keep them eating all tne time, or at any rate, to keep their digestive organs continually well supplied. ‘Short commons’ are not economical In chicken raising.” The common custom is to keep a dish Of “ Indian meal dough” mixed up, and two or three times a day a lot is thrown to the chickens. If they eat it, well and good; if not. and the chances are they will not, they having become tired of one siugle article of diet set before them day after day, it stands and sours. If a quantity is.tbiwfounJ uneaten the next feed is likely to be a light one, and the chickens, driven by hunger, finally devour the sour stuff; the result is cholera or some other fatal disease sets in and their owner wonders

why ray chickens are all dying oil.” In our own practice we find small quantities of varied food if given to tire chickens often produce vastly better results than any other method of feeding. Indian meal dough we banished from our poultry yards long ago and on no conditions > would wo permit young chickens to be fed irttk & Fof" thff first morning meal we give all our young poultry stock boiled potatoes mashea up fine. We find nothing so good and acceptable, and as we use only the small potatoes, those which are unmarketable and not large enough for the table, they prove to bo more profitable than any othor article of rood. * ' Whon, In days gone by, we used to feed the chickens With the traditional Indian meal dough, we always counted on losing a large percentage of them, and the nhmbers that died from oholera, diarrhoea and kindred diseases were great. Now a sick chicken is unknown to our yards and we lay our success entirely to the disuse of Indian meal dough. After the potatoes are disposed of wo give our chickens all the line cracked corn they will eat up clean. We cannot find in the grain stores corn cracked to tho proper degree of fineness, and we have as a fixture in our poultry house a large-sized coffee mill, such as grocers use, and we run the corn through that. Of course large chickens, those which are ten or twelve weeks old, do not need such fine ground corn, but the young birds do. In about two hours after the cracked corn is eaten we give all the wheat screenings that the chickens will eat, and in another two hours spread before them a fresh meal of boiled potatoes. For supper they have all the cracked corn and wheat they can eat. The best system of feeding, however, will not avail if the young birds are permitted to become overrun with vermin. They should be anointed on their heads and under their wings and on their backs once a week with a mixture of equal parts of lard and kerosene oil; and if the hens are anointed in the same way the additional labor will prove remunerative. Unless proper management is exercised chicken raising is one of the most unsatisfactory of employments, but if it is done systematically, is as profitable and pleasant as any other business. — N. Y. Herald.