Part 3
During the bright, sunny hours in the middle of the day let the chicks have plenty of fresh air in the playroom; at feeding time, when they are all busy, give the hover compartment a thorough airing.
When Biddy is doing the brooding, remember she is pretty sure to need dusting with some good insect powder. The nest box she sat in should have been cleaned, and a handful of camphor balls scattered under the hay of the nest. Moreover, each hen should be dusted before setting, twice during the twenty-one days, three days after the hatch is out, and each week so long as she broods the chicks.
Fresh air, warmth and good food prevent many troubles almost impossible to cure if once contracted; so look to the little things.
Thirty hours must be allowed for the proper digestion and assimilation of the yolk, which is absorbed into the abdomen immediately before the chick breaks through the shell. When Biddy has done the hatching do not move her to the brood coop for twenty-four hours, unless she is flighty and keeps getting off the nest, in which case it is better to keep the chicks in a covered box by the kitchen stove until some more motherly hen can be persuaded to adopt them. Always try to set two or three hens at the same time. Good hens that are well fed and have not been bothered with vermin seldom give any trouble about the last twenty-four hours.
HOW TO DIVERSIFY THE DAILY RATION
Now about the all-important question of feeding: For the first two or three days get ten pounds of rape and millet seed, pin-head oatmeal and cracked corn, charcoal, and fine, sharp grit. Mix all together. If you cannot get pin-head oatmeal, buy hulled oats and break them up fine. The grain must also be cracked quite fine; in fact, it is safer to put the mixture through a sieve which will allow nothing larger than millet to go through. Then there is no danger of chicks being choked. Feed the mixture by scattering among the sweepings, to encourage the chicks to scratch and take exercise.
Morning and evening make a mash by chopping a hard-boiled egg, shell and all, green onion tops or sprouts. Mix with stale bread crumbs, and feed on a flat pie plate or strip of wood. After the chicks are two weeks old the oats and corn need not be quite so fine--more the size of hemp seed, which can be added to the mixture; so can cracked wheat or barley, and the mash can be made of ground corn and oats, with onions and scalded liver, chopped, three times a week (about a small cupful to a quart of mash).
What I mean by scalded liver is liver dropped into a kettle of boiling water and let boil up once. Leave to cool in the water. Quite raw it is too strong for little chicks. For a change I mix the grain with scalding milk two or three times a week. Never make more at a time than will be fed within the next few hours, as it sours.
Pot cheese is a favourite dish with all poultry, and very wholesome. If there is any tendency to bowel trouble, give them rice water in place of the drinking water.
Keep brooders and brood coops clean and dry. The grass around the coops should be kept cut loose, so that the chicks can run about easily. See that every coop is closed at night, and do not let the chicks out while the grass is dewy. Don’t give the hens too many chicks to brood in winter, for if she cannot keep them close to her they will die of chill.
RAISING EARLY BROILERS
A distinct branch of the poultry business, and one that is extremely profitable for those who can run it successfully, is raising young chicks in the winter for early broilers. To commence on a large scale requires as large capital, but there are hundreds of men and women who have accommodations on their premises that would enable them to start in a small way, and by investing the profits from the first year they could obtain a really good equipment for the business.
Of course, the real starting-point should be a good flock of healthy hens, all of one breed, preferably Wyandottes or Rocks, for really the hen who lays the egg has as much to do with the success in broiler-making as the care one may bestow on the business.
Next in importance is a well-constructed new incubator. Don’t be tempted to buy a second-hand machine, which has usually been allowed to stand in a damp cellar or in some outside shed while not in use, for it will in all probability warp or go to pieces when put in commission again.
Brooders come third on the list, but are quite as important as the two foregoing, for there is no use hatching a chick unless it can be reared, and the heat and ventilation of the artificial mother is more than half the battle.
The up-to-date broiler plant consists of an incubator-cellar, a nursery, or brooder-house, as it is usually called, and a broiler-house. Both the latter are divided into small pens, about two feet wide and five feet long. In the nursery-house, the top ends of the pens are inclosed like boxes to the depth of about a foot and a half, and have hot-water pipes running through them to furnish heat for the chicks to brood under. A flannel curtain cut into strips falls from the top of the inclosed part to divide it from the rest of the pen, which runs down to the outer wall of the house, where a large window lets in light and sun. The pens should have board floors slightly elevated above the main floor, to avoid dampness, and the divisions are made with a foot board about nine inches high, and one inch netting two feet high above that. The brooder-house is divided in the same way, but the hot-water pipes only run around the walls of the house, as the birds don’t need the immediate heat to brood under, after they leave the nursery, when they are five or six weeks old.
But, until you can afford the proper equipment, one or two incubators can be run in the cellar of the house or an unused room where there is no other heat. Individual brooders can be used in place of the nursery and brooder-house, if you have any light outbuilding to stand them in. In fact, I like the individual brooders better for the nursery period than the pipe-house system, because it is only necessary to heat as many as are needed, and with the pipe system the entire house has to be heated, even if you are only going to use one section.
Most of the different makes of brooders on the market are made with two compartments: A chamber with a round hover, which is heated with a lamp, and an outer compartment for exercise and feeding. The average price is nine dollars, and the machines are supposed to hold one hundred chickens, but seventy-five are quite enough; and even that number should be decreased to fifty the second week, and twenty-five the fourth week--that is, if the chicks are to be confined entirely to the brooder. But if it stands in a warm room, where a small outer inclosure can be made on the floor of the house for a playroom, fifty chicks can be carried through to the squab-broiler age in one brooder.
Chicks hatched specially for the broiler trade have to be steadily pushed along; plump, juicy meat being the main object. The first requisite is warmth. Have the compartment in which the hover is situated heated up to ninety-eight degrees before the chicks are put in and keep it so for the first three days and nights. Keep the door in the outer compartment shut for the same length of time. On the fourth day it can be opened and the chicks allowed to run into it, but the room in which the brooder stands should be warm, and the little ones should be watched toward bedtime, for they are apt to remain in the outer compartment and become chilled.
Being chilled even for a short time is fatal to young chicks, for if it does not kill outright, it causes bowel trouble and gives them a bad setback which will surely delay the day of marketing, if nothing worse. After they are three weeks old, the door in the outer compartment can be opened, so that they can run out on to the floor of the room. Let them have plenty of scratching material. If the weather is fine and mild, it will do them good to let them have an outside run for an hour or two in the middle of the day, but don’t be in a hurry to harden them before they are five weeks old, for it is a risky experiment.
Wyandotte chickens when hatched will weigh two ounces. If all goes well they should gain two ounces during the first ten days; four ounces for the third week; another two ounces in the fourth week, and at the end of the eighth week they should weigh two pounds.
The entire life of a chicken intended for a broiler is so artificial that few if any of the rules for raising ordinary chicks can be applied to them. The great aim is to develop them as quickly as possible, for, to get the best price, a broiler must grow quickly and be plump.
Like all newly-hatched birds, they must have nothing to eat for the first thirty-six hours. After that commercial chick-feed (which is a mixture of all sorts of small seeds and cracked grains) should be their sole diet for ten days.
When there are only small quantities of chicks to feed, and cash is of more value than time, it will be cheaper to mix the feed at home. Take one quart each of finely-cracked corn, bran and hulled oats; mix with the same quantity of golden millet, rape, Kafir-corn and very sharp, fine gravel, crushed charcoal and finely-chopped clover-hay. Mix thoroughly, then pass through a fine sieve, to insure there being no large pieces of the corn or oats for the babies to choke themselves with. For the three days they are confined to the hover department, put a small pan filled with the mixture in each corner and, instead of water, fill a small drinking-fountain with milk which has been scalded and allowed to cool. Leave it with them for ten or fifteen minutes, at morning, noon and again at about 3:00 P. M. It must not be allowed to remain all the time, because the heat from the hover will turn it sour.
After they are allowed access to the outer compartment, mixed grain should be scattered on the cut hay (or whatever is used to cover the floor) so that the chicks will have to scratch which compels them to take enough exercise for healthy growth. The plan is to feed little and often. The milk can be allowed to stand in the outer compartment, but the fountain must be thoroughly cleansed and scalded every day.
After the tenth day, the door of the outer compartment can be opened and the chicks given further liberty, if there is a stove in the building to warm the atmosphere; but if there is not, don’t let them out of the brooder until they are four weeks old. In either case their diet must be slightly changed after the tenth day. Steam some of the chopped clover-hay--about a quart--and add one pint of coarse corn-meal, one pint of ground oats and half a small cupful of chopped liver which has been boiled for five minutes (raw liver is too strong for such young birds, but it should not be boiled more than the five minutes). Feed once a day at noon. Put the mash into two or three dishes, so they can all get a chance to eat at once. Remove any that is left at the end of ten minutes. If it is not possible to get fresh liver, use one teaspoonful of beef-meal or any of the commercial meat preparations which are ground fine. Continue to scatter the dry grains three times a day.
When they are four weeks old, give mash twice a day about 9:00 A. M. and 2:00 P. M., increasing the allowance of meat slightly; and if you have plenty of skim-milk, make cottage cheese and give it to them as an extra once or twice a week. From the fourth week keep a pan containing grit and charcoal always before them. After they are six weeks old increase the quantity of corn-meal in the mash, and correspondingly decrease the ground oats, until all corn-meal and no oats are being used. Also, stop steaming the clover and mix it dry with the other ingredients; then moisten the mash in scalded milk in which suet has been boiled (one pound of chopped suet to four quarts of milk). Boil for fifteen minutes. Feed it three times a day--9:00 A. M., 12:00 M. and 3:00 P. M. The last two weeks before killing, omit all the dry grain; feed nothing but mash, made as before, only as soft as possible without being sloppy. Feed four times a day all they will eat in ten minutes, but on no account leave food before them longer than that, or they will become satiated. Birds pushed along should be in fine condition for market when from ten to twelve weeks old.
Our broilers are never given water to drink, but always scalded milk. Scalded milk invariably checks any tendency toward bowel trouble and is also a strong factor in making the flesh tender and juicy.
THE POULTRY-YARD IN MID-SEASON
Baby chicks are so pretty, and appeal so strongly to the sentimental feeling most people have for infant things, that they are invariably well cared for until they are deposed by new arrivals, or reach the half-fledged, long-legged period of gawky ugliness. Then they are almost surely neglected, especially by the amateur, who does not realise that the intermediate stages are of paramount importance. It is a waste of time and money to hatch chicks and feed hens heavily in the winter, if they are allowed to reach a standstill period during growth.
When chicks are eight weeks old, they should be separated from their mothers, and the families divided; the young pullets being relegated to colony coops, in an orchard or partly shaded meadow, where they will have extensive free range; the cockerels being placed in the semi-confinement of yards, as their ultimate fate is the frying-pan, which necessitates plump bodies, while free range would only develop frame and muscle.
Our colony houses are six feet long, three feet wide, thirty-six inches high in front, and twenty-four inches at the back. They are made of light scantling; the ends, back and roof being covered with roofing-paper, and the front, to within eight inches of the ground, with unbleached muslin, which insures perfect ventilation and prevents rain beating in upon the birds when they are on the roosts, which are fixed a foot from the bottom and nine inches from the back of the coop. Two holes are made, nine inches apart, in the middle of each end of the coop, and a heavy rope knotted through them, to form handles.
The coops having no flooring, and the whole construction being light, they are easily moved to fresh ground each week, and so kept clean with little trouble, an important item when there is a large quantity being used. Having a large orchard, we placed the coops in rows thirty feet apart, as two sides of the orchard adjoin woodland, through which a never-failing spring-stream runs, so the birds have a splendid range.
Twenty birds are placed in each coop. The first week a portable yard, five feet long, is placed in front of each coop so that the young chicks cannot wander off and get lost, as they surely would in strange quarters. During that time a self-feeding hopper and a drinking-fountain are placed inside of the coop. When the yard is removed, the individual vessels are dispensed with, large drinking-tubs and feed-hoppers being stationed midway between every four coops, to reduce time and labour in caring for the birds.
The large hoppers are nothing more than boxes, five feet long, two feet wide and six inches deep, over which is placed an A-shaped cover, made of slats, one inch apart, to prevent the birds getting into the box and scratching the grain onto the ground, where it will be wasted. For water, five-gallon kegs are used, with an automatic escape, which keeps a small pan continually full. Both feed and water are placed under a rough shelter, to protect them from sun and rain. Using such large receptacles, it is only necessary to fill them every other day.
Feed consists of a dry mash, composed of ten pounds of wheat bran, ten pounds of ground oats, one pound of white middlings, one pound of old-process oil-meal and ten pounds of beef scraps, all well mixed. In addition to that, they receive at night a feed of wheat and cracked corn--two parts of the former to one of the latter. About half a pint is scattered in front of each coop, at about four P. M.
Grit is supplied in large quantities. Being near a stone-crusher, we buy the screenings by the cart-load and dump it in heaps on the outskirts of the orchard, where it does not show, but is quite accessible to the chicks.
On these rations, without any variation, the pullets are kept until September, when they are transferred to their winter quarters--houses twelve feet wide, ten feet high in front, sloping to eight feet at the back. Each house is divided by wire netting into twelve-foot compartments, in each of which forty birds are kept.
Winter feeding commences as soon as the birds are settled in their houses, and consists of the same mash as when on range, except that ten pounds of corn-meal is added, and, instead of the ten pounds of commercial beef scraps, sixteen pounds of freshly cracked green bone is used, and, in place of being before them all the time, it is fed once a day, just what they will eat up clean in fifteen minutes.
Until three years ago, we used to moisten the mash and feed at eight o’clock in the morning. Now we feed it dry, at 2 P. M.; at night, wheat, cracked and whole corn, scattered over cut straw, which covers the floor of the house. The proportions are three pounds of whole corn, one pound of wheat and two pounds of cracked corn. The birds are always eager for the whole corn, and, as they run about to pick it up, the cracked corn and wheat get shaken down into the litter, so they rarely get any but the whole corn at night, which fills up their crops and keeps them warm until morning, when the fine grain induces them to scratch--vigorous exercise, which sets their blood circulating and keeps them busy until 8 A. M., when the drinking-fountains are filled up with hot water.
For green food we use Swiss chard, cabbage and rape until frost destroys the supply, after which we resort to clover hay, chopped and steamed. It is fed at about 11 A. M., a large panful to each compartment, and at the same time a pint of wheat and cracked oats is scattered on the floor. Sharp grit and oyster-shells are always before them, and in very cold weather the drinking-fountains are filled up again with hot water at eleven and three o’clock.
If you have no orchard, or other partly shady place for coops, it will be necessary to erect some sort of shelters for the birds to rest under during the heat of the day. Any sort of material or shape will do, so long as protection from the sun is afforded. If free range is quite impossible (as it often is for suburban poultry-keepers), the birds must be given as large yards as possible and supplied with lots of scratching material, over which small grain must be scattered two or three times a day. Fresh green bone will be better than the beef scraps. Vegetable food is most imperative under such circumstances. Sow a large patch of Swiss chard; it is a true cut-and-come-again crop. Oats and rape are also useful crops for poultry-keepers who can give their birds free range through the summer.
A word of warning: If you are reduced to cutting grass, or use lawn-clippings, be careful to have them cut into short lengths of not more than an inch, otherwise the birds may become crop-bound.
The cockerels which go into the market-pen are fattened and sold as quickly as possible, except the few we keep for stock, and these are given large yards and fed in the same manner as pullets on range.
For fattening birds, use ground corn and oats in equal parts, add half a part of charcoal and moisten with skim-milk. Give plenty of green food and sharp grit. Feed little and often. All expedition must be used in the matter of marketing, for every day’s delay after they reach the desired weight is a dead loss.
Constant culling and marketing is one of the great secrets of success. Culling must be observed just as rigidly when selecting winter stock. Discard any faulty birds. There are always some in every flock, even if the parent birds have been blue-ribbon specimens: Crooked tails or feet, ear-lobes which are red instead of white, or white instead of red, according to the variety you may be keeping. Wyandottes, Orpingtons, Plymouth Rocks, Brahmas or Cochins should all have bright-red ear-lobes. Leghorns, Minorcas and Andalusians should be pure white. It is a bright, energetic-looking pullet which makes the best layer, and it is not profitable to keep any but the best layers, so put them into small pens and fatten. The young roosters bring good prices in the fall, and their absence from the farm reduces feed-bills and prevents crowding in the house, which is always disastrous.
Do not delay, after September first, in getting the pullets into their winter quarters, for it is most important that they become accustomed to their new surroundings and reconciled to the change from free range to semi-inactivity. It often takes five or six weeks for them to become accustomed to the new conditions, and, unless they have time to adjust themselves, they won’t start laying until cold weather sets in, which means that the egg-crop is likely to be unprofitably delayed.
JULY IN THE POULTRY-YARD
It is strange that few people except the real poultry-farmers realise that July is one of the most important months in the year. The desire to have eggs in zero weather invariably compels good attention to the hens during the winter. Baby chicks arouse interest in the spring, but as the weather gets warmer, eggs are plentiful, and the pretty, fluffy babies developed into long, lanky creatures, who seem nothing but a nuisance specially ordained to destroy the garden, so the poor things are shut up in small quarters and woefully neglected. During the fall and winter I am repeatedly asked how to make pullets and hens lay, but I can rarely suggest a remedy, because nine times out of ten it is the result of blunders made during the preceding summer.
I don’t believe in sacrificing the garden to the chickens, but I do think they should be properly controlled. A roll of two-inch-mesh wire netting five feet high costs only about four dollars. At the price of eggs nowadays a few dozen will pay for it. Posts can be cut in the wood-lot on most farms, so a yard for a good-sized flock can easily be made for less than five dollars. The best plan is to run a division fence down the centre, so the birds can be confined in one half alternately, for by such means a supply of green food can be kept growing until frost. The ground should be ploughed, and seeded to rye or oats, before the wire is put up. If poultry is to be profitable, the old and young stock must be kept apart, because it is impossible to feed correctly when they are all together. Young birds need plenty of nutritious food to push them along quickly, and laying hens must be put on special rations to bring about early molting, which is the foundation of a good winter supply of eggs.