Part 16

Standardize on one breed if possible.

Buy the best chicks or mature stock available.

Use a brooder house for the young birds.

The laying house must be well ventilated, fully lighted and easily cleaned.

Use latest mechanical feeding and watering devices to save labor.

Employ artificial lighting to lengthen the hen's working day.

Work toward the "one-man plant"--a total of 1,500 laying hens--for most efficient results.

Don'ts

Don't try to raise poultry in buildings that may still carry infection.

Don't economize by buying cheap chicks or breeding stock.

Don't overlook importance of health factors and productive qualities in determining value of stock purchased.

Don't try to operate a poultry plant with ill-adapted buildings and equipment.

Chapter X

SUCCESSFUL MANAGEMENT OF POULTRY

The successful poultryman will have set up his establishment with due attention to adequate housing, good stock, facilities for maintaining sanitation and for creating generally favorable conditions for egg production. His next problem will be that of adopting successful methods of management so that he may obtain a satisfactory net income from the investment.

Feeds and Feeding.--There are two groups of materials that are essential in food rations for all ages of poultry. The organic feeds include grains and grain by-products, hays, grasses and vegetables. The inorganic feeds include salt to increase palatability and digestibility of the ration; lime, to aid in building bone and body tissue as well as to furnish the shell material; bone ash, especially for growing chicks, and water in liberal amounts supplied by a fountain as well as from succulent green foods. The fact that a dozen eggs contain approximately one pint of water demonstrates the necessity of having drinking water before the flock at all times.

The feeding of baby chicks, young stock and laying hens has been scientifically worked out by research and practical experience over a period of many years. The poultryman, especially if he is a novice, will do well if he carefully observes the recommendations of competent authorities. The ration for each of the three ages will consist of a grain feed and a dry mash composed of grain by-products reinforced with materials that supply the birds' daily nutrition requirements.

The following rations and recommendations for management have been prepared by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, New Brunswick, New Jersey:

CHICK RATION

Baby Chick Grain

200 pounds finely cracked yellow corn 100 pounds cracked wheat

Fed morning and evening, beginning when chicks are 36 hours old.

Baby Chick Mash

20 pounds ground yellow corn 20 pounds wheat bran 20 pounds flour middlings 20 pounds pinhead oats 10 pounds meat scrap (50 per cent protein) 5 pounds dried buttermilk or skim-milk 2 pounds oyster shell meal or limestone flour or bone meal 2 pounds cod liver oil (mixed with the pinhead oats) 1 pound table salt

This mash is fed to the chicks as soon as they are placed under the brooder stove. It may be placed in hoppers. Let the chicks have all they want to eat; some of the mash should be before them at all times.

Teach the chicks where to find the warmth by enclosing them for a few days with a 1/2 inch mesh wire one foot high and set from 10 to 12 inches from the edge of the hover.

Put some clean grit on bits of cardboard in several places around the hover when the chicks are first brought from the incubator.

A little sour skim-milk or semi-solid buttermilk, diluted 1 to 7 in founts should be available from the beginning.