CHAPTER XIX
Rearing Chicks in Brooder House—The Following Two Years’ Results Depend Upon Success in Brooding
The Brooder House is built over the Sprouted Oats Cellar and the Incubator Cellar. Its total length is 264 feet. 118 feet of this is 16 feet wide, and the balance is 22 feet wide.
Incubation might be termed a mechanical operation, and, as outlined in the previous chapter, a very fair hatch is usually obtained. But after all is said and done artificial rearing of young chicks is the most difficult problem which a poultryman has to solve.
Chicks running with a hen will stand climatic conditions, and in fact thrive under conditions, which, if they were being handled in a Brooder House, would mean a tremendous mortality. The hen will feed her brood on substances which would mean the annihilation of ones’ entire flock of youngsters, should one attempt it, and, perhaps, the most curious feature of the feeding part is the fact that one may give the brood, running with the hen, food Nature never intended a small chick to eat, and many of the brood will thrive on it, and the mortality will, in most cases, be confined to the weak ones.
Corn Not Proper Chick Food
In past decades, wet corn meal seemed to be about the standard ration which the chicks were fed on by the farmer’s wife, and in fact this practice has not yet entirely gone out. Naturally, it brought about a large mortality which everyone deplored but could not understand. Corn in any form was never intended for a chick to eat, but when you place it before them in the form of meal, and this made into a sloppy mass, the wonder is, not at the largeness of the mortality, but rather that any of them live at all.
But the advance in Poultry Culture has brought about feeding of whole grains, to a large extent. For years the proper feeding of chicks, even on farms with modern brooding equipment, has been a stumbling block, causing serious loss, and, in many instances, failure, to those attempting to raise chickens either in large or small numbers.
Follow Nature’s Teaching
In Poultry Culture, in order to succeed it is essential to study Nature, to find out how the hen in a wild state cares for her brood, and then bring the artificial conditions as near to Nature as possible. In almost every chick food put on the market the main ingredient, namely corn, was never intended for a young chick to eat. Consider for a moment, and you will realize that the hen in a wild state could not possibly feed corn to her young. For the sake of argument, however, suppose that corn did ripen at a time when it would be possible for the hen to procure it for her brood, the size of the kernel is so great that the small chick could not possibly swallow it. Thus Nature plainly points out that corn, for young chicks, is not the proper food.