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.