BULLETIN 163.] [MARCH, 1908 



Ontario Department of Agriculture. 



ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



;RARV 



NL 



Experiments in Hatching and Rearing Chickens. 



By W. R. Graham, Poultry Manager and Lecturer. 



For a number of years the Poultry department has been endeavoring 

 to locate the cause or causes for the large losses of young chickens, par- 

 ticularly of those hatched artificially. Numerous visits have been made 

 to farms where chicks were being grown both naturally and artificially. 

 The most casual observer would have noticed that, upon the average, the 

 chickens hatched naturally were more thrifty and vigorous. I have often 

 seen, however, some choice chicks that were hatched by the artificial 

 means, and also a few chicks hatched by hens that were far from first- 

 class. In a general way, nearly all large poultry farms that I have visited, 

 where 1,000, or even say 500, chickens are hatched annually, there 

 was a very heavy death rate, so heavy as to render the business unpro- 

 fitable. The death rate among chicks hatched artificially, when there is 

 not more than one hundred hatched, is proportionately not so heavy, so 

 far as I can judge from correspondence and observation; yet even among 

 these growers, numerous complaints are made, and the average mortality 

 is very serious. The questions to my mind are as follows : 



(a) Is artificial incubation to blame? If so, wherein does it differ 

 from natural incubation? 



(b) Is the heavy mortality due to inferior breeding stock? 



(c) Are the methods of feeding and brooding the causes of the trouble? 



All the questions have to be considered seriously, and it is very diffi- 

 cult to separate them so as to be positive that one and only one is influ- 

 encing the results. Therefore the writer would ask the reader to care- 

 fully consider the methods of selecting eggs for incubation, as well as the 

 methods of feeding and brooding the chickens, before drawing conclusions 

 as to incubation. Many of these experiments, if not all, will have to be 

 duplicated for a number of years. 



In taking up the question of how a hen hatches eggs, we at once 

 felt the necessity of a careful study in every detail, and to do this we 

 asked the co-operation of the departments of Physics and Chemistry. 

 The work done by these departments is given in this Bulletin. What 

 may be termed the practical work, or that which may be done by any 

 poultryman who will take the trouble, was done by the Poultry depart- 

 ment. 



