FIFTH Annual year book — part vi. 421 



they are made of mud in the form of a large oven and the heat is kept up by 

 a furnace fire. If one expects to have the early spring chickens -to catch the 

 welcome half dollar he will be compelled to use an incubator. 



To raise chickens with an incubator is a business. An incubator is not 

 a plaything to be looked at when you see fit. If you wish to hatch chickens 

 with an incubator and be suceessful you must make up your mind to study 

 and work. You must look after all the details, you must have a suitable 

 place to locate the machine. "Any old" place won't do. You need a room 

 where the temperature will not change too fast. We have found a good dry 

 cellar to be the best place. Access to plenty of fresh air, as fresh air is very 

 important in hatching chickens. The impression that an incubator requires 

 a great deal of attention is without foundation. This is true of sitting hens, 

 twenty or thirty hens sitting on eggs require a great deal of looking after and 

 good management, or the production of live chicks will be very disappoint- 

 ing. Do not commence to operate an incubator until you thoroughly study 

 the instructions that come with the machine. It requires patience, attention, 

 common sense and a certain amount of experience to manage an incubator 

 or anything else successfully, even the most perfect and easily operated ones. 

 The machines can not do it all, but the operators must do their part. Use 

 common sense and you stand an equal chance with others for success. Do 

 not expect too much at first. If you fail to secure the best results from your 

 incubator or brooder at first, or to produce as many chickens as you should, 

 don't give up in dispair, try again. Did you ever think the fault may be in 

 you and not in the machine? It may take a gteat deal of time and work to 

 get this fault out of yourself, but keep on and if the fault is yours it will in 

 time give way to success. 



'Those who have raised chicks with old hens know the trials attached; 

 you waste time to see whether they are in earnest. When a hen will she 

 will, and when she won't she won't. The incubator saves this time, it is 

 willing to set when wanted. A hen is valuable when she is making some 

 returns for her care, therefore, she hasn't time to sit three, six or nine 

 weeks out of a year and spend almost twice that much time looking after 

 her chicks. Nowadays a hen's business is to lay eggs and when not at that, 

 recuperating for business. A hen can't lay all the time, but nature has ar- 

 ranged a time during moulting when they can rest. Fully eighty per cent 

 of the eggs are now hatched in incubators. Buy an incubator, don't worry 

 with broody hens. Buy ' 'a good one," use common sense in running it 

 and it will be a source of continued profit and satisfaction. 



People think that all the chicks that die in the shell are the cause of the 

 incubator, that they don't do that way when set under an old hen, but they 

 do. The question is often asked, why do chicks die in the shell? No one 

 knows. Let us remember it is not the hen that hatches the chicks, it is the 

 heat, no matter from what source the heat comes. Cases are on record 

 where chicks have been hatched from the heat of a manure pile. Ostriches 

 and reptiles deposit their eggs in the hot sand and leave them there to be 

 hatched by the sun. 



After an egg has started to incubate the germs may perish at any stage 

 from lack of strength or of any other cause. It is subject to disease and 

 weakness the same as any other living organism. The principal cause is 

 attributed to the fluctuation of the temperature, such as overheating or a 



