238 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Apr. 1 



Our Homes 



By a. I. Root 



In all thv ways acknowledge him, and he shall di- 

 rect thy paths.— Pro V. 3 : 6. 



It is now the 15th of March, and I have 

 made my last hatch with my two incubators 

 before going to my northern home. A good 

 many inquiries are coming in in regard to 

 that " simplicity " incubator pictured and de- 

 scribed in our issue for Dec. 1. By the way, 

 perhaps I should mention that I have not 

 only taxed my brains but I have done more 

 praying (that the Lord would "direct my 

 paths") in regard to this incubator, than 

 any other thing for some time. While all 

 along I have had gHmpses of success, I have 

 reason to fear it was unwise to describe it as 

 I did while it was yet unproven. I did it a 

 good deal as I have done all my life, to set 

 other minds at work on the problems that 

 are confronting me; and, judging from the 

 correspondence, I have succeeded pretty 

 well. 



I have already mentioned getting one 

 hatch, from a machine full of eggs, of about 

 70 per cent; but when a neighbor, Mr. G. M. 

 Raub, a York State bee-keeper who has re- 

 cently passed his 80th birthday, on his first 

 trial with a new incubator secured over 

 eighty per cent (and has every chicken alive 

 now) , I began to think I and my incubator are 

 a "back number." I think friend Raub got 

 the chicken fever by coming down to visit 

 me. As he had no previous knowledge with 

 incubators I advised a sitting hen; but hens 

 were too slow, and he made a trip to Tampa 

 and came home with a "Mandy Lee" ma- 

 chine (the one I advised him to get*) almost 

 before I knew it. I called to advise him; but 

 the new moisture hygrometer, and, as it 

 seemed to me, the complicated directions, 

 were such that I feared he would never do 

 any thing with it. He sold 12 of the chicks 

 to a neighbor of his, and gave the rest (close 

 on to 70) to a single sitting hen, just as I 

 have been advising, and I think every chick 

 is "alive and well." Full of enthusiasm he 

 filled the machine again (I think before it 

 cooled oli"), and did almost as well, and now 

 he is running the third hatch. I have the 

 credit of furnishing him the eggs, or at least 

 the greater part of them. 



There is a big moral right here, friends, 

 for old people like Mr. Raub and myself. Is 

 there any thing nicer and more fitting for 

 elderly people who want to be busy about 

 something than caring for chickens? Such 

 a one can, with a clear conscience, ask God 

 to "direct his paths" in devising and plan- 

 ning for this innocent and harmless rural in- 

 dustry. Friend Raub lost his good wife but 

 a short time ago, and so he is alone in his 

 neat little cottage, surrounded by a very 

 pretty Florida garden. He has his bright 

 new incubator close by his bedside, and I 



* At that time this was the only incubator I knew of 

 for sale in Tampa; but since then the Cyphers people 

 have also opened a house there. See advertisements 

 of both, also Prairie State, in this issue. 



can easily imagine it is a sort of company for 

 him while he enjoys studying it and giving 

 it the careful attention it requires. 



Well, we have another neighbor, Mr. Dan- 

 iel Abbott, who, with an old Prairie State in- 

 cubator that had remained unused for sever al 

 years, took 187 chicks from 214 eggs. I 

 furnished the greater part of the eggs for 

 this remarkable hatch also. Well, after I 

 heard of this and saw the fine healthy chick- 

 ens, I tackled my Cyphers incubator, and, 

 by closely following all the directions, I se- 

 cured almost an 80 per-cent hatch, and every 

 chick is now alive— yes, very much alive — as 

 I see them out of the window from where I 

 write; and this brings me to the point of my 

 story to-day. 



Five days after starting the seventy-egg 

 Cyphers I gave the old Simplicity 60 eggs for 

 one more trial. In order to make out the 60 

 of fresh-laid eggs I took three eggs from a 

 hen that had been sitting on them just about 

 24 hours, and I put a pencil-mark ring around 

 each one of the three eggs. By means of a 

 new thermometer called the "Inovo," that 

 I got of the Prairie State people, I kept the 

 temperature of the eggs themselves much 

 more accurate than ever before, and in just 

 19 days two bright strong chicks hopped out 

 of two of the pencil-marked eggs so quickly 

 I didn't even know they were pipped; and 

 you will recall that the eggs are moved from 

 every shelf to the lower one every eight 

 hours. This shifting three times a day is all 

 the "cooling " and turning the eggs get; and 

 examination on the 18th day with my egg- 

 tester showed nearly sixty eggs with a live 

 active chick in every egg. I noticed then 

 these two eggs were plainly in advance of 

 the others. Well, heretofore I have prac- 

 ticed shifting the eggs from shelf to shelf 

 until all were hatched; but as Cyphers and 

 others plainly declare the eggs are not to be 

 touched or moved at all after the 18th day, I 

 decided this time to stop moving, even if 

 each egg is warmed only from one side by 

 "contact heat," as has been already explain- 

 ed. At this time there were eggs on four 

 shelves (see p. 740, Dec. 1), 14 on each of 

 the three lower ones, and 11 on the upper 

 shelf. Now, this upper shelf is not as warm 

 as the three lower ones, and it is the one I 

 always use to place the chicks just out of the 

 shell, so it was desirable to get these eleven 

 eggs out of the way; and, therefore, I warm- 

 ed up the Cyphers machine again just to take 

 those eleven eggs. Now mark carefully. 

 One reason for the eight-hour shifting is be- 

 cause this top shelf is colder, and the eleven 

 eggs that happened to be on it that particu- 

 lar morning were exactly like (and, in fact, 

 a part of) the whole 57 fertile eggs. Well, 

 on the 21st day all of the eleven but one had 

 produced a fine chicken, and that one was part- 

 ly hatched. If every e^g from that upper shelf 

 had produced a good chick why should not 

 all of the other shelves? I was almost ready 

 to shout to the boys back in old Medina that 

 my incubator had given a 100- per-cent hatch; 

 but Mrs. Root held up her finger and said, 

 "Counting chickens!" 



