62 PHOFITS IN POULTRY. 



ers, kept in one house and yard, and properly kept and 

 cared for with such help as this, to secure early broiling 

 chickens, as these bring a high price. A brood of eight 

 chicks, which is a fair average for each hen, sold at 

 seventy-five cents each, will make six dollars alone, and 

 some of the cockerels in the case mentioned sold in the 

 fall for eighteen cents a pound, and weighed nine 

 pounds each, making one dollar and sixty- two cents 

 each. 



BROODERS FOR EARLY CHICKENS. 



The greatest profit in poultry-keeping is from the 

 early chickens. By good feeding and management 

 some of the hens may be brooding in January, and all 

 the chicks may be saved by the use of artificial brooders. 

 Incubators are used by experts with success, but farmers 

 and ordinary poultry-keepers are rarely successful with 

 these machines. Brooders, however, may be used by any 

 person, even a boy or girl, who will simply see that the 

 heat is not excessive, and when the chicks open their 

 mouths, give them fresh air. Eighty degrees is quite 

 enough warmth for newly hatched chicks, which are 

 taken from the nest as they come out, and are placed in 

 the brooder until all the brood is out, when they may be 

 removed to a warm, glazed coop, with the hen. Young 

 chicks have been thus nursed until they were strong, 

 which ran about in the snow in February with great 

 pleasure and comfort, and not one was lost out of a lot 

 of ninety, which were all hatched in January. All that 

 is required is to have a warm part of the buildings or an 

 attic room for the setting hens, and glazed coops set in 

 a sunny place out of doors for the chicks when they 

 come from the brooder. The brooder (fig. 43) is a box 

 eighteen inches square or thereabouts, one end opening 



