384 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15 



I have given the above in order that you 

 may not think I am inconsistent, or change 

 my mind every Httle while. Here in the 

 North, so far as my experience goes, I would 

 prefer the Root brooder to any thing else — 

 at least for the first week or two. After that, 

 my opinion is that the fireless brooder will 

 give better and stronger chickens in the 

 warmer months. I am inclined to think they 

 sometimes hover around the hot-water pipes 

 when they do not need it.* 



With the above preface I want to tell you 

 that this young inventor, Mr. R. R. Root, has 

 recently gotten out the Root incubator on an 

 entirely new principle. You will see it pic- 

 tured and described in Gleanings for Jan. 

 15, page 27. By rather expensive advertis- 

 ing, Mr. Root has succeeded in selling about 

 125 of these incubators; but, unfortunately 

 (so it seems now], he sent them out before 

 he had fully tested the full-sized incubator 

 holding 124 eggs. As a consequence, many 

 of his customers have been disappointed, and 

 may be disgusted, with the new incubator. 

 I made a test myself after I returned from 

 Florida, and succeeded in getting only 20 

 chickens from something over 100 eggs which 

 were presumed to be fertile. As soon as 

 Mr. Root discovered that the full-sized ma- 

 chine did not seem to work as well as the 

 small one which he experimented with a year 

 ago, he set about at once to find the trouble. 

 Yesterday, May 24, I visited his incubator- 

 cellar where he is making his experiments, 

 and I feel satisfied that he has surmounted 

 the difficulty with the machine as first made, 

 and that, too, without any expensive changes. 

 The chickens hatched by this new incubator 

 are the brightest, stockiest, and cleanest I 

 ever saw, either from an incubator or hen. 

 The shells, after the chickens have emerged, 

 are clean. The chickens dry off quicker 

 than I ever saw chickens do it before in any 

 other incubator, and they are the handsom- 

 est, strongest, and most nearly perfect chick- 

 ens I ever saw. From one incubator con- 

 taining, I think, 97 eggs pronounced fertile, 

 he has hatched 73 chickens. 



About ten days ago I decided to give one 

 of these incubators another trial. So far it 

 seems to be working all right. Only seven 

 eggs, out of something over a hundred, prov- 

 ed to be unfertile, and nearly all the others 

 show every evidence of making healthy 

 progress. Let me <|ive you a little incident 

 that gives me great laith in the incubator. 



About the time I started it we found a hen 

 that stole her nest in the barn and came out 

 with three chickens. One of the men found 

 the nest and brought up to the house six 

 eggs that had not hatched. When I found 

 out about it, although the six eggs had been 

 pretty well cooled off, I put them in the in- 

 cubator, and in about two days a nice healthy 

 fluffv chick hatched. In two days more 

 another one came out, and so on through the 

 six. These eggs were evidently laid by some 

 other hen, every other day, in the nest with 

 the sitting hen. That is why they hatched 



•A henlthij chick will never stay In the brooilor diirini^ day- 

 light unless It needs warmth.— R. K. Root. 



out every other day. This incident indicates 

 that the machine hatches out nicely eggs 

 that have been started by a sitting hen. It 

 also indicates that you can put eggs in this 

 sort of incubator every day, every other day, 

 or once a week. Put the dates on the differ- 

 ent shelves, and they will hatch out, and can 

 be taken out as fast as hatched, and put into 

 the brooder. You can put in duck eggs with 

 the hen's eggs, and they will hatch out all 

 right. Mr. Root has done this already. I be- 

 lieve that most if not all the incubator man- 

 ufacturers say that the incubator must not 

 be opened during the hatching. With this 

 new machine (on a new principle) you can 

 open your incubator as much as you please. 

 In fact, it is practically open all the while. 

 You can see exactly what is going on, and 

 meddle with the hatch at any time and all 

 the time. In fact, Mr. Root showed me a 

 number of eggs that he had broken open, at 

 the air-cell end, to see how the chickens got 

 along. He afterward sealed them up with 

 wax, and had them hatch out good strong 

 chickens. Not only this, he took the top off 

 from an egg and then took a half-shell from 

 another egg, so as to cover the opening. 

 The chick cut the shell in the regular way to 

 hatch out, and I saw the wax cap, all per- 

 fect, after the chicken had come out of it. 



Now, I should like to advise those who 

 have purchased the Root incubator, but have 

 not made of it a success, to hold on a little, 

 and my friend Root will give you instructions 

 showing how to use the mcubatoras success- 

 fully as any other incubator made; and he 

 hopes, and I hope, they may prove to be even 

 more successful. The A. I. Root Co. have no 

 pecuniary interest in the machine nor in the 

 patent on it; but as the machines are made 

 m our establishment, of course we like to see 

 them a success. We regret very much, just 

 as Mr. Root regrets, that the machines were 

 sent out before they had been most thorough- 

 ly tested. 



AN EGG-TESTER THAT IS FAR AHEAD OV ANY 

 THING ELSE IN THE MARKET. 



I say this, friends, after having purchased 

 almost every egg-tester I have seen adver- 

 tised. When Mr. Root put in my hands an 

 egg-tester which enabled me to see the pul- 

 sations of a chicken, its movements,* and to 

 see it kick inside of the shell during almost all 

 the stages of incubation, I was ready to swing 

 my — far cap! I had read in the books about 



itteil to Mr. Root he writes as 



• After the above was- 

 follows: 



■■ Chicks ill the shell do not lireathe'witli their lunKS till they 

 pip the shell, orsoiiietimes they will break into the air-cell be- 

 fore pipping. If yon have eniptieil an ejfff that had a live 

 trerm in it whiih'had devclopcil about ten days, you would 

 have found that thi- entire inner surl'aie of the shell was cov- 

 ered with blood vessels, ami tlie blood is purltled 1)V the air 

 that comes tliroii|.'h the por.s oC the shell. If these iiores are 

 closed, the u-ci-ni will die in a very few hours. The writer has 

 learned this bv covering a number of euRs under different 

 stafres of incubation with a thin coating of lard. This, again, 

 shows the necessity of allowing an abundance of fresh air to 

 get t'l the eggs while under iucnbation." 



1 hardly need remind our readers that fresh air promises 

 .just now to be the salvation of a considerable part of the hu- 

 man race; and fresh air for chickens, we are beginning to Hnd 

 out. is just as important as for human beings; and it is not 

 o-hly fresh air after the chickens are out of the shell, but while 

 they are undergoing tlie jirocess of incubation inside of the 

 shell; and this incubator gives the chickens constant acces- 

 sions of a'r right through the whole process of Incubation. 

 No wonder they are so strong and lusty, with no deformities 

 nor cripples. 



