1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



751 



and, in fact, I do not see why anybody should 

 fuss with this cheap oil of commerce when 

 something so much better costs only a little 

 more. Montgomery Ward & Co. furnish it, 

 and say that no other kind should be used in 

 an incubator, and I heartily indorse that 

 statement. Let us now go back to our sub- 

 ject. 



This lin can, as you will notice, is covered 

 with a sheet of Canton flannel. I had more 

 trouble in getting something for the shelves 

 to hold the eggs than any other part of it. I 

 had them made of pasteboard, of thin wood 

 glued together with the grain crossed, and 

 in different ways; but the high degree of 

 heat, together with the dampness, warped 

 them all out of shape so that it was a bother 

 to handle the eggs and get them to stay in 

 place. One morning when I had been puz- 

 zling over the matter I awoke between four 

 and five o'clock, and had the thing all work- 

 ed out in my mind before I got up. Just as 

 soon as the whistle blew I had one of our 

 tinners make four wire hoops 14'+ inches 

 across. Then I had him make four smaller 

 ones just 9 inches across. Then I went into 

 the wood-working department and asked the 

 boys to make me some strips of wood 1x3 

 inches, with a saw-kerf cut across both ends 

 that would just take in my wire hoops. They 

 go in so snug they had to be driven with a 

 hammer, and then driven down with a suit- 

 able punch. This made the four pretty little 

 shelves that you see in the cut. In order to 

 hold these shelves securely the proper dis- 

 tance apart, some clips of tin are soldered to 

 the water-boiler so that bent wires can be 

 pushed down in, to support the shelves. 

 These bent wires are something like the let- 

 ter L, but not bent clear up at right angles. 

 They stand out at an angle so as to support 

 the shelf just right. Each shelf is supported 

 by seven of these projecting wires. Just un- 

 der the lower shelf you will see some copper 

 trays — to hold wet sand; but i really do not 

 know if these trays are needed. I have 

 not yet decided. If they are not needed, an- 

 other row of eggs can take their place. 



On the upper shelf in Fig. 2 you see a little 

 cloth fence to keep the chicks from tumbling 

 out after they are hatched. This chick fence 

 is shown again in Fig. 3. It is made of wire 

 cloth covered with flannel. Now for the 

 operation of the incubator. 



Each shelf holds 14 eggs. As explained in 

 our issue for Nov. 1, you are to place 14 more 

 eggs outside of the circle that rests against 

 the hot-water tank. As there are 28 on each 

 shelf, we shall have 112 eggs in this small and 

 compact incubator; and you can put in 130 

 eggs to run up to testing time if you choose. 



Now for the principal objection to this 

 small and cheap incubator. It is the chang- 

 ing of the eggs every eight hours as I have 

 explained. The way I do it now is to have a 

 coat with side pockets capacious enough to 

 hold 14 eggs apiece. Take off the 14 cool 

 eggs on the lower shelf and put them in 

 your left-hand coat pocket. Now take off 

 the 14 hot eggs and put them in your right- 

 hand coat pocket; then with both hands 



rapidly take the eggs from the shelf above 

 and put them in the one below. This will 

 leave the top shelf empty. Now take your 

 cool eggs out of the right-hand pocket and 

 put them down against the boiler; then put 

 the warm eggs on outside of the hot ones, 

 and your incubator is ready to close up. Put 

 on your cloth-covered hoop, hook it up and 

 slip in the wooden cover, and let them re- 

 main another eight hours. Both top and 

 bottom of this incubator can be further pro- 

 tected with cushions. Of course, there must 

 be a hole in the upper cushion for the chim- 

 ney of the lamp; but so far I have not used 

 any cushion; and if you have an incubator 

 cellar that varies but little from 70 degrees I 

 do not think you will need any. By the way, 

 when I said 3 pints of oil would make a hatch 

 it was with the understanding that your ma- 

 chine is run in a room or cellar that keeps 

 pretty close to 70 degrees. I have not yet 

 decided on the best temperature for the 

 water in the boiler; but I think that any- 

 where from 110 to 115 will be all right. I 

 have several times had the temperature up 

 to 120 degrees; and I am sure this does no 

 harm if you are careful to change places with 

 the ( ggs every eight hours. The whole se- 

 cret of the success of this cheap incubator is 

 in the alternate warming and cooling of the 

 eggs; and I think that our incubator manu- 

 facturers are getting on to it. In a little 

 book just out, by Mandy Lee, I see the state- 

 ment made that a sitting hen lets her eggs 

 vary as much as 7 degrees; and this agrees 

 with my observation. I believe you will get 

 more and stronger chickens with a temper- 

 ature that is alternately up and down than 

 where you have it right steady at 103. As a 

 proof of it I should like to show you strong 

 healthy chickens that were hatched out in 

 September and October by this method. Un- 

 less your apartment becomes very cold I 

 would not put any blanket or other insula- 

 tion around the cloth-covered cylinder. This 

 cloth cover, like the cloth-front poultry- 

 houses, gives pure fresh air without any 

 draft, and confines the heat as much as is 

 needful. 



HAWKS, SKUNKS, ETC., AND THE POULTRY BUSINESS. 



Dear Friend Root : — I usually read your department 

 ia Gleanings about the first thing. Indeed, it was 

 largely because of it that I subscribed for Gleanings. 

 There are other good bee-papers, but only one "Our 

 Homes" with its sound sense and Christian helpful- 

 ness. Your chicken experiences are always quite in- 

 teresting, though I sometimes think you worry unduly 

 about force. A chicken, like all animals, is merely a 

 living, automatic, soulless, unreasoning, unmoral ma- 

 chine, and force is sometimes the only effective way 

 of governing and training animals. But I write this 

 letter to commend all you may say about the desir- 

 ability of exterminating hawks and "varmints." I 

 just came in the house from chasing a skunk out of 

 the chicken-house where he had been busily thumping 

 a glass egg for half an hour in the vain attempt to 

 break it. Yesterday he got four good eggs that I know 

 of. Now that I have visibly determined the guilty 

 party, I shall feed him one more egg — and he will 

 thereafter make good fertilizer, I am thinking. I 

 might try to catch him and express him to your sub- 

 scriber who, I notice, protests in the current Glean- 

 ings that everybody liut himself and his coterie of na- 

 ture-lovers are fools, killing off friends. He evidently 

 belongs to that class that induced the Pennsylvania 

 legislature to pass that idiotic bill protectins bears I 

 The last legislature repealed that la^v; but in all the 



