72 AX EGG FARM. 



person running the very best incubators and brooders in 

 the world under the mental tension and watchfulness 

 their successful use implies. Tending sitters in great 

 numbers, unless with conveniences,, is, however, an 

 abomination. Any plan of managing them that places 

 the operator at the mercy of their whims and cranks, 

 and the liability of their lice and uncleanliness, makes 

 his task irksome in the extreme, and costs in dollars and 

 cents. They have certain traits and habits, however, 

 which we can rely upon and turn to our advantage. 

 Nature has placed within our reach vital machinery of 

 such wonderful precision that nothing man can make 

 will ever rival it. 



Hatch chicks artificially and rear them in brooders, 

 where location demands, and market them in ninety 

 days from the shell, and besides, use the incubators, if 

 you choose, to supplement sitters, but never rear a bird 

 to keep to adult age for a sitter, or to exhibit, or for a 

 breeder, except under a good, motherly hen. The egg 

 must, in the first place, be laid by a fowl kept under 

 sanitary conditions that were perfect, and during incu- 

 bation be surrounded by air much better and purer than 

 that in incubators averages; and then, while the chicks 

 are getting their growth, they should never see a fence, 

 but have the use of as much of the United States as 

 they choose to travel over. Pullets thus hatched and 

 reared, and from an ancestry thus hatched and reared 

 for several generations, will have constitutions that will 

 stand forcing (to get eggs for food purposes only), and 

 can be put through the severest ordeal of rich and stim- 

 ulating diet for a year after completing their growth, 

 when they should be killed and their places given to 

 new recruits. The colt reared in the green pastures and 

 beside the still waters, and from a country-bred sire and 

 dam, you can take at its maturity to toil in the city 

 streets. You are trading on the vitality stored up by 



