BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 257 



runs but a few months annually, says he cannot make $1.50 per day 

 tor the time he is in it. 



" Evidently such a wide difference between the ideal and the real 

 calls for an explanation and that can be given in two words, dead 

 chicks. Incubators hatch from 50 to 60 per cent of the eggs. The trou- 

 ble is not in the hatching, unless that means weakened vitality, but in 

 keeping the chicks alive afterward. The death rate is awful, ranging 

 from 60 to 80 per cent. When one-half a hatch reach to the broiler 

 state, rarely done, the business is moderately profitable. If 60 per 

 cent die, a prudent man can about pay his feed bills; when more than 

 this die, as is usual, the business is unprofitable. This mortality is 

 principally within three weeks from hatching. One of the first pain- 

 ful duties that awaits the novice is the burial of chicks; they are often 

 buried by the bucketful daily. 



"Practical men differ in placing blame for the mortality upon brood- 

 ing or feeding. Many kinds of brooders have been tried, using top 

 heat, bottom heat, heating with hot-water pipes and with single 

 lamps, but the chicks die about the same with all. Feeding is a mat. 

 ter of great importance that has been most carefully studied, but no 

 satisfactory ration has been found, or none than can entirely over- 

 come the ill effects of imperfect brooding, and no brooder has been used 

 that can overcome the ill effects of improper feeding if the trouble is 

 in the ration. The "infant mortality" is the great cause of failure. 

 Atter investing $1,000 or more and losing a year's time, the average 

 man sells at a sacrifice to a new enthusiast, who in turn sells again or 

 dismantles the houses and devotes the land to more profitable uses. 

 In the light of Hammonton's ten years' experience, it is plain that 

 until some better system of artificial brooding is devised, the business 

 is a very hazardous one; it cannot compete with the hen." 



The above is very unwelcome to a host of people who 

 have been hoping to find in broiler raising a sure path to 

 fortune. Chicks of all gallinaceous species of fowls are 

 so constituted in their essential physical nature that a 

 tremendous amount of exertion is absolutely necessary, 

 not only to thrift but to life itself. They are so con- 

 structed that without almost continual activity of their 

 organs of locomotion the proper balance between their 

 muscular system and their digestive and respiratory sys- 

 tems is lost. Their whole constitution becomes impaired 

 because the equilibrium of vital forces ordained in 

 nature has been broken up. 



The Hammonton chicks died for the same reason that 

 brooder chicks by the thousands have died all over the 

 country. The heat and ventilation in the brooder and 

 17 



