310 AK EGG FARM. 



Future. Objections on the score of expense are, of 

 course, very apparent. There must be a furnace, a 

 boiler and pipe system for the brooder house itself, 

 either steam pipes or hot-water pipes, in addition to 

 lamps for the brooders, and the house must be quite 

 well built and reasonably free from crevices around the 

 doors and windows, to meet the case of unusual cold, 

 and winds especially, and the furnace fire carefully 

 tended so that the regulator can change the furnace 

 dampers to good effect. If the season of the year and 

 the latitude permit the use of an equivalent number of 

 brooding hens, the management of which, with their 

 broods, is properly provided for, mind, their employment 

 will be vastly less expensive than such a good, complete 

 brooder system as is above described, with triple regu- 

 lators. 



In place of this plan of thorough automatic brooder 

 regulation, personal supervision may be employed, but 

 this must be done by a relay of help and kept up day 

 and night in order to come in competition with the nat- 

 ural process of brooding. This would be so expensive, 

 with a plant of small brooders and small broods, as to 

 be afforded only when pursued on a large scale and 

 helped out. by very high prices for the product. The 

 operator must pass up and down the lines of brooders, 

 and, guided by thermometers, or, better, by the sense 

 of feeling which, after a little practice, becomes marvel- 

 ously accurate in determining temperatures in many 

 cases, and by the behavior of the chicks, for they will 

 tell him unmistakably whether they are too hot or too 

 cold or just right, turn down a flame here and raise 

 one there, eternal vigilance being the price of chickens. 

 Expense again less mechanism than in the triple reg- 

 ulator system, but more labor in attendance. Worst of 

 all, while securing the right degree of heat, the ventila- 

 tion of the hovers is bound to be lacking whenever the 



