THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 323 



room was available for each, but when a brood is confined 

 in a pen 3 or 4 ft.xG ft., as is unhappily often the case, 

 there is no opportunity for the prisoners to get up full 

 speed. 



Now for a little improvement of the heating appa- 

 ratus. Instead of the stove, use the combined hot-water 

 and hot-air system, a method a better than which has 

 never yet been found for warming dwellings, the 

 same apparatus to answer for ten or more rooms, each of 

 1000-chick capacity. Have attendants on duty day 

 and night, of course, to govern the temperature of the 

 rooms absolutely and keep up a constant circulation of 

 fresh air. The chickens in one of these big rooms must 

 all run together in the daytime, and must be all of the 

 same age and breed, so as to be of the same size and 

 strength as far as possible. Any markedly inferior or 

 superior birds to be culled out from time to time. The 

 whole floor to be littered, and screened cracked corn or 

 other fine feed stirred in. The whole space not occupied 

 by the sleeping rooms to form one continuous exerciser. 

 How to mix the ingredients ? Perfectly simple. It 

 may not be advisable to introduce a donkey or goat to 

 the floor to draw a specially constructed diminutive hay 

 tedder, with many tines set close together, to throw the 

 chaff, excelsior, or short cut straw, for the operator can 

 draw it himself. The chickens get in his way and are 

 immediately annihilated ? Not at all. The machine, 

 together with the operator, must be enclosed, front, 

 rear and on all sides, by a light movable frame 

 attached to the tedder and covered with muslin, with a 

 fringe of leather thongs, or tape, or narrow strips of 

 heavy canvas, depending at the bottom in a way to 

 always graze the ground. The writer operates such a 

 screen and fringe out of doors, to keep chicks away 

 while stirring straw to cover grain on the scratching 

 grounds of half-grown chickens, by means of two wooden 



