BROILERS AND ROASTERS. 63 



hover as in the egg chamber, but as the chicks require 

 much more air than the eggs, the problem of ventilation 

 is, if anything, more difficult, and it is the difficulty of 

 supplying fresh air as required, without reducing too much 

 the temperature under the hovers that makes it generally 

 necessary in practice to reduce the number of chicks in the 

 brooders so much below the manufacturers' rated capacity. 

 After an approximately correct temperature, (about 95 at 

 the start, gradually reduced to between 80 and 85 by the 

 time the chicks are three weeks old), the most important 

 thing to observe is the purity of the air in the hover, and 

 the operator should bear in mind that in securing this he 

 must consider the chicks, as well as the lamp, as possible 

 sources of noxious gases, and keep their number down 

 to the safety point. 



As the chicks grow, whether under pipes or in hot air 

 brooders, there is less and less need of artificial heat, and 

 the danger of chicks* in close hovers becoming overheated 

 through the combination of heat from their bodies, and 

 from the lamp or stove, increases so much that the smaller 

 the early losses in a batch of chicks, the greater the danger 

 of things suddenly going wrong with chicks supposed to 

 be well past the dangers of early chickhood. The surest 

 preventive of troubles at this period is to avoid overcrowd- 

 ing. Whatever mode of brooding is used, brooder chicks 

 require more care than those hatched and brooded naturally. 

 The larger numbers kept together alter conditions, while 

 the fact that the brooder, however good, cannot be to the 

 chick all that the natural mother is, makes it more neces- 

 sary that the keeper should exercise close watchfulness 

 and see that everything is right and kept right. To give 



