INTRODUCTORY 



O THE READER: I will tell you how I came to write this 

 book. In the year 1882 I took up poultry raising as a money 

 making proposition, believing there was more money to be 

 made for the capital invested than in any other line of busi- 

 ness and am still of the same belief, but I became dissatisfied 

 with the slow way of raising chickens with hens. I had read that chicks 

 could be hatched by artificial incubation, but I had never seen an incu- 

 bator, and knew nothing of the natural laws of incubation, but if one 

 wants to learn they must investigate, so I went to work. I placed a ther- 

 mometer under a setting hen every day for three weeks and found first the 

 temperature at which she kept her eggs each day during the whole hatch. 

 The hen from which I was taking lessons I set on the porch near the win- 

 dow, where I was doing my spring sewing. I watched her closely that I 

 might know how many times she turned her eggs during the day. She 

 turned them about every four hours. I did the same for a while, but soon 

 found it was not necessary. After I had found the proper temperature at 

 which to keep the eggs during incubation, and also how often to turn them, 

 I commenced the construction of an incubator. I used two dry goods 

 boxes, one of which had served me as a wood box for several years. One 

 box was a little larger than the other. I placed the smaller one inside the 

 larger, and filled the space with sawdust. I thought it had to be thick so 

 it would retain the heat. That was not a bad idea, either. I made a hot 

 air space at the top and bottom. I thought the eggs should have heat 

 from above and below. Then I put pipes through it and heated it with 

 lamps just about the same as the modern hot air machines are heated to- 

 day. It was a rude concern but it hatched chicks just the same. After 

 the thermometer registered 102 degrees, I placed the eggs in my new 

 machine and kept the temperature at the same point each day for three weeks, 

 just the same as the hen did, with the result that I hatched 108 chicks 

 from 116 eggs. I did not test any out. I did not know enough about such 

 aft'airs at that time. I had six ventilators in the top and six in the bottom. 

 After awhile I saw where I could make an improvement in my machine. I 

 went to work and made a new one, and then another, and so on until I had 

 made nine. Each machine was an improvement over the other. I made 

 my own brooder also. Here is where goods boxes played an important part 

 again. I put sheet iron in for a floor and placed a lamp under it to keep the 

 chicks warm. Now with my home-made incubators and brooders I have 

 raised as many as twenty-six hundred chicks in one year, and seldom less 

 than fifteen hundred. 



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