HANDLING AND FEEDING YOUNG FROM MACHINES 65 



it is the favorite type. To my mind, a hover should al- 

 ways permit ventilation above the chicks ; hence, I 

 would have it made of a porous material, instead of 

 wood. A thickness of felt, or two of burlap, could be 

 used, fastened upon a wooden rim. I would not use a 

 hover at all, were it not for the fact that the chicks may 

 huddle in a corner of the brooder, if there be no hover. 

 The first point in handling the chicks is to leave them 

 in the hatching machine till they are strong. More 

 chicks are lost for lack of this precaution than from 

 any other one cause, in my belief. Nearly every incu- 

 bator operator is in such a hustle to lose no time get- 

 ting his machine " set " again, that he hurries the chicks 

 out of it before they can all stand, and before they 

 have sense enough to do anything but huddle toward 

 warmth. On the way, he exposes them to cold, and 

 possibly does not get the brooder just running right, 

 and soon he has a beautiful bunch of crowding, 

 soiled, hollow-eyed chicks, and two weeks later, he wont 

 have any, and will be so discouraged that he will be 

 glad of it ! He will suspect the feed, the eggs, the 

 brooder, anything except the real cause, and will pos- 

 sibly write to some Station which will tell him he should 

 have disinfected his eggs and his incubator. Too many 

 people need to disinfect their common sense, so that it 

 may grow strong and robust enough to inform them 

 that a chick just out of the close, warm egg is in no 

 state to grapple with the universe the first day ! His 

 mother's feathers, or the close, warm spaces of the in- 

 cubator are a big enough world for him to learn to use 

 at first. When he can safely take more air, open the 

 machine ventilators wide ; then, when he has had a few 



