No. 4.] RAISING CHICKENS. 3(53 



are met with machines of very different quality and possibilities, and as 

 one result of this state of affairs an enormous proportion of the incu- 

 bators and brooders sold each season does not go into permanent, 

 practical use. 



Thousands and thousands of the cheaper machines will hatch well 

 only while new, and under the most favorable circumstances. Thou- 

 sands of poultry keepers who buy good machines never learn to run 

 them satisfactorily. They may continue to use them experimentally 

 for some years, but in the end they go back to natural methods as 

 easier and better for them. And the question which is the better 

 method in the end comes to a question of circumstances and of the 

 aptitudes of individuals. Some people can do so much better with 

 artificial methods that they prefer them under any circumstances. 

 Some can use either method successfully. Others get their best 

 results by natural methods. So natural methods continue to be used 

 and used very extensively, and, further, the competition of methods 

 has without doubt served to give a better general understanding of 

 the weak points of natural methods and the best ways of treating 

 them. 



However much he may in his innocence have been deluded by the 

 representations of those interested in selling the goods, the operator of 

 incubators and brooders soon finds that these mechanical contrivances 

 are not self-operating. He has to tend them constantly and carefully, 

 and give a great deal of thought to what at first seemed the trivial 

 matter of putting into practice the few simple directions for operating 

 which accompanied the machine. He learns in time (if he succeeds) 

 that to have his machines work well he must, in working with them, be 

 methodical and regular, and, as far as possible, furnish conditions of 

 operation which are favorable. 



Favorable conditions, regularity and system seem necessary and 

 fitting parts of a method in which mechanical contrivances have an 

 important part, but all do not readily see their importance in methods 

 when results do not depend upon them absolutely. So it happens that 

 in the hatching and rearing of chicks by natural methods there is too 

 often nothing resembling a system, and no well-advised effort to get 

 all the benefits of natural agencies while avoiding the losses which are 

 apt to occur when natural agents are not well ordered. 



The farm furnishes as near an approach to purely natural conditions 

 for the production of poultry as we can have for domesticated fowls, 

 yet it is a most exceptional farm that offers conditions which admit of 

 leaving the poultry — particularly the young poultry — to itself. In 

 a state of nature the tendency is for such creatures as fowls to maintain 

 themselves in about the same numbers on the same area year after 

 year. This means that the great majority of the young produced must 

 succumb to their natural enemies or to the rigors of natural conditions 

 before reaching maturity. Now, though the domestic hen may be far 



