106 FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



LE5SON XIII. 



Incubator Rooms and Brooder Houses. 



IN DISCUSSING the topics under the title of this lesson, I shall not go into details of 

 construction as fully as in the treatment of houses for adult stock, for these reasons : 

 In the first place to do so would involve a good deal of repetition of what has appeared 

 in the other lessons, for many small buildings used in connection with artificial methods 

 are quite like some of those already described. In the next place the larger buildings for pipe 

 systems of brooders must often be planned with reference to the arrangement of the heating 

 system, and the incubator and brooder manufacturers that sell heating systems furnish plans 

 especially suited to them, and I would by all means advise any who intend to build brooder 

 houses for pipe systems of brooding to decide first on their heating arrangements, and build 

 after designs furnished by the manufacturers. 



Incubator Rooms. 



For an incubator room most incubator operators prefer a cellar. It is desirable that the 

 temperature of the room in which the machines are to be operated should not vary sharply 

 with outside fluctuations of temperature. This condition might be obtained in a room wholly 

 .above ground by making the walls very thick, but such a building would be expensive. The 

 conditions sought are as nearly as possible attained and that at comparatively small expense 

 by building cellars, as shown in the illustration. 



Sometimes the cellar used is under a building, but in general cellars built expressly for this 

 purpose are placed at a little distance from other buildings. The use of the cellar of a hous-e 

 or barn for incubators is quite common when the number of machines operated is too small, or 

 the permanence of the use of machines too uncertain to seem to warrant the expense of con- 

 struction of a special cellar. 



In making use of honse and other cellars under buildings of more value than poultry build- 

 ings generally are, one has to consider first of all how it affects his insurance. At present most 

 insurance companies either refuse to take risks under such circumstances, or charge a very 

 high rate. A movement is now on foot among incubator manufacturers to induce insur- 

 ance companies to modify their regulations about incubators and brooders. Almost simulta- 

 neously with the beginning of this movement some people in the insurance bus-iness seem to 

 have discovered that harsh regulations about the operation of incubators and brooders were 

 very poor policy. So it is likely that before long there will be a change in conditions, and an 



