FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



109 



Therefore, wherever .you run an incubator see that ventilation is good enough to remove had 

 air, and wherever you run more incubators see that this good condition is maintained. That it 

 is possible to batch chicks in crowded cellars where the air is bad, there is no doubt. There is 

 lots of it done. That it is such chicks that give most trouble many think they begin to notice. 

 Build the incubator cellar as large as you are ever likely to use it. Though it may always be 

 too large better that than too small. Space in it not needed for incubators may be used for an 

 egg room or for storage of light, clean articles, as coops, egg boxes, and baskets, etc. 



As to the structure of the incubator room : If a cellar, the walls below the surface should be 

 of stone or brick, the floor of cement, the entire room above the ground lined with matched 

 lumber, and the windows double, for this is a building in which it is necessary to keep the tem- 

 perature moderate, avoiding both extremes. 



c* 



Brooder Houses. 



In artificial brooding there are two systems. In one small brooders each heated by its own 

 lamp are used. In the other a hot water or steam heater sends the heat through a system of 

 pipes that extends throughout a building constructed on the continuous bouse plan. 



A pipe system is sometimes used for two or three hovers, but in that case the beater is small, 

 and the entire system quite as easily portable as an individual brooder. Usually the building 

 for a pipe system approaches a hundred feet in length, and may vwy much exceed it. 



For individual brood- 

 ers small buildings may 

 be used, or the brooders 

 may be put in such lonp 

 buildings as are used for 

 pipe brooding systems-- 

 a brooder with its lamp 

 being required for each 

 section in the building. 



For those who hatch 

 only a few small hatches 

 each year the individual 

 brooder in its own small 

 building i s generally 

 more satisfactory. 

 When the chickens no 

 longer need the extra 

 beat the brooder may be 

 removed and the build- 



View of Part of Exterior of Brooder House 

 At Lone Oak Poultry Farm, Reading, Mass. 



Ing used to shelter the growing chicks. Later it may be used for surplus cockerels or even for 

 a pen of laying or breeding fowls. 



Individual brooders may also be used in such continuous houses as are used for laying stock, 

 one brooder in each compartment; but the brooder house especially fitted for individual brood- 

 ers is as a rule used for brooding only, and the same is true of the pipe brooder houses. 



Where large numbers of chicks are to be hatched in cold or cool weather I think the long 

 brooder house with pipe heaters over the hovers is by all odds the best plan. 



We say, then, that for growing winter chickens, for growing broilers and for all chicks 

 which must be kept indoors or closely yarded the pipe system is preferable when operations go 

 beyond the number of chicks which can be handled in a few brooders. 



A few years ago a favorite style of brooder house arrangement was to build one end of the 

 house for nursery brooders these being individual brooders for the youngest chicks and use 

 the pipe system in the other end. A bank of pipes extended along the north wall of the nursery 

 supplementing the heat of the individual brooders. This arrangement was devised because of 

 the general difficulty in keeping youngest chicks under pipes warm through cold nights. Of 

 late years it has been discovered that merely using a heater or*sufficient capacity makes it pos- 

 sible to maintain the heat under the pipes. 



