76 THE PRACTICAL POULTRY KEEPER, 



whom it is not advisable to subject to the wear and tear of a 

 young brood. And lastly, many persons consider that it is 

 absolutely better to bring up chickens by hand, even when 

 they have been naturally hatched. All this is quite in- 

 dependent of the immense numbers of chickens now hatched 

 in incubators, for which artificial rearing is indispensable. 



For chickens hatched towards the end of April, or later, 

 the very simplest form of artificial mother may be made to 

 answer, since in such weather their own animal heat alone 

 is sufficient. Many an odd brood has been reared through 

 May by rigging up a mother out of a piece of sheep-skin 

 mat, tacked round the edges only to a board about nine 

 inches wide and fifteen inches long, so as to fall a little slack 

 by its own weight when turned with the wool downwards. 

 If this board is nailed on four pegs at the corners so that it 

 may slope from about four inches high in front to about two 

 inches behind, it will do very well, if set upon dry earth or 

 ashes, renewed perfectly clean every night and morning. 

 Occasionally, however, a chick will entangle and hang itself 

 in the wool ; and a better way of making the covering is to 

 sew a number of flannel strips about two and a half inches 

 long and three-quarters of an inch wide by one end to a 

 piece of canvas. They cannot get entangled with these, 

 and, moreover, the flannel strips are more easily cleaned, 

 which is done by turning the inside up and well shaking 

 clean dry earth into it every day, afterwards shaking it free. 

 But only late chickens can be reared in this simple way. 



For earlier ones some heat is required, and the first 

 stimulus to artificial rearing in this country was given by an 

 apparatus brought out, about 1873, by Mrs. Frank Cheshire, 

 a section of which is shown in Fig 21. This mother was 

 heated by a zinc tank, shown at A B, about one inch deep, 

 and hermetically closed, with the exception of one aperture 

 for filling and for safety. It was fixed on the top of the 



