152 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Mar. 1 



Poultry Department 



By A. I. Root 



THE CHICKEN BUSINESS IN FLORIDA; ITS 

 POSSIBILITIES, ETC. 



On page 27, Jan. 1, I made the following 

 remark: "The explorer in nature's domains 

 meets with many disappointments, and as 

 a rule follows many false scents, etc.," and 

 I want to give you an illustration right here. 

 On the next page (after the above) I men- 

 tioned a buttercup hen that laid a very long 

 peculiar egg every other day. Well, as she 

 kept this up for several weeks I began to 

 think she might make a pretty good record 

 after all, say close to 200 eggs in a year; 

 and as these long eggs contain almost a 

 half more than a common-sized egg, and as 

 she has never yet offered to sit, she might 

 be quite an acquisition after all. Accord- 

 ingly I began putting her eggs under hens 

 and in the incubators; but — what do you 

 think? Not one long egg hatched a chick- 

 en. It is true there was a large well-devel- 

 oped chick in almost every ege; but the 

 shell was too thick or something else, for 

 none of them seemed to get out. Let me 

 digress a little. 



For some time back I had noticed the ad- 

 vertisement of an incubator that was war- 

 ranted to hatch every fertile egg into a good 

 strong healthy chicken, or something like 

 it. In fact, I believe I remonstrated with 

 the makers, telling them that the best in- 

 cubators in the world gave more or less 

 chicks "dead in the shell." Their answer 

 was that they wnuld be exceedingly well 

 pleased to have me try one of them; and if 

 it did not do all they claimed, they would 

 expect me to report the full truth, either for 

 or against them, in my well-known frank 

 and honest way. They said they would be 

 quite willing to take their chances. Ac- 

 cordingly I paid them $7.00 for a Buckeye 

 incubator, they agreeing to pay the freight, 

 as it was so far away. Now, the Buckeye is 

 a very pretty little incubator for the mon- 

 ey, even if it is not as well finished as the 

 new Cyphers; and, to be frank, it does not 

 regulate as easily and hold the temperature 

 exactly on the spot as does the Cyphers; 

 but, much to my surprise, it actually did 

 hatch every fertile egg but one; and this 

 one was the one long Buttercup egg I put 

 in to try them just once more. I then de- 

 cided, rather sadly, I would give up trying 

 to start a new strain of Buttercups laying 

 extra long large eggs. But there were some 

 more of these long eggs under some sitting 

 hens; and it occurred to me they (my new 

 breed of fowls) might, like ducks and geese, 

 require more than the orthodox 21 days: and, 

 therefore, after a hen had hatched all the 

 chicks except from the long eggs I moved 

 several of these to the incubator, and, sure 

 enough, in from 22 to 24 days I had several 

 nice strong Buttercup chicks. 



Now, if you please, let us go back to that 



little Buckeye incubator that did, virtually, 

 hatch every fertile egg. One swallow does 

 not make a summer, and there are also 

 quite a few "holes in a skimmer." The j 

 Buckeye holds just 50 eggs. I was some- 1 

 what surprised and disappointed to find, on ■ 

 testing out after 5 days, that 17 out of the 

 50 eggs were infertile. Let me say here be- 

 fore I forget it that the 32 chicks I took 

 from the incubator were about the strongest 

 and finest chicks I ever hatched, even under 

 hens. They had big legs and great lusty 

 wings, and were such a mass of down that I 

 took them right from the incubator and set 

 them loose in the Florida sunshine, and the 

 whole 32 are alive now (two weeks old) , and 

 they never had a bit of artificial heat nor a 

 hen to cover them. They just had the bas- 

 ket brooder I described about a year ago, 

 with two cheap feather dusters hung to the 

 handle (see page 806, Dec. 15) . The basket 

 (chicks and all) was carried into the incu- 

 bator cellar every night for about a week. 

 Now, why were there so many infertile eggs? 

 Hens that stole their nests gave strong fer- 

 tility. One found in the palmettos had 19 

 eggs, and 18 of them were fertile. I know 

 that makes a big difiFerence. This hen prob- 

 ably laid the whole 19 eggs, and very likely 

 made it her business in life to see that every 

 egg was a fertile one. 



Once more, in testing eggs almost daily I 

 have found that one particular hen lays a 

 rough egg (that is, among the infertiles) 

 every time. I really ought to spot her, and 

 get her out of the M'ay. Yes, I have tried 

 swapping the roosters, and that may help 

 the matter. Now you will have to let me 

 digress just once more in telling my long 

 chicken story. 



Both of the two new poultry books put 

 out by the Farm Journal people (The Mil- 

 lion-egg Farm and the Curtis Poultry-book) 

 recommend placing the eggs in the incuba- 

 tor with the small end down. Well, our 

 apiarist, Mr. Mell Pritehard, told me over a 

 year ago that a friend of his, when first fill- 

 ing his incubator, stood all the eggs on the 

 small end until they were tested. Now, by 

 so placing the eggs I got 81 eggs in the Cy- 

 phers tray (that was made for 70), and had 

 70 eggs strongly fertile (a trayful) at the 

 end of five days. Of course, I could not turn 

 the eggs for five days instead of three, ac- 

 cording to the directions; but so far it seems 

 (in two trials) to have made no difference 

 to be noticed. One of our experiment sta- 

 tions has called attention to the fact that a 

 sitting hen will always give a larger percent- 

 age of fertile eggs than any incubator. 

 .Just one thing more: After the chicks were 

 out of that Buckeye I sold it to a neighbor, 

 and sold her 50 eggs (from the same yard) 

 to go with it. She has just sent word that 

 only 22 of the 50 eggs proved fertile. Oh 

 dear me! both lots of eggs that were so poor- 

 ly fertile were fathered by my Buttercup 

 rooster that I called worth $25.00. 



YOUR MONEY BACK IF YOU ARE NOT SAT- 

 ISFIED. 



It is getting to be quite the fashion now- 



