GROWING POULTRY 281 



also show whether there is a uniform gradation of conditions from 

 the warmest part of the brooder to a point where the heat does 

 not sensibly affect the heat of the apartment. In the old type of 

 pipe brooder, with permanent hovers built over the pipes, and close 

 fringes to retain the heat, the ventilation in the hover was in- 

 sufficient ; the change from inside to outside temperature was too 

 abrupt ; there were practically but two conditions (neither perhaps 

 satisfactory) between which the birds must choose. If birds huddle 

 together at a temperature which an accurate thermometer shows is 

 sufficient for normal chicks or ducklings, that is evidence that the 

 birds are not normal, that either they are constitutionally of low 

 vitality, or that they have been chilled ; if birds huddle outside 

 the brooder or at a low temperature, the presumption is that they 

 have not access to a temperature high enough to be attractive. 

 If exposure was short, and the birds are promptly warmed, the hud- 

 dling should last but a short time, and no serious ill effects should 

 follow ; if the tendency to huddle becomes chronic, the behavior 

 of the birds becomes unreliable for regulation of the brooder. 

 If such a lot of birds will not recuperate quickly when separated 

 into groups so small that crowding cannot be especially injurious, 

 and kept at the usual high temperature at the level of the birds in 

 brooding, they may be regarded as injured beyond remedy. Some 

 may live to make marketable poultry, but a profit and loss account 

 kept with such a lot usually shows a loss. 



As in incubation, the regulation of temperature, while partly 

 automatic, requires such oversight that wrong conditions may be 

 promptly corrected. The successful growers of large numbers 

 of poultry by artificial methods almost live with their birds while 

 they require special attention. Regulators and electric alarms 

 may be used to relieve them of the necessity of unintermittent 

 watching, but they never leave the place without some one to re- 

 spond to an alarm, and they make complete rounds of brooders 

 before retiring at night and again the first thing in the morning. 

 To make sure that the birds will not get so far from the heat that 

 they will not find their way back to it when cold, it is usual to keep 

 an individual brooder closed until they become familiar with it ; in 

 pipe brooder houses it is customary, for the first few days, to con- 

 fine them to the space under and near the pipes by means of a board 



