NATURAL LAWS. 



healthy. It is the engine of the hen or chicken. If the giz- 

 zard is idle the rest of the machinery is idle. Feeding mash 

 food is the cause of indigestion. They eat all the crop holds 

 and then lie around and do nothing until the next feeding- 

 time. Meat and other highly rich foods are sure death to 

 poultry, if they get too much. Poultry writers say that the 

 chicken gets worms and bugs when on range, so that we 

 must feed meat to hens that are yarded up. Poultry on 

 range get bugs and worms, but the bugs and worms are 90 

 per cent water and only contain about 8 per cent nutriment 

 and other ingredients. On the other hand, meat and pow- 

 ders are 80 to 90 per cent nutriment and are too rich for 

 poultry to be fed every day. Once a week, and a very little 

 to each chicken does not do much harm, or one pound of 

 green bone per day to one hundred hens. Only a few years 

 ago another mistake was made in supplying moisture in 

 incubators. They find that they were wrong and now have 

 no moisture. Some of these professors have seen a hen 

 hatch every chick in a hay loft; the weather was dry; it did 

 not rain for six weeks. Why did these chicks hatch? Now; 

 they claim that they have it O. K. Well, to that I will say r 

 one incubator has it almost right and near to nature. They 

 use no tank ; instead they use a heavy woolen cloth; this is 

 the Axford incubator. I am experimenting on an incubator 

 and have been for ten years, but will not put it on the mar- 

 ket until I get a natural heat, and one that will hatch every 

 egg that a hen can, almost on the same principle as my 

 brooders. 



They say you must heat up a house to get eggs; also 

 heat up a brooder house to 70 degrees. This is sure death 

 and sickness to fowls. Just as soon as you heat up a house 

 to more than 50 degrees the air is not fresh, nor is it healthy 

 for the poultry or chicks; and if you let them out doors to 

 get fresh air and exercise they catch a cold. I never heat, 

 up a poultry house nor have a brooder house warmer than 

 45 degrees in winter, unless the sun warms it up to a higher 

 degree. This is natural. A chick is not a hothouse plant, 

 nor is it natural for young chicks to hatch in winter, nor 



