72 



yard in which the chickens are confined, high enough so the attend- 

 ant can walk beneath. These wires and poles act as supports for 

 hundreds of strands of ordinary binder twine, as you can see in the 



The Maine Station method of preventing hawks and crows from preying 

 upon young chickens. Binder twine strung on wires. 



above illustration. By this method, they have been able to protect 

 their young poultry from both hawks and crows. 



INDOOR OR OUTDOOR, HEATED OR FIRELESS BROODERS. 



It is an easy thing to tell how to raise chickens, but it is a much 

 more difficult thing to successfully raise them. Books are being pub- 

 lished and schemes advanced whereby fabulous sums of money can be 

 made in the chicken business, and they picture it as one pleasant 

 dream, and they tell you if you pay them fifty cents or one dollar to 

 tell you how, that your fortune is assured. There are some good ideas 

 advanced in most all of these schemes, but if you attempt to put into 

 practice all they advocate, you will land in the "poorhouse." 



Just which brooding system is the best it is difficult to say. Some 

 are succeeding with one system and others fail with the same system. 

 Some of the incubator factories are making reasonably good brooders, 

 but they are all more or less unsatisfactory. Many are using fireless 

 brooders. The best chickens we ever raised were kept in a shoe box 

 with a jug of water in the center, and a cloth to come down and touch 

 their back. You can do away with heat of any kind, so long as you 

 confine the chicks in small quarters at night and keep sufficient cover- 

 ing over them so they will be kept comfortable by the heat of their 

 own bodies. In cold weather the chicks must be given some heat or 

 kept in a comfortable place until they are a week or more old before 

 they are transferred to the fireless brooder. A room can be heated 

 to sixty degrees in the day time and to forty or fifty degrees at night, 

 and these fireless brooders work successfully in such a temperature 

 and at less cost than a building can be piped and equipped for hot 

 water or other methods of brooding. By putting a stove in the center 

 of a large room these fireless brooders or hovers work very success- 

 fully. 



