140 



front yards, or the greater part at least, a rest, in which some crop 

 should be grown to sweeten the ground. Portable frames two feet 

 wide and fifteen feet long, may be made, which, when set on edge 

 and hooked at the ends with small hooks, will make from three to 

 five small runs inside each pen for the little chick. Into each of 

 these runs may be placed a fireless or heated brooder. I would use 

 the heated brooder in very cold weather for the first two or three 

 weeks and then transfer to the fireless brooders. As the chicks get 

 older and the weather better, small runs could be made, if desired, 

 with the same kind of frames outside the house by cutting small 

 holes in the front at the floor. This method of brooding has its ad- 

 vantages in so far as it does away with the cost of erecting a brooder 

 house and on a small place saves room. 



A HOMEMADE OAT SPROUTER. 



I will now describe the grain or oat sprouter. Almost any poultry- 

 man who has ever used sprouted grain, particularly eats, will admit 

 its value for both quantity and quality in eggs and fertility in the 

 brooding pens. In construction it is not unlike a crude incubator, 

 only more simple. It is made of any kind of matched lumber, double 

 thickness, to hold heat, six feet long by two feet wide and thirty- 

 eight inches high, inside measurement, with fourteen sliding trays 

 two and one-half inches high and a two and one-half-inch space be- 

 tween each tray. These trays are thirty-eight inches long by twenty 

 inches wide, may be made of wood or metal. The latter costs con- 

 siderably more, are more durable and will outlast those made from 



GLASS 

 DOOR 



SECTION A B 



Home-made oat sprouter. 



wood. Under the lower tier of trays a piece of sheet iron is sup- 

 ported by bolts from the bottom. This sheet iron is seventy inches 

 long by twenty inches wide, thus allowing a"* space of one inch on each 

 side of the trays for the heat to rise. The heat is brought into the 

 sprouter under the sheet iron from an ordinary incubator lamp and 

 drum suspended at one end by means of three two-inch iron pipes 

 extended one, three and five feet under the sheet iron, thus making 

 three openings for the heat to escape and spread under the sheet iron 

 through the openings along the sides and up through the trays, where 

 it escapes through a vent with a damper attachment at the top. Gas 

 may be used if desired. You should have glass doors in front and 

 these should face the sunlight. 



(Note. We have been able to get best results where we use a 

 pan of water above the lamp or heat.) 



