63 



To sum up : If one wants early chickens and wants them in 

 quantities and has the time to give to them, he should by all means 

 get an incubator. Otherwise he would best stick to the hen. 



GET A ^ GOOD INCUBATOR OR NONE. 

 In purchasing an incubator remember that the best is the 

 cheapest. A poor machine is dear at any price. Beware of the 

 home-made incubator. Sometimes they work satisfactorily, but 

 oftener they do not. I know a young man of more than ordinary 

 ingenuity who constructed an incubator from plans that he found 

 in a paper. By visiting the machine at intervals during the day 

 and by getting up two or three times a night to trim the lamp or 

 to pull out plugs so that the surplus heat might escape, he was 

 able to keep the temperature somewhere near where it ought to be. 

 But one warm Sunday, while he was at church, the tempera- 

 ture took a leap upward, and when he returned at noon the ther- 

 mometer registered 120 degrees. As a consequence 180 chickens 

 were prematurely roasted, and nearly three weeks of valuable time 

 lost. The young man has lost confidence in incubators, and now 

 hatches his chickens with hens. An incubator should be bought 

 at least a month before it is to be started on eggs, in order that 

 the operator may become thoroughly familiar with the machine 

 and know how to run it right. 



A NATURAL HEN INCUBATOR. 



The work of caring for sitting hens may be greatly reduced 

 by the construction of what I may call a natural hen incubator, 

 the design for which is shown here. 



A Natural Hen Incubator. 



This natural hen incubator may be of any length ; but should 

 be two feet deep, two feet high, and divided into compartments 

 18 inches wide. Some prefer a door to each compartment, but I 



