UNIVERSITY 



should be placed in a brooder house, and there is no better 

 brooder house in my opinion than the colony community house 

 described in Chapter II. 



Be sure to set the brooder where the sun will not shine on it, 

 in installing it in a house ; and do not put more than 60 chicks in 

 a loo-chick brooder. 



REMOVING CHICKS TO BROODER. 



We will now assume that the period of incubation is com- 

 pleted, and that the chicks are ready to be removed from the nest. 

 It is 24 hours at least since the last chick broke the shell, and may 

 be 48 hours since the first hardy pioneer made his entrance into 

 our sinful world. I assume that two or three times while the 

 chicks were hatching you gently lifted up the mother hen and 

 removed the fragments of broken egg shell from the nest. 



And now comes the most important and in some ways the 

 most disagreeable part of the whole business the transfer of 

 the chicks from the nest to the brooder, which may be some dis- 

 tance away. You cannot choose your day it may be cold or it 

 may be warm but you can choose the warmest part of it for 

 your purpose. Better take your wife with you, if you are fortu- 

 nate enough to have one. Take a shallow basket, such as is used 

 for marketing, and line the bottom with a piece of old woolen 

 blanket, which has previously been warmed. Over this lay 

 another piece of warmed blanket, to put over the chickens when 

 they are pkced in the basket. 



As each chicken is taken out from under the hen anoint its 

 head lightly with lard or vaseline, to kill head lice, and place it 

 quickly in the basket. When the basket is full take the chicks to 

 the brooder house and place them in the hover, which has been 

 brought to a temperature of 100 degrees. 



If you are a man of tender sensibilities you will feel as if you 

 were a kidnapper or a manstealer when you take the chicks away 

 from their mother. You will feel, as one man expressed it to me, 

 "too mean to look a hen in the face." But, fortunately, the hen 

 does not suffer long she soon forgets. Place her in a bright, 

 sunny pen where there are other hens and a male, supply her with 

 more varied food than she has been accustomed to during the 

 period of incubation, and in a few days she will be scratching and 

 singing as merrily as of yore. 



