Hovers and Brooders 41 



The George Hover. — A great many of the big poultrymen are using 

 the George brooder or hover. This is a stove too, but the chicks in- 

 stead of being around the stove in a circle are under a hover, where 

 warm air passes through and around them. In case of accident to the 

 stove, the chicks would in a measure be comparatively safe, because 

 the heat from their own bodies would keep them warm, being con- 

 fined by the top of the hover. This is all the advantage I can see in 

 the hover over the stove. The same number of chicks are crowded 

 together with the same difficulty, namely, a shortage of fresh air. 

 Twelve or fifteen hundred chicks must consume barrels of air and the 

 bodies of so many chicks must be exuding barrels of foul air. Now if 

 the intake of fresh air does not enter a hover or building in excess of 

 the foul air being sent out from these bodies, you can imagine what the 

 results will be. 



The results will be poisoning from carbonic acid gas. The chicks 

 may not die in numbers but the poison is there and unless they can 

 throw it off by open air exercise during the day, they will stand a 

 poor chance for a long and happy life. 



The only remedy for this is to reduce the number of chicks to half, 

 and I believe poultrymen would get much better results. 



The Hot Water Pipe System. — Like the preceding systems, this also 

 is expected to brood large numbers of chicks together, and exactly like 

 them, the weak place lies in the number congregated together, no 

 matter what the system may be called. However, this tubular hot 

 water system has one advantage. It can be set in the center of a 

 house running as long as you wish, and if it were desired, it seems to 

 me that the chicks could be divided into small runs, running each way 

 across the house. This would be much better than having the chicks 

 all scrambling together. The hot water pipes are covered over by a 

 platform, that forms a hover for the chicks, and as they can run out 

 either side there is not so much danger of crowding. The air supply 

 is ithe one thing that needs watching in all these systems where crowd- 

 ing large numbers of chicks together is practiced. 



The One Perfect Brooding System. — This is a brooding system 

 that has no strings to it so that any one who is mechanically bent can 

 make one after it without fear of infringing on patents. Mr. Norton, 

 the man who invented it for his own use, is a mechanic by trade and 

 given to studying out the whys and wherefores of anything that 

 bothers and perple.xes him, and as he had been much perplexed over 

 the brooding of his chicks he set himself the task of inventing some- 

 thing that he could rely upon. As it is difficult to get pictures of such 

 interior places the only thing to do is to try to describe this brooder 

 system so that you can see it for yourselves. 



This is something of a task, but if we try, that is all that can be ex- 

 pected of us whether the result is success or failure. The brooder 



