CHAPTER XV 



POULTRY APPLIANCES 



If you are going to hatch with hens, you must have a system. Do 

 not have hens sitting around the house in all kinds of places where it is 

 next to an impossibility to attend to them. A room or shed 12 feet 

 long can be made to accommodate twenty hens, or more if it is 

 worked right. 



A Natural Hen Incubator 



Build a box, without top or bottom, 18 inches high, 10 feet long 

 and 8 feet wide. Run partitions, one foot apart the 8-foot way, mak- 

 ing compartments 12 inches by 8 feet. Divide these compartments in 

 the center into two, making them 12 inches by four feet. This will 

 give you 20 compartments. At the ends, away from the middle of each 

 compartment, take a board 6 inches wide, 1 inch thick and ten feet long 

 and nail across at the top, tacking it to each partition. This board 

 should be nailed so as to leave an opening 18 inches at the ends away 

 from the center partition. Hinge doors to these boards, having the 

 doors 18 inches by 3 feet, except one, which will have to be 18 inches 

 bj' four feet. Thus each door covers three nests at each end, except 

 one, which covers four. The space in the center, between the two 

 6-inch boards, should be covered with wire netting, 2-inch mesh. This 

 makes the top, and the ground is the bottom. Raise up the covers and 

 put your nests in next to the ends. Use two bricks to keep your nest 

 material from working away. Put a shovelful of dust and coal ashes 

 in each compartment, next to the dividing partition, away from the 

 nest end. Put water and feed at the other end as far away from the 

 nests as possible and toward the dust pile. Change the water every 

 day and see that the hens come off to feed. This gives a quiet, cool 

 place to set hens, and you can go along each day and raise up the 

 cover and see if your hens and eggs are all right. The hens are never 

 allowed out of the run, as you have room for water, grain and green 

 feed, right there to their hand all the time, also one of the best of dust 

 baths, as nothing beats earth and ashes. 



This incubator will hatch more chicks than many of the SOO-egg ma- 

 chines. If the hens are all of good size and it is set full and fifteen 

 eggs to the nest, you ought to hatch 250 good, strong chicks in the nat- 

 ural way with no more expense than the few cents for wire and a few 

 boards, that can most likely be found lying around the ranch. One 

 year I hatched over 700 chicks in such a natural incubator, and they 

 were good chicks. 



