A GUIDE FOR KEEPERS OF POULTRY 81 
illustrations give. The writer has built many coops of 
this kind from the boxes in which cereal foods are packed, 
buying the boxes for a few cents each and using the lum- 
ber without cutting. 
BROODERS.—.\ brooder is an absolute necessity for 
those who use incubators and brooders are very often 
used by those who use hens for incubation, because it is 
easier to rear chicks in a brooder than to let them run 
with hens. The brooder is safer than a hen as a foster- 
mother as it is always in one place. It never distributes 
insect pests to the chicks, unless brought into it from the 
outside. It is always warm and comfortable for the 
chick and furnishes a comfortable place at all times. A 
chick that becomes chilled is often deserted by a mother 
hen, but if it is being raised in a brooder it learns as soon 
as it begins to feel at all uncomfortable to run inside un- 
til it gets warm. The brooder is rat and weasel-proof and 
no predatory animal of any kind can get into it to disturb 
the chicks after it is closed at night. Chicks raised in a 
brooder never having become chilled and stunted grow 
better, mature quicker and make better fowls than those 
raised by natural methods, unless the season is espe- 
cially favorable. 
A large number of chicks in brooders may be cared 
for by one person with the minimum of labor. The cost 
of operation is very small per chick and the number of 
hens that would be required to take care of 100 chicks 
will. lay enough eggs to pay all the cost of keeping 
the brooder warm. The directions furnished with each 
brooder are so definite that it would be a waste of space 
to give definite directions about operating them. They 
are so simple in construction and so easy to operate that 
anyone can use them with success. 
