THE DOLLAR HEN FARM 
separately and installed in colony houses which do both for 
brooders and later for houses for growing young stock. The 
universal hover sold by the Prairie State Incubator people is 
about as perfect a lamp hover as can be made. 
The cold brooder, or Philo box, as it has been popularly 
called, is the chief item in a system of poultry keeping that has 
been ‘widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is 
that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to 
them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of 
the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the 
chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the 
chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the 
greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire- 
less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly 
proven, but most poultrymen believe that it will pay better, 
especially in the North, to give the little fellows a few weeks’ 
warmth. 
Curtis Bros. at Ransomville, N. Y., who raise some twenty 
thousand chicks per year, have adopted the following system: 
The chicks are kept under hovers heated by hot water pipes. 
for one week, or until they learn to hover. Then they are put 
in Philo boxes for a week in the same building but away from 
the pipes. The third week the Philo boxes are placed in a 
large, unheated room. After that they go to a large Philo 
box in a colony house. 
To make a Philo house of the Curtis pattern, take a box 
5 in. deep and 18 in. to 24 in. square. Cut a hole in one side 
for a chick door, run a strip of screen around the inside of 
the box to round the corners. Now take a second similar box. 
Tack a piece of cloth rather loosely across its open face. Bore 
a few augur holes in the sides of either box. Invert box No. 
2 upon box No. 1. This we will call a Curtis box. It costs 
about fifteen cents and should accommodate fifty to seventy- 
five chicks. 
A universal hover in a colony coop or colony house, for 
which a Curtis box is substituted, as early in the game as the 
weather permits, is the method I advise for rearing young 
chicks. The lamp problem we still have with us, but it is one 
that cannot be easily solved. Large vessels or tanks of water 
which are regularly warmed by injection of steam from a 
movable boiler, offers a possible way out of the difficulty. On 
a plant large enough to keep one man continually at this work, 
this plan might be an improvement over filling lamps, but 
for the smaller plant it is lamps, or go south. 
Rearing young chicks is the hardest part ,of the poultry 
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