INCUBATION 
of Lancaster County, Pa., were to be prevailed upon to patron- 
ize a public hatchery, the county would support between fif- 
teen and twenty 100,000 egg incubators. Any of the numerous 
trolley centers in Indiana, Ohio and Southern Michigan would 
likewise be profitable locations for the establishment of public 
hatcheries. . 
The demand for the incubator of large capacity has, within 
the last year or so, brought two or three “mammoth” incu- 
bators into the market. The devices I now refer to consist of 
a row of box incubators which, instead of being heated by 
single lamps, are heated by continuous hot water pipes. This 
scheme effects a considerable saving in fuel cost and labor, 
but the bulkiness of construction and the woeful lack of evap- 
oration control are still to be dealt with. 
The writer now wishes briefly to describe the plan of con- 
struction and operation of a new type of hatchery, the success 
of which has recently been made feasible by inventions and 
technical knowledge hitherto unavailable. The plan of the 
hatchery is on that of a cold storage plant as far as insulation 
and general construction go. The eggs are kept in bulk in 
special cases which are turned as a whole and may rest on 
either of four sides. At hatching time the eggs are spread out 
in trays in a special hatching room, which is only large enough 
to accommodate chicks to the amount of one-sixth of the incu- 
bator capacity, for twice a week deliverings, or one-third if 
weekly deliveries are desired. 
There are no pipes or other sources of heat in the egg 
chambers. All temperature regulation is by means of air 
heated (or cooled as the case may be) outside of the egg 
rooms and forced into the egg rooms by a motor driven cone 
fan, maintaining a steady current of air, the rate of move- 
ment of which may be varied at will. The air movement main- 
tained will always be sufficiently brisk, however, to prevent an 
unevenness of temperature in different parts of the room. 
So simple is this that the reader will doubtless wonder why 
it was not developed earlier. The reason is that air subject 
to the climatic influences will, with any forced draft sufficient 
to equlize temperture, result in a fatal rate of evaporation. 
Sprinkling the air has not generally been thought practical 
because of the notion that air must not be used in the egg 
chamber but once, which involved quite a waste of heat neces- 
sary in warming a large bulk of air and evaporating sufficient 
water. Moreover, no means has, in the past, been available 
for making a sufficiently accurate measurement of the evapor- 
ating power of the air. 
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