HATCHING AND REARING. 



The Importance of Adopting Methods of Hatching and Rearing 

 Which Tend to Produce the Highest Degree of Vitality — 

 Uniform Development at a Normal Rate is Better 

 Than a Rapid Growth. 



By Ho A. Nourse. 



It is not our intention to go into the details of operating 

 incubators, caring for sitting hens, operating brooders, 

 etc., because definite instructions for all these things arc 

 more fitly the subject for another volume. There are, 

 nevertheless, certain features in the hatching and rearing 

 of chicks intended for the purposes of an egg farm which 

 differ materially from those affecting the production of 

 stock destined to the market. In the latter instance the 

 business of the poultry keeper is to grow the youngsters 

 to marketable age in the shortest possible time and to place 

 upon their frames as much soft meat as possible, together 

 with a reasonable amount of fat. Chicks started in life 

 in this manner never possess the strength and stamina 

 required for the best service as profit makers in other lines; 

 they never recover from the effects of .the imnatural condi- 

 tions of the first weeks or months of their lives, whatever 

 the environment, care and food may be later. 



The future egg producer should make its entrance in 

 the world and pass its early life under such conditions as 

 promote perfectly normal growth, or the growth that nature 

 intended it should make under the most favorable condi- 

 tions. We have mentioned in previous" chapters the neces- 

 sity of strength in parent stock and the further necessity 

 of so conserving that strength that it will be transmitted 

 to the chick. A chick from such stock, properly incubated, 

 begins life under favorable auspices and requires intelli- 

 gent care only to develop within it the vitality of its parent. 



Heavy feeding of overnutritious foods, too long con- 



