HATCHING AND BEABING. 43 



magnitude of the operations to keep a good-sized 

 fattening business supplied. Where there is abun- 

 dance of room and the ground will not be over- 

 crowded, there is no reason why a goodly number 

 of chickens should not be reared in connection with 

 a fattening establishment. At the same time, I ques- 

 tion whether it would ho desirable to entirely depend 

 upon birds produced there, the difficulty being to 

 obtain a sufficient number of eggs for hatching, and to 

 give the requisite attention to the young chickens. 

 We have not yet arrived at the state of things met 

 with in Prance, where, in given districts, the birds 

 kept are almost entirely of one type. Thus eggs for 

 hatching can be purchased with greater confidence as 

 to results than would be possible in this country. 



I do not propose in this chapter to detail minutely 

 the methods of hatching and rearing, as they can be 

 found elsewhere, but rather to show the lines upon 

 which work should be conducted. If hatching and 

 rearing is to be done by a large number of small 

 people, then as a rule they will be content to depend 

 chiefly upon hens. The difficulty, however, in this 

 case is to obtain broody hens sufficiently early, and 

 to do so needs thinking a considerable time in advance, 

 and the maintenance of heavier breeds of fowls which 

 are more given to sitting than the lighter varieties. A 

 complaint which one hears reiterated is as to the 

 scarcity of broody hens at certain seasons of the year. 

 Where hatching and rearing is carried out upon a 

 larger scale, then another plan should be adopted, 

 namely, artificial hatching and rearing. 



At one time incUbators were very expensive toys, 



