ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION 



General Remarks on'Jncubators and Brooders — Good Machines are Simple in Construction and 



Easy to Operate— The "Old Reliable" Briefly Described— Work Done with the 



Reliable, and Definite Information About How it was Done — 



The Reliable in Foreign Lands. 



WITH due deference to the necessary hen (necessary 

 as an egg laboratory) we are still forced to admit 

 that she is not able to successfully compete with 

 the modern incubator. In hatching eggs the 

 shallow-pated and fretful hen is at a great disadvantage. 

 It is her pea-sized brain against the brain of a man. It 

 is her long list of bodily ills against insensible wood and 

 metal. It is her patient ( ?) breast probed by the feedersi 

 of a thousand lice, against a machine that has no fear of 

 such pests. And so on through the list. 



Nor is this all. Eollins, in his ancient history, tells' of 

 artificial incubation being resorted to on the bants of the 

 Nile by the Egyptians who built the ancient pyramids, in the 

 shadow of which Napoleon said to his soldiers: "From those 

 pyramids forty centuries look down upon you." We learn 

 from recent reports, shown elsewhere in this book, made by 

 the United States Consuls, that large "Incubators" or 

 "Hatching Ovens", are now used by the Egyptians in 

 hatching poultry. 



Theoretically, the modern incubator should easily dis- 



On the other haii'l tiiere may still exist drawbacks to the 

 ■incubator, but we are fully eouvinced that there is no draw- 

 bi|ck that cannot be overcome. The modern, improved 

 incnbator, when well made, is a complete success. 



The writer has taken an active interest in artificial incu- 

 bation for twenty-eight years past. We have watched the 

 development and rapid improvement of the incubator. 



We do not mean to say that twenty-eight years ago 

 the incubator w^as a new thing. Not at all. 'Way back in 

 1845, on Broadway, New York, some ingenious Yankee was 

 hatching out large numbers of chicks by artificial means and 

 charging crowds of visitors 12% cents per head to step 

 inside and gratify their curiosity. To convince them that 

 it was not a fraud' this New Englander would break open 

 eggs and show the chick at different stages of development. 



tance the hen, and we freely maintain that a brooder that is 

 built on correct principles and is properly handled, is as 

 much an improvement over the hen as is the incubator.. Both 

 are much surer than the hen. That is the main point, and 

 it is true for many reasons. In a properly constructed incu- 

 bator the temperature is uniform throughout the egg cham- 

 ber. It is very seldom, is it not, that your house lamp goes 

 outf An incubator or brooder lamp should be every bit as 

 trustworthy as your house lamp. The regulator is, or should 

 be, a simple thing. A person is liable to be my; "aed in 



