PREFACE 



Practical and successful incubating and brooding by 

 artifical means have taken giant strides since the introduc- 

 tion to the first edition of this book was written, some 

 six years ago. To-day popular sized incubators are used 

 extensively in every civilized country in the world where 

 poultry is grown for market. We thought we had large poul- 

 try plants six and seven years ago, and such was the case, 

 but since that time still larger ones have come into existence, 

 including, for example, the StouSer Poultry Farm, Harrisburg, 

 Pa., with a capacity of 100,000 ducks and broilers annually, us- 

 ing one hundred 300-egg capacity incubators; Yardley Duck 

 Farm, Yardley, Pa., green ducks, broilers and roasters, using one 

 hundred and foiu- 300-egg capacity incubators; Oxford Poultry 

 Farm, Oxford, Pa., capacity 50,000 green ducks per year, using 

 seventy-four 288-egg capacity incubators; Earl Stock Farm, 

 New Holland, Pa. using sixty-five 300-egg capacity incubators; 

 Woodlands Farm, lona, N J., having 7,000 laying hens; For- 

 est Lakes Poultry Farm, Browns Mills In the Pines, N. J., cap- 

 acity 10,000 layers, using eighty-three 360-egg incubators; Hart- 

 man Stock Farm, Columbus, Ohio, using fifty-seven 360-egg cap- 

 acity incubators; Emma B. Poultry Farm, Gumee, Lake Coun- 

 ty, 111., using thirty-two 360-egg incubators; Ledgewood Duck 

 Farm, Norwalk, Conn., capacity 50,000 ducks per annum, us- 

 ing eighty-five 300-egg incubators; Weber Bros. Duck Ranch, 

 Wrentham, Mass., capacity 45;000 ducks annually, and many 

 other well-known farms of equal and less capacity. 



Undoubtedly, America still leads in the size and output of its 

 poultry plants, but foreign countries are recognizing the op- 

 portimity and embracing it. The fame of American incubators, 

 brooders and poultry appliances has gone abroad and a num- 

 ber of our manufacturers make foreign shipments, others have 

 foreign agents and a few find it profitable to maintain their 

 own offices and warehouses in the largest foreign centers. 



Five and six years ago comparatively little attention was 

 paid to the poultry industry by the general and state govern- 

 ments; to-day the Bureau of Animal Industry is making ex- 

 tensive experiments and issues regularly valuable bulletins de- 

 voted to poultry exclusively, and in the neighborhood of thirty- 

 five state colleges are conducting poultry plants on which they 

 are making a systematic study of poultry and egg production, 

 including the problem of successful incubation and brooding 

 by both natural and artificial means. At several of these col- 

 leges aimual poultry classes are conducted, with increasing 

 membership, and numerous college graduates in poultry work 

 are obtaining lucrative employment as managers of large mar- 

 ket and standard-bred poultry plants. 



But the greatest progress made by incubators and brood- 

 ers in supplanting the hen as a hatcher and brood mother has 

 been among poultry fanciers, farmers and farmers' wives. For 

 many years fanciers held aloof from the use of incubators, fear- 

 ing to trust their valuable eggs to them. At present, on the 



contrary, there are a number of makes of incubators on the mar- 

 ket that are so trustworthy in their operation and so correct in 

 in principle that they hatch as good or better chicks than the 

 hen will produce, and, as a result, a majority of the poultrymen 

 who produce fancy fowls are using nowadays one or more in- 

 cubators. Until recent years many farmers have looked on an 

 incubator as a mysterious contrivance or an ingenious plaything. 

 Incubators on the farm are now quite common. Where per- 

 sons used to look askance at a neighbor who made bold to buy 

 a "tin hen," the purchase of an incubator is now looked on as 

 a stroke of enterprise and the possessor of a good incubator is 

 envied. 



When it becomes known that a pair of chickens has 

 been hatched in an incubator, raised in a brooder, fed on pre- 

 pared chick food and brought to weigh 23 pounds dressed at 

 six months old, and that the first prize birds at many of our 

 largest shows are incubator-hatched and brooder-raised, pre- 

 judice against the artificial hatching and brooding of chickens 

 and ducks dies a speedy death in the minds of progressive poul- 

 try raisers. The large poultry plants, the growth and present 

 development of the poultry industry were impossible without 

 the aid of good incubators and brooders. 



The incubator has come to stay. The practical success 

 of properly-constructed incubators and brooders is no longer 

 questioned by persons acquainted with the facts. The inven- 

 tion and perfection of the small-sized portable incubator gave 

 origin to what is now known as the poultry industry. With- 

 out these modem hatchers and artificial mothers the great 

 duck and poultry ranches could not exist. It ^would be futile to 

 attempt to hatch 5,000 to 100,000 ducks, broilers or roasters by 

 the use of hens alone. A person can hatch 100 to 1,000 chicks 

 by the hen method, though a large amount of work is involved, 

 and the expense, labor included, is out of all proportion to the 

 results. With incubators, on the other hand, the cost, labor 

 included, is greatly reduced and profits increased. 



One large-sized incubator, holding 360 hen eggs or 300 

 duck eggs, will do the work of 30 hens. Five minutes' time, 

 morning and evening, will give the incubator all the attention 

 it requires, whereas the work of obtaining 30 broody hens, pro- 

 viding nests for them, caring for them, dusting them with lice 

 powder, seeing that they return to the right nests, cleaning the 

 eggs and removing the broken ones, is a task that tries even 

 the patience of a woman. The difference between the use of 

 a modern, improved, automatic incubator and the use of hens, 

 as herein briefly described, indicates the difference between 

 present up-to-date methods and old-time conditions that were 

 in force before what is now called the poultry industry existed. 

 The successful incubator and brooder, therefore, have come to 

 stay and are highly important factors in the upbuilding of a 

 great industry. 



