CHAPTER XX 

 DAY-OLD-CHICK INDUSTRY 



Unique Development. — The day-old-chick industry probably 

 constitutes the most remarkable development in the history of 

 animal husbandry. Chick producers themselves do not boast 

 about this achievement, and the industry is still too young to 

 have gained the distinction to which it is rightfully entitled. 

 In sharp contrast to other discoveries of its kind, the baby chick 

 trade is one of those evolutions which arrived unheralded and 

 unnoticed, but which instantly secured recognition through sheer 

 merit alone. 



Accidental Beginning. — The baby chick business is unique 

 in that the discoverer of it did not know that he had discovered 

 anything. The idea came into being by accident, one might say. 

 And from this accidental beginning it has progressed by leaps and 

 bounds that are almost bewildering even to those who have made 

 a practice of following the enormous strides taken by other 

 branches of the poultry industry in the past twenty years. 



Old Idea. — ^We speak of the baby chick trade as a new idea, 

 whereas it is little more than the adaptation of a very ancient 

 practice. Artificial incubation is an old custom. It was prac- 

 ticed by the Chinese and Egyptians centuries before the Christian 

 Era. Tradition credits the invention to the priests of the ancient 

 Temple of Isis. The Egyptian hatcheries, which were little 

 more than brick ovens heated by wood fires, were public institu- 

 tions, operated on a toll basis. The farmers brought their eggs 

 to the hatcheries, and later they returned for the chicks. Prac- 

 tically the same idea is carried on in this country, and it is called 

 custom hatching. 



It remained for an American farmer to expand this custom 



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