CHAPTER VIII 
THE BROODY HEN 
the old style of hatching, Nature has insisted that at certain 
seasons of the year certain hens will become broody. It 
is then that the old mother hen begins to utter her “‘ Cluck, cluck, 
cluck,”’ and declines to leave the nest. She tells one as plainly as 
possible that now is the appointed time, now is the hour for the 
hatching of chickens. I yield to no one in my admiration of the 
incubator as a useful invention. On large poultry farms it is 
indispensable and even the broody hen has to take second p. “>, 
or no place at all. 
But it will be long, I hope, before the broody is quite forsaken as 
a mother or foster-mother. She fulfils her function admirably, 
and although she can only act on a small scale her day of uselessness 
has not yet come into view. If she could understand the process 
of the 5000 egg incubator all under the control of one man, what 
would she think ? Here is a gigantic instrument made by human 
hands for doing what the mother bird was created for. It would 
require 500 hens sitting on ten eggs each to perform the operation 
that one machine can do in the same time. 
By the amateur or the smaller farmer the broody hen is by no 
means despised ; indeed there is one very large egg-farmer who, 
notwithstanding the extra labour involved, hatches the bulk of his 
chickens by means of broody hens. He has as many as 3800 
sitting at one time. If it can pay the commercial egg-man to use 
the broody hen for hatching, how much more is it likely to pay the 
amateur who wants to raise a dozen or two of chickens. 
Speaking for myself, I may say that I did all my hatching by 
Nature’s methods during my first year in business, and was 
successful in raising about 241 healthy birds from some 400 eggs. 
976 
Je to show that the incubator has not entirely superseded 
