THE CHICK BOOK 



69 



craze for mere "bigness!" If we will but take heed of the 

 suggestions given us by Prof. Graham there will be a nota- 

 ble improvement in the "type" of bird we send to market; 

 ths improvement in type resulting in a bettering of quality, 

 an increased price, quicker sales and better profits to the 

 poultryman. 



I spoke of the remarkable attraction that broiler raising 

 seemed to have for the beginners in. poultry work, and to 

 such the very great bettering of incubators, brooding 

 and feeding comes as a great boon. The distressing fail- 

 urBR, such as I have seen many of, should now be less com- 

 mon. One such, in a pleasant town about thirty miles west 

 of Philadelphia, is worth citing as a warning. In this case 

 two young men frcm the city had thought to better their 

 pecuniary condition by broiler raising. They built a hot 

 water pipe brooder house a hundred feet long, bought five 

 hundred eggs and went to work. A friend with whom I was 

 making an over-night visit told me of their poor success, 

 and suggested that we drive over in the morning and see 

 them. When we arrived we found them contemplating an 

 incubator full of eggs which should have hatched the day 

 before, and from which not one chick had come. Closing 

 the shutters (the incubators were being run in the old 



damijers as the temperature falls or rises from the paint 

 desired. Moreover, the hovers are not back against the 

 walli partition, but out about three feet from it; there is 

 no confined (dead) air under such hovers and no possibility 

 of chicks crowding each other back against a back wall and 

 smothering some. Of course such a brooder house costs 

 more than a cheaply built and inadequately heated one, but 

 it "raises the chinks," and therefore pays the added cost 

 over and over again, instead of aiding to pass them along 

 to the fertilizer heap. 



Must Be "Well Hatched. 

 Chicks to grow well must be well hatched. It is a seri- 

 ous handicap to the baby life to have great difficulty in 

 getting out of the shell; sometimes the struggle for exclu- 

 sion is so violent and exhausting that the chick has little 

 chance of making a live of it. There are various causes for 

 this, such as too high or too low average temperature in the 

 incubator, irregularity of temperature, and other eccentrici- 

 ties; poor eggs, owing to the laying stock being out of con- 

 dition, is another potent cause. With the well made, up- 

 to-date and well ventilated incubators of to-day there is 

 no reason for poorly hatched chicks if directions are closely 



Colony Houses and Yards tor Maturing the Crowing Stock on the Farm of J. D, /Vev/us. 



farm house parlor), we tested about half the eggs, and told 

 them they hadn't ventilated the incubator at all (appar- 

 ently), and their eggs were only about half fertile, so they 

 were only entitled to about one hundred and fifty chickens 

 anyway. 



The air was "blue" there for a little while, but talking 

 did no good, and while they in their lurid dreams had pic- 

 tured a chicken hatching from every egg (in winter at 

 that!), the potent fact was their work was a failure. They 

 had already incubated over two thousand eggs and 

 hatched less than three hundred chickens, and the 

 brooder house showed at a glance the moment we 

 entered it that no one could "raise" chickens in it. 

 There was a "chill" in the air that went to the mar- 

 row, and chicks cannot possibly be grown in such an atmos- 

 phere. The brooder house had been built with half-dried 

 lumber, after freezing weather came in the early winter, and 

 to save fifty dollars or so a beater two sizes too small had 

 been bought. There was no heat except the two fiow and 

 two return pipes under the hovers, and the hovers were 

 close up against the partition along the walk. Compare 

 such a defective brooder house with the one in use at Lake- 

 wood Farm, illustrated on pages 14 and 15 — A New 

 Jersey Brooding House. There is a. brooder house equip- 

 ped with abundant heating pipes under the hovers, having a 

 bank of auxiliary heating pipes along the walk, to warm 

 the house, and an adequate heater for the coldest weather. 

 Then there is an electric regulator connected with a thermo- 

 stat under one of the hovers, and which opens or closes the 



followed, provided, of course, that the eggs are good and 

 strong. The most important thing is that the right tem- 

 perature be maintained in the incubator, and that it be 

 steadily maintained. It is wiser to err up'on the side of a 

 bit too high temperature than letting it run low; it is the 

 opinion of Incubator operators that just a little too much 

 is better than running the risk of the temperature going 

 too low. ' This is especially true in winter hatching. As a 

 general rule, the colder the weather the stronger (or slight- 

 ly higher) the average temperature should be. 



Sunning an Incubator. 



The daily task of running an incubator consists of turn- 

 ing the eggs, twice a day, morning and night, and daily fill- 

 ing and trimming the lamp. Ordinarily the lamp trimming 

 can best be done about the middle of the afternoon, in the 

 interval between feeding the chicks and before the last 

 feeding of the hens. About the seventh day the eggs should 

 ■ be tested, which is the simple operation of passing the eggs, 

 with the large end up, before a testing light and noting If 

 the egg contains a living germ. The germ is a dark (almost 

 black), spider-like spot upon the side of the yolk, and the 

 stronger and darker the germ appears the better. An egg 

 which is absolutely clear is infertile, and should be saved 

 out to be eaten in omelettes or scrambled, or sold to the 

 bake shop to be used in cooking. Now and then a dead 

 germ will be found, evidenced by reddish circles about the 

 yolk or a generally cloudy appearance of the egg. ■ These 

 should be thrown in the manure pile, or may be fed to hogs. 



