THE BROILER BUSINESS 



97 



Colony Houses , Where Broilers are Fattened on . 

 J Poultry Farm. 



Well-Known 



eggs and poultry for market are the mainstay, most of the 

 broilers are » produced. On these places incubator 

 cellars, containing a greater or less nun^ber of large incuba- 

 tors, and brooder houses, some of them several hundred 

 feet long and equipped with hot water heating apparatus 

 for heating both houses and brorders, form the naain 

 part of the equipment. The incubal in are put in operation 

 in the latter part of January or early In Ji'ebruary so that the 

 first lot of future broilers go into the brooder house about 

 the first of March. The F-^+^hing of I roller chicks is con- 

 tinued on most of these planrt anuxl tLe first of May when 

 the last broods are taken from the n.achines. A broiler 

 weighing one arid one-half pounds requires an average of ten 

 weeks in which to grow, the last two weeks of which is given 

 to laying on flesh and fat; therefore, the chicks hatched be- 

 fore the first of March are ready for market about May 1st 

 when the prices are highest and those which leave the shell 

 about the first of May are placed on the market in the middle 

 of July just before the prices tumble. 



Rearing the Broilers. 



The methods of hatching and rearing of these chicks are 



