300 



COMMERCIAL POULTRY RAISING 



arranged side by side and heated from a central plant, which is 

 generally a hot-water system. See Fig. 191. 



Hot-Water System. — The earliest method of heating the hovers 

 in a long brooder house was by means of a series of hot- water pipes 

 arranged about eight inches above the floor of the brooder. The 

 chicks huddled together under these pipes, and ventilation was 

 controlled by means of apertures in the tops of the hovers. A 

 development of this idea was found by heating a compartment 



Fig. 194. — Colony coop brooders on a Government experiment station. 



or duct under the brooder floor with a hot-water system of piping, 

 and then conveying the warmed air up through a vent in each 

 hover. 



Fireless Brooders. — Another method is to heat the brooder 

 house to a moderate temperature b>' the use of a few coils of hot- 

 water pipes, but to heat the hovers themselves by means of indi- 

 vidual kerosene lamps. An adaptation of this method is to use 

 fireless hovers, so constructed as to conserve the heat thrown off 

 from the chicks' bodies. See Fig. 195. These fireless brooders 



