THE POULTRY 
273 RUN 
localities. Fancy poultry is a money-making 
game for those who are successful in winning 
prizes at the show, and getting well advertised 
as breeders. The broiler business, seemingly 
the most profitable branch, has in practice 
been a source of loss to many investors. The 
cause of failure in the broiler business, lies 
chiefly in the difficulties of artificial incubation, 
especially in the winter season. 
Incubation is to the chicken raiser what the 
hot-bed is to the tomato raiser. If incubation 
is a failure, the whole business must fail. For 
the poultryman with a few dozen, or even several 
hundred fowls, hatching with hens is to be rec- 
ommended, unless he keep Leghorns or Minor- 
cas; these varieties not being good brooders. 
Convenient arrangements for setting hens in 
large numbers will be a more successful invest- 
ment than incubators. For duck farms or 
Leghorn egg farms, or any poultry business on 
a large scale, artificial incubation is a “ neces- 
sary evil.” 
The Central Hatchery, only now being es- 
tablished here, although in use in Egypt for 
centuries, promises to solve this difficulty. 
The advantage of centralizing the hatching 
is that it admits of better methods than are 
available on a small scale, and also allows one 
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