36 HOW TO HATCH, BBOOD, PEED AND PREVENT 



Recipe for Keeping Eggs 



To every three gallons of water add one pound of fresh slacked lime 

 and one-half pint of salt. Have it well dissolved, drop in your eggs 

 one at a time; mind, do not crack them. If you wish to keep them 

 eight months or a year, you can do so, but you must use them or sell them 

 as soon as taken out of the water, or they will spoil. When you have put 

 in all you wish, take a thin piece of board and place on top of the eggs. Be 

 sure they are all under the brine. Then cover the board with salt. Now 

 place them in a cool cellar. Your eggs must be strictly fresh. It would be 

 well to test them to make sure. This is a good way to keep eggs for win- 

 ter's high prices. 



Talk on Incubators and Brooders 



TRYING to save a few dollars on the first cost of an incubator often 

 results in a very large additional cost through failure on the part of 

 those so called "cheap" machines to hatch more than half of the 

 eggs, and when the eggs are worth more than the machine, which is true in a 

 great many cases, the spoiling of ten or twelve dollars' worth of eggs for the 

 sake of saving two or three dollars on the first cost of an incubator is, to 

 say the least, very doubtful economy. Never buy a machine just because 

 it is cheap. It may cause you lots of grief and many disappointments. If 

 you have never had experience with incubators and do not know how an 

 incubator should be constructed to do good work, go to or write to some 

 one that has had practical experience and good success with incubators — 

 one in whom you have confidence and can trust. Ask their advice before 

 purchasing a machine, then you will be sure to get a good one. Do not 

 buy a sixty or hundred-egg incubator. You will have to spend as much 

 time with a small one as you would with a large one. A large incubator 

 will cost you a little more in the start, but will save you money in the end, 

 for it takes more oil to operate a real small incubator than it does a big 

 one. The more eggs you have in the incubator the more animal heat there 

 is, which helps keep up the temperature. Then you will have more to show 

 for your three weeks' work if you operate a 150 or 240 incubator. If 

 you do not want that many chicks at one time, sell them to your neighbors 

 - to help defray expenses. 



One should have two brooders with each machine, because if you 

 crowd your chicks they are more likely to become diseased than when they 

 are kept in small numbers. You will have disentery to fight if you crowd 

 your chicks. You should have a closed feed yard, like cut in this book, to 

 attach to each brooder, provided you haven't got a brooder house. Fifty 

 chicks will do better together than 100. It is their nature to crowd just 



