6l2 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
September 18 
so I put a little less than two pounds of salt to 1,000 
pounds of milk, and get the cheeses into these little 
hoops as quickly as I can. You see that they are the 
true orthodox style, an oval cheese, and weigh about 
10 pounds, though, as a rule, a little less. They, in 
shape, are a good deal like Ohio, round at each end, 
and hi in the middle.” 
“ How do you press them, and have them keep to¬ 
gether ? ” 
“ You see these presses ? Well, we have them fixed 
so that we can put on not to exceed 70 pounds of 
pressure to the cheese, and that for only a few hours, 
when we take them out of the hoops and give them 
their bath.” 
“ What is that ? You do not soak them in beer, do 
you ? ” 
“ Not here ; but that is their destination, as they 
are in great demand in the beer halls and summer 
gardens of the East, and get beer soaked, I suppose, 
at last. Come this way. ” 
In an adjoining room, were a number of shallow 
vats of different dimensions, filled nearly full of 
brine, as strong as can be made with hot water and 
salt, and in these vats the little Goudas by the hun¬ 
dred were floating about. A young man with a golf 
stick was turning them in their bath, and as they 
have from five to six days’ make in the baths, all the 
time absorbing more salt and getting a rind on them, 
it was no small task to keep them “ flopped.” “ Yes, 
they have to be turned in the brine once and twice a 
daj for five to seven days, and then they are taken 
out and put on the shelves in a cool curing room.” 
In these rooms were at least 5,000 little Goudas, every 
one an exact duplicate of the other, ranged along 
the shelves enveloped in mold as thick as a “ green¬ 
back.” Here they are turned and cured for a month 
to six weeks, when they are scraped clean of mold, 
rubbed down as sleek as a cake of Buttermilk soap, 
which they much resemble in form, and are packed 
six. in a long, round cheese box, and sent to meet 
their cousins from Holland. Later on, they travel in 
the same company, and are warranted to create as 
mueh thirst as the imported article. 
“ Can’t you make ’em with less salt ? ” I asked. 
“ Oh, yes ; we sell a great many here at home, and 
for this demand we make a few, salt them only in the 
brine bath, and it will be a hard thing to find a finer 
cheese. We make them so salt to meet a demand. 
Here is a Gouda from Holland. Taste this, and then 
a piece of Ohio Gouda. Can’t you see why the cheese 
we make are so in demand ? The reason is that we 
cook our curds a little, not much, and salt lightly 
before pressing it, and get a firm cheese. I think 
that, with my cheese, I could ‘capture Holland.’ 
Yes, one firm in New York handles all of these 
cheese. This is not a patron factory. The man who 
sells the cheese in New York, rents this factory and 
buys the milk by the 103 pounds, and does what he 
has a mind to with it.” 
“ How about the making ? ” 
“Well, there are three of us, and each one has his 
own vat of milk, and makes and hoops his own make 
of curd. I boss the job, and am responsible for the 
good character of the cheese, and see them in the 
shipping boxes.” 
Well, what a dairy State Ohio is ! Ohio flat cheese 
made everywhere, Pasteurizsd butter in the Scioto 
Valley, Jersey butter among the Quakers, Limburger 
cheese on the Monroe hills, Switzer and Brick cheese 
in central Ohio ; and now Goudas in the Yankee hill 
town, 700 feet above the possibility of a canal or 
dyke. Oh, great is the kingdom of the cow ! 
JOHN GOULD. 
THE WOODEN NURSE 
BEST METHOD OF BROODING A CHICK. 
A reader in Pennsylvania sends us the following 
questions : 
Which do you consider the best way of brooding a chick from 
the time it is hatched until ready for market ? Our plan is an in¬ 
dividual brooder with a combination of top and bottom heat for 
the first month, and after that, we put our chicks into a long 
brooder with top heat only, a row of pipes heated by a Hitchings 
base-burning heater. When they are fully feathered and weigh 
about a pound, we place them in the fattening coops, holding 
about six to each place, and leave them there until ready for 
market. Wherein is this plan defective ? In general, do you 
prefer top to bottom heat, and why ? 
A New Plan Discussed. 
During tbe past 10 years, I have used several dif¬ 
ferent styles of brooders and brooding-pipe systems. 
If the heat can be maintained at an even temperature 
as in an incubator, or even within a few degrees, I 
should prefer top heat; but in my experience, I find 
it almost impossible to control a large heater, as 
closely as it should be for the best results. I use the 
Gurney hot-water heater, and have a Powers regulator 
attached to it, but find even then sometimes that it 
will go wrong, and even one chill or over-heating is 
enough to kill a great many chicks when we have 
1,000 or 2,000 in the brooding house. While lamp 
brooders can be regulated the same as an incubator, 
I do not like them except for summer use, or when 
only a few chicks are to be brooded. As I was unable 
to regulate the heat satisfactorily, with either bottom 
or top heat pipe system, I determined to let the chicks 
help regulate. With this idea in view, I laid a two- 
inch flow and return pipe, one directly above the 
other, along the back of the brooding house, and from 
this two-inch pipe, we put in 10 flow and return 1%- 
inch pipes, one directly under every second partition; 
these are 12 feet long. This with the five feet of two- 
inch pipe along the back of the pens gives 17 feet of 
pipes for the chicks to brood against in each pen the 
entire length of the house, 20 pens each five feet wide. 
There is a ten-inch board hinged to the partition on 
each side of the pipes about six inches from the floor 
to hold the heat. With this method, the chicks can 
nestle close to the warm pipes, or move out towards 
the cloth as they require more or less heat. I find 
that this gives better results than either top or bot¬ 
tom heat, and there is less danger from overheating. 
Each pen has an outside run of 5 xl2 feet, and accom¬ 
modates from 50 to 75 chicks until ready for market. 
New Jersey. j. e stevenson. 
Opposed to Bottom Heat. 
I have not tried bottom heat in a brooder, or a com¬ 
bination of top and bottom, and cannot answer the 
question from personal experience. While bottom 
heat might not effect serious injury if employed dur¬ 
ing the first week or two, I should, nevertheless, de¬ 
cline to use it, the same as I would an incubator that 
applied heat to the underside of the eggs. Any 
attempt to modify or improve on Nature’s laws must 
result in failure. If the right degree of heat is main¬ 
tained on the chicks’ backs, a sufficient amount will 
descend to the level of the feet to keep them as 
warm as Nature intended they should be. 
Missouri. h. e. moss. 
Anything That Keeps the Chicks Warm. 
Any method of heating is correct if the chicks 
thrive. Opinions differ, but my experience is in favor 
of top heat only, as bottom heat may cause leg ail- 
CROSS SECTION OF BROODER HOUSE. Fig. 259. 
A A, two inch pipes full length of house, boxed in back and top; 
if, top of hover hinged at E\ c, sacking or flannel hanging 
down in front. K, canvas to keep chicks away from the hot 
pipes; X, entrance for cold air which passes through if to 
hot pipes. 
ments and render the chicks less able to withstand 
exposure to a colder temperature. The pipe system, 
as mentioned in the inquiry, has been used very suc¬ 
cessfully. The method of fattening, with but six in 
a pen, should prove satisfactory provided the chicks 
are not too closely confined. It is difficult to fatten 
a growing chick, and attempts to force them may re¬ 
sult in indigestion and bowel disease. The first essen¬ 
tial is warmth, and the second so to feed the chicks 
as to avoid disease, aiming to keep them in thrifty 
condition. p. h jacobs. 
New Jersey. 
The Whole Story Told, 
My experience with the wooden hen this year has 
been that of an average of 85.5 per cent of chicks for 
100 fertile eggs. I have had 93 per cent and 07 per 
cent as highest and lowest in May and December re¬ 
spectively, on eight occasions. I used two hens at the 
same time, and gave each a fair sample of the same 
kind of eggs and, in all cases if the hen stuck to busi¬ 
ness, the results came within one per cent of the 
incubator work. I have two hot-water machines and 
one hot-air. The latter gives the most even tempera¬ 
ture throughout the egg chamber; the others being 
large machines, vary nearly one per cent between 
center and corners of the egg chamber, and some¬ 
times, two per cent during the 24 hours, whereas I 
never see one-half per cent variation of temperature 
in the hot-air machine during the whole hatch. 
Although the results are nearly alike, I have the best 
“ luck ” in raising those hot-water hatched. I agree 
with what Messrs. Wyckoff and Rice say in The R. 
N.-Y. of July 31, but I believe that Mr. Mapes’s con¬ 
tact experiments have been tried extensively and 
found wanting compared with warm air as the best 
way to imitate Mrs. Hen. If we study for a moment, 
it is clear that it is the air surrounding the eggs under 
the hen warmed by the hen’s body to a fair, even tem¬ 
perature, for by contact alone, an even temperature 
could not be maintained, as a few eggs might be 
against the body, and others would have feathers in¬ 
terposed, then again, others would be placed on the 
outside covered by her wings. I don’t believe that 
an animal’s body is of the same temperature all over, 
being several degrees colder the farther away from 
the lungs, heart, stomach, etc. As an example, one 
of my old Brahma sitters had quite cold feet while 
sitting, and often, when lifted off the nest, she would 
have an egg in each claw, and still they would feel 
warm to the touch. 
But, as the saying is, “ Any fool can hatch chickens, 
but it takes an old hen to raise them.” She, how¬ 
ever, never runs with 100 chickens at one time—10 or 
12 are enough for her—and when, at times, we give 
her the hatchings of another hen, if she is of the 
large breeds, there is a correspondingly greater per¬ 
centage of loss than there would be if she had been 
limited to her own dozen or so. The fow years I 
have been in the business I have bad my share of 
mortality among young chickens, I would not like to 
tell the number, still I am improving. In the begin¬ 
ning, I could never raise more than 40 per cent; now, 
however, I can raise 75 to 76 per cent, and believe 
that, in another few years, I shall be still more 
successful. I have improved the vitality of my stock 
in the first instance, so that my fertile eggs contain a 
strong germ, which is the main point of all. I fill 
the incubator with either P. Rock or White Wyan¬ 
dotte eggs (never mix them) of as near even size as I 
can, and never use any ill-shaped or very large eggs. 
The smaller ones I keep together on one tray, and 
pack them up if necessary so that they will be an 
even height above the tray sides. I fill the incubator 
at 6 A. m., and the eggs remain undisturbed in a tem¬ 
perature of barely 103 degrees, for 48 hours, when 
they are turned, the trays turned end for end, and 
transposed. There is no need for any cooling of eggs, 
beyond the time required for turning the eggs, for 
the next three days. In the beginning of my incu¬ 
bator fever, I tested the eggs on the fifth and tenth 
days; now I test only on the tenth, as I have to be very 
economical with my time to get everything done on 
time. From the fifth day, I begin to cool the eggs, 
by leaving them on the top of a table placed close to 
the incubator, so that, when I open the door for tak¬ 
ing out or replacing the egg trays, it is opened as 
short a time as possible ; I don’t see any good in cool¬ 
ing down the incubator. Towards the 16th to 18th 
day, the time of cooling is extended day after day 
from 15 to 30 minutes in warm weather, with the tern, 
perature at about 65 to 70 degrees in the morning. 
In winter, with the temperature at 35 to 45 degrees, 
they still remain out not less than 15 minutes, with 
a double sheet of newspaper loosely placed on the 
top of the eggs. I believe that several germs perish, 
but I thereby get rid of what, otherwise, would prove 
weak chicks if they were hatched. 
I use no moisture up to the 16th day, when I take 
two or three eggs from each tray, and place them in 
the tester to observe the size of the air space. If the 
base area of the same is a little larger than a 25-cent 
coin, the moisture has been all right ; if larger, mois¬ 
ture must be added ; if smaller (a rare occurrence), I 
raise the temperature to 103% to 104 degrees. I ex¬ 
amine a couple again on the 17th or 18th day. On 
the morning (4 or 5 A. m.) of the 21st, they ought all 
to be chipped, and if so, all hatched by 10 or 11 a. m., 
that are going to hatch, if the eggs are from W. Wyan- 
dottes ; if from P. Rocks, the hatch will extend over 
a longer time. If they don’t break through the shell 
at a reasonable time, I put two or three teaspoonfuls 
of warm water on the top of the tank through the 
ventilator opening, raising the temperature to 105 
degrees; this will fetch out all those desirable to 
keep. 
As the chicks begin to move about, they fall 
through the trays to the bottom of the incubator, 
where the temperature is 100 degrees when the ther¬ 
mometer registers 105 degrees on a level with the egg 
tray. When once they begin to hatch, I leave the 
door shut; I used to be inquisitive in the beginning, 
but the chicks didn’t like it, so I gave it up. My hens 
have Alfalfa and crushed oyster shells, therefore 
their eggs have good strong shells ; the chicks break¬ 
ing through them show their vitality from the start. 
I extend no help to those not able to perform this, 
their first task. 
Now comes the difficult part, viz., to raise them. 
The greatest enemy a chicken has is cold draughts ; 
they kill more chickens than any ill treatment. What 
would happen, if the door were left open on the in¬ 
cubator ? Tne eggs would get chilled, and germs 
near the front would be destroyed. I had several 
kinds of brooders all constructed on this principle, 
and the result was that the chicks died from bowel 
troubles caused by the cold air rushing in from their 
entrance opening up against-the hot-water pipes. The 
hot air leaked out through the top cover, and the 
