Vol. LXVIII No.'4016. NEW YORK, OCTOBER 16, 1909. » WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YKAR„ 
MAPES AND INCUBATOR CHICKS. 
Why the Chicks Die. 
What ails the incubator chicks? Cosgrove says hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of people are asking that ques¬ 
tion. 1 am told that some of those who read my 
article on page 583 got the impression that the “mil- 
lenium” has come for the hen man. As a matter of 
fact, I wrote only at that time of what was occurring 
across the road from the house where my old birds 
are kept. At the brooder houses back of the house I 
was having what might well be called “a howl of a 
time" right then, and have been having, for that mat¬ 
ter, for a number of years. The wonder is, perhaps, 
that I have succeeded in getting any pullets raised 
to move across the road to the laying quarters. 1 
have only to mention the words white diarrhoea, or 
brooder cholera, and those who have been through 
the mill will understand the situation. 1 can hatch 
chickens all right, by the thousand, or by the hundred 
thousand, if need be, but when it comes to raising 
a satisfactory percentage of them the fun begins. 
East year I got barely 50 per cent raised, and about 
decided I would never try again without first getting 
an entirely new outfit of brooders. Some of my neigh¬ 
bors, however, reported good success, so I started out 
one day to see what kind of brooders they were 
using. One of the most successful, I found, had used 
brooders almost identical with mine, so I came home 
determined to make one more trial. My hatches were 
good as usual, averaging about 250 per 360-egg incu¬ 
bator. One hatch gave me a plump 300 chicks. From 
three incubators I soon filled my 10 brooders, placing 
about 100 chicks in each oiie. 
All went swimmingly for the first two weeks. The 
brooders ran uniformly at about 90 degrees, and the 
chicks appeared strong and healthy. Before the second 
hatch from the incubators appeared, however, I saw 
indications of trouble. There was a rough appear¬ 
ance to the feathers of the chicks at first, indicating 
want of thrift. This was soon followed by weakness, 
so that many of them would get knocked over by the 
stronger ones in the rush for feed, often lying on 
their sides and trying to reach for feed. They seemed 
to have an appetite, but not enough strength to get 
up and run with the others. How "interesting” 
was to pick up ■ and bury the dead, morning after 
morning, until barely 40 per cent were left of the 
1,600. The deaths stopped almost entirely at from 
five to six weeks of age, and the survivors gradually 
recovered and make fairly good birds. 
The Deacon and I held a consultation at this point. 
Should I give up beaten or not? He suggested one 
theory which I had never tested. It was this: With 
my big incubators and the trays well filled with fer¬ 
tile eggs and hatching chicks, they may suffer for 
want of sufficient oxygen. This may reduce their vi¬ 
tality so that they have not sufficient strength to stand 
the strain incident to the feathering period. I had 
seldom opened wide the top ventilators until the hatch 
was well under way, and with 200 to 300 chicks on 
the trays it was often difficult to hold the temperature 
below 105 at hatching time. Many of the chicks will 
often “loll,” either from the effects of heat or of 
bad air. This theory of insufficient oxygen seemed 
worth trying out, so I again warmed up one of the 
incubators, though it was late in June, but instead 
of filling the trays I only put in 160 eggs. I also 
opened wide all the top ventilator slides, four in 
number, so as to insure plenty of pure air. In order 
to guard against excessive drying at this midsummer 
season, I placed pie-dishes filled with water under 
the trays, although the makers claim this to be a “no¬ 
moisture” machine. I also placed sponges in the 
dishes of water to assist evaporation. As a “check” 
against the expected hatch of incubator chicks, I set 
an equal number of eggs under hens the same week. 
The incubator ran very uniformly at about 102’A 
degrees, and at the close of the twentieth day the 
hatch was well under way. I got 121 chicks from 
the incubator, only one of which had to be helped 
from the shell, and 109 from the hens. On July 12 
I put the 121 machine-hatched chicks in one of the 
6x8-foot pens in my brooder house, and the hen- 
hatched lot in the adjoining pen, jwith wire partition 
separating them, a few days later. For a little over 
two weeks they were as thrifty and uniform a lot as 
1 ever saw, with no apparent difference in the two 
pens, t began to hug myself that I had solved the 
riddle, and that my earlier hatches had been too much 
crowded in the incubator. Alas for human hopes! 
All at once the older pen developed that roughness 
of the feathers alluded to before, followed by dead 
chicks, both pens being affected precisely alike. At 
the end of six weeks I had about a dozen left in each 
pen. This disposed of the “want of oxygen” theory, 
and also eliminated the incubator from the problem. 
The hen-hatched chicks had gone the same way as 
the others. 
What next? Was the fault with the brooding? 
Anticipating this query, I had reset most of the same 
liens and enough others to make 19. On August 11 
these began hatching and gave me 225 chicks. The 
Deacon now insisted that a disease germ was at the 
seat of the trouble, and that the brooder house and 
grounds must be well stocked with the germs. “The 
Deacon,” you know, is a term I sometimes apply to 
the chap who runs my “think-factory.” In order to 
test this theory, I divided the 225 chicks into three 
lots. One lot of 80 I placed in a pen of the brooder 
house with four of the mother hens, giving them free 
AN EXAMPLE OF DEEP AND THOROUGH TILLAGE AT ONE OPERATION. Fig. 500. 
