302 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
February 79. 7921 
Why let Them Die? 
HOUSANDS upon thousands of baby chicks die because 
of improper brooding. Why should you let these 
dollars slip through your hands when you can obtain 
COLONY BROODERS. 
These brooders have made three chicks 
grow where one grew before, have reduced 
the labor to a fourth and the cost to a third; 
have turned chicken raising from an un¬ 
profitable venture to a certain industry. 
Wherever poultry raisers talk about their 
success, there you will find Buckeye users. 
Buckeye Colony Brooders have taken the 
risk out of the business, and a hundred 
thousand users proclaim their merit. 
Ask the Buckeye User—He Knows! 
Bum coal or kerosene. Self-regulating, sani¬ 
tary and economical. Endorsed by experimental stations, 
agricultural colleges and county agents everywhere. 
Send a postal for a Buckeye catalog that tells why Buckeye 
equipment makes poultry raising profitable, why you run 
no risks in its use and why it is universally recommended. 
Address the factory. 
The Buckeye Incubator Co. 
*87 Euclid Avenue Springfield, Ohio 
Barred Rocks, R. I. Reds, White Wyandottes, 
Anconas, White, Brown and Buff Leghorns 
. Big, sturdy chicks, at prices you can afford. From pure-bred, free range flocks 
of heavy layers; selected birds, which combine great utility value with fine appearance. 
All breeding flocks are headed by remarkable males, the sons of choice hens which have 
made big egg records. Wonderful chicks that live and grow. ren years of square 
dealing is our record. 
CHICKS SHIPPED POSTPAID — SAFE DELIVERY GUARANTEED 
Write now for complete catalog — FREE 
ROSEMONT POULTRY FARMS & HATCHERY 
Drawer 4 
ROSEMONT. N. 
J. 
KlRR’S baby chicks 
Kerr’s breeding flocks, always good, 
have been improved through careful 
culling and the addition of new blood 
of superior quality. We spare neither 
time nor expense in the effort to make 
our breeders better each season, and 
our 1921 crop of chicks will unques¬ 
tionably surpass our previous high 
standard of quality. 
Two big. complete plants at French- 
town. N. J.. and Springfield, Mass. 
Both under personal management of 
R. \V. Kerr. Producing chicks of the 
long-established Kerr quality, selling 
at the modest Kerr prices, giving uu- 
approached service to Kerr customers 
everywhere. Chicks shipped from 
hatchery nearest you. prepaid, and 
safe delivery guaranteed. 
REAUTIFUL CIRCULAR FREE 
THE KERR CHICKERIES, Inc., 
Box 0. Springfield.- Mass. 
Box 0. Frenchtown, N. J. 
1 EGGS for HATCHING and ! 
DAY-OLD CHICKS 
■ 
! Hatching: eggs from fully matured, carefully \ 
• mated farm raised birds, selected for their ■ 
! pr-’ ic laying qualities and vigor. We can ; 
5 * eggs in any quantity, in season : 
S fro... our matings of 
| S. C. White White & Barred | 
j Leghorns Plymouth Rocks j 
Pay old chicks we can supply in any quantity ; 
■ from our White and Barred Plymouth Rocks ! 
5 amt S. C. White Leghorns. 
Write for Price List 
2 ■ 
: Branford Farms Groton, Conn. : 
Who Are You Going to Buy 
Your Chicks From This Spring ? 
The Lord Farms, wo believe are the largest 
and most successful breeders and shippers of 
Single Combed White Leghorns in the Eastern 
or Middle States. From a small beginning, 
eleven years ago, we have grown from a 12-acre 
farm, and today we own 399 acres. This season 
we shall produce for our own use 40,000 to 00,000 
Leghorns. We have today also a capacity for 
incubating 103,000 eggs, devoted only to one 
breed. We have built this business tip simply 
from giving customers satisfaction. We have 
never claimed to have the biggest layers in 
America, or the best sliow birds in America, but 
we have always claimed to have mighty good 
all-ronud Leghorns that our customers invariably 
make money on. Our business is mostly with 
experienced poultrymen who want good stock— 
not necessarily high-priced stock. We try to 
sell chicks that: will live, mature quick, above 
tlie average size, and lay extra good eggs. Fur¬ 
thermore. we think that our birds will average 
as many eggs as any strain you can buy. 
If you are looking for some real sensible 
bred Legliorns of good size and strain, American 
bred, then write to Lord Farms for their 80 
page catalog. Pealing with ns will eliminate a 
good part of the risk there is In going into the 
poultry business. 
“Ask the man who owns ’em ’’ 
Our Grade A Chicks only $28.00 per lOO 
Our Grade B. 85.00 per XOO 
Hatching eggs about L price. Cheapen in thousand lots 
Po business with a reliable farm that are 
breeders, not simply running a hatchery. 
If you can’t do well with our stock we don’t 
believe you will do well with any. Address all 
correspondence to our main office. 
LORD FARMS, Methuen, Mass. 
Baby Chicks, Cockerels 
Pullets, Eggs, S.C.W. 
Leghorns, R. I. Reds 
B. P. Rocks 
From high laying, pure¬ 
bred farm range stock 
that will multiply your 
poultry profits. Illus¬ 
trated folder free. Write 
for it now. 
G. F. G I B S O N 
Iiox too 
Galen Farms. Clyde, N. Y. 
IMPROVE 
the laying qualities of your Hock with sioek from 
CORNELL Certified LEGHORNS 
STATE FAIR WINNERS 
CHIX AND EGGS 
STEWART L. PURDIE, Dept. A, Sk.neatele., N. Y. 
Hatching Eggs 
S. C. White Leghorns — Trap-nested S‘ock 
No show birds, but grand utility stock. 
Bred for egg production. Established 1913. 
No day-old chicks. ORDER NOW. For 
further particulars and prices, address 
PROVOST BROS.. Spring Valley. Rockland Co., N. Y. 
FOR QUALITY CHICKS 
Sturdy, lively.chicks that will quickly grow into profit-producing poultry 
—Hillpot Quality Chicks. Safe delivery anywhere within 1200 miles guar¬ 
anteed. Post prepaid. Begin right—now. Get my book. 
LEGHORNS—ROCKS—REDS—WYANDOTTES 
W. F. HILLPOT Box 1 Frenchtown, N. J. 
The Henyard 
Some Facts About Incubation 
The time is near when incubation will 
be the subject uppermost in the poultry- 
man's thought, and any facts concerning 
it will be of interest to him. For nine 
years Prof. G. II. Lamsou, Jr., Connecti¬ 
cut State College, has been studying and 
experimenting as to the effects differ¬ 
ent temperatures, ventilation, presence of 
carbon dioxide, etc., have on the incuba¬ 
tion of hens’ eggs. In 1917-18 about ten 
thousand eggs from trap-nested hens were 
incubated, and the records show that the 
individuality of the hen is a most im¬ 
portant factor. 
Poultrymen wonder why a chick starts 
to grow in the egg. attains full size and 
then dies in the shell. Some laid it to 
too much or too little moisture, or to an 
improper degree of heat, or that the ven¬ 
tilation was not correct, or the eggs were 
not cooled properly. 
At present it. is the practice of many 
not to cool the eggs at all ; results show 
that the practice is superfluous. When a 
lieu leaves her nest to obtain food, the 
eggs get cool, and it was to imitate nat¬ 
ural processes that cooling the eggs was 
instituted. 
It has been found that there is a wide 
range in the conditions under which eggs 
will hatch. A weak embryo may not 
hatch under the best possible conditions, 
while a strong embryo may hatch under 
quite unfavorable conditions. I am re¬ 
minded of an incident that happened 
many years ago. A next-door neighbor 
(it mine had some hens, hatching. TV hen 
he thought the hatch finished he gathered 
up the unhatched eggs and threw them 
over the fence bao of his garden, then 
went to his work, ine next morning he 
heard a peeping over the lot, and he found 
chickens hatching out from those eggs 
which had laid out all day and all night 
in the grass. It was warm weather, the 
grass was so thick the shells- did not 
break, and the chicks finished tin* job of 
hatching all by themselves. It goes to 
show what strong embryos can endure. 
The incubating of so many eggs from 
trap-nested hens brought out the fact that 
some hens laid eggs that were not hatch- 
able under the best conditions ; though the 
eggs were fertile and the germs started 
to grow, a very large per cent would die 
in the shell. 
Bulletin No. 105, the work of Prof. 
Larason and L. K. Card, states that hens 
may be divided into four groups. 
First-—A very small number that lay 
few or no eggs. 
Second—A relatively large group that 
lay eggs, all or nearly all of which are 
fertile. 
Third—A small group that lay eggs-' 
nearly all of which are infertile. 
Fourth—Another large group, a large 
proportion of whose eggs are of varying 
inconsistent performance as to hatching 
qualities. 
The outstanding fact in the records is 
that comparatively few liens are respon¬ 
sible for the majority of the infertile 
eggs. A removal of 10 per cent of the 
hens in 1917 would have eliminated (52 
: per cent of the infertile eggs. 
In the 191N record the removal of nine 
hens would have reduced the infertile eggs 
incubated by <>0 per cent. 
The question then is, ‘‘Can these liens 
be identified; early in the season?” The 
answer is, “Yes.” A hen that lays in¬ 
fertile eggs early in the s ason is likely 
to continue to lay infertile eggs, or a con¬ 
siderable proportion of infertile. Though 
it has been found mat after a molt and 
rest f’-om laying at the end of the season, 
she may reverse the process the next year, 
and lay eggs a goodly number of which 
will be fertile. 
But the liens ..which show high fertility 
are apt to carry that quality year after 
year. A selected group of 18 hens whose 
records ran through four years, with a 
total of 1.00.” eggs incubated, showed only 
seven infertile eggs. 
On the contrary, seven other liens 
whose records ran for the same time, 
showed 188 infertile eggs out of 295 
placed in the incubator. 
It is this latter class which it is desir¬ 
able to weed out. The best time in this 
climate for a trial hatch is about April 1; 
that is, set the eggs laid iu the last 10 
days of March. Eggs should not be held 
for hatching more than 10 or 12 days, 
and should be turned every day; they 
should lie on the side. The yolk is 
lighter than the white, and slowly rises 
through the white until it touches the 
shell; it does not “settle" to the bottom, 
as commonly thought. As the united 
male and female germ cell remains on top 
of the yolk, it is easy to see that all 
chance of incubation is gone when the 
yolk reaches the top. hence the value of 
daily turning. Of course, eggs will hatch 
that have not been turned if the yolk has 
not made sufficient progress toward the 
top. hut the chance for hatching is better 
if the yolk remains in its natural position 
iu the center of the egg. 
Those who trap-nest their hens to se¬ 
lect the best for breeders, usually select 
only by the number of eggs laid. At the 
Maine Experiment Station, under Prof. 
Raymond Pearl, that question was the 
fifth one asked about a breeding hen. 
The first was: “How many eggs did 
she lay in Winter, November, December. 
January and February?” 
Second—“What per cent of her eggs 
were fertile?” 
Third—“What per cent of the fertile 
eggs hatched?” 
Fourth—“How many of the hatched 
chicks lived?” 
Then, and- not until then, was the ques¬ 
tion asked : “How many eggs did she lay 
in the. year?” 
It will be seen that there are several 
tilings to be noted about a good breeding 
hen besides the number of eggs she may 
have laid, and it was learned through the 
loug-continued experiments of Dr. Pearl 
that the 100-egg lieu was quite liable to 
produce more 200-egg pullets than the 
200-egg hen. \nd that the 200-egg 
hen transmitted her laying potentiality 
through her sons and not necessarily 
through her daughters. 
Analogy should have taught us poul- 
trymen that long ago. .when we saw 
what prices dairymen were willing to pay 
for bulls bred from high-producing dams. 
Another point ascertained by the ex¬ 
periments at Stores was that the hen pro¬ 
ducing strong, fertile eggs and livable 
chicks continued to do so through the en¬ 
tire season. That it;, the production of a 
large number of eggs did not seem to 
weaken the fertility or the vitality of the 
eggs. 
This is exactly contrary to what one 
would naturally think. A lien lias to put 
life into the egg, part of her vitality. It 
is not comparable to the quantity of milk 
produced by a cow; rather it is as though 
a cow had a dozen calves in a year, and 
one would naturally think that the last 
calf would he weaker and less desirable 
than the first. "But the experiments at 
Storrs demonstrated that the fertility and 
viability of the chicks was a persistent 
characteristic of the individual hen. and 
was not perceptibly altered by the num¬ 
ber of eggs previously laid.- 
I want to make one more point before 
closing this article. Years ago, at Cornell 
University. Prof. .Tames E. Rice experi¬ 
mented with the size of eggs, usiug large 
eggs, medium eggs .and small eggs; of 
course, all one variety. White Leg¬ 
horns in this case. He found that the 
chicks corresponded to the size of the 
eggs; that is, the chicks from the large 
eggs weighed the most, from the medium 
eggs next, and from the small eggs they 
weighed the least. That might have been 
expected, but following the mattter up he 
found that all through the season the 
chicks from the large eggs continued to 
be the largest, and the other two sizes 
followed according to the size of the eggs. 
I wonder whether this is a point that, 
it followed up, would enable us to in¬ 
crease a little the average size of our 
Leghorn fowls? This doesn’t mean that 
a small egg always produces a small fowl. 
Buff Wyandottes usually lay a smaller 
egg than a Leghorn, but it produces a 
bird twice the size of a Leghorn. Neither 
does ic mean that monstrous, abnormal 
eggs will produce a bird comparatively 
large. But the point, taken within rea¬ 
son, is worth considering. 
GEOKGE A. COSGKOVE. 
