ee = 4 iN fy es vey ee Dl if t Site, Ne ion se) Some Met Ne a As Or the management of poultry on a large scale for commercial purposes FARM oeed eee. A practical manual and reliable handbook upon producing eggs and poultry for market as a profitable business enterprise, either by itself or connected with other branches of agriculture. By H. H. STODDARD For many years editor Poultry World and American Poultry Yard, Author of An Eyg Farm, etc., etc. An entirely new work, embodying all that is most valuable from the author’s first book, to which are added the results of a lifetime of work, invention, improvement and observation in the vast and growing commercial poultry industry in all sections of the country. IN eal O TLICOST eA (TONS New York ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 1900 ‘Ldbrary aa. ree | Office of Ecaes 57080 Copyright 1899 : BI : ai ORANGE J UDD COMPANY — FIG ‘Feed box for Chacks LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Author—Fr oanuesioneee Diagram for egg farm = Coop of growing chicks - Stone cutter’s dray. - = Scraper for dry earth - E Shovel fordryearth - -— - Platform for drying earth - Loading dry earth Sr heya Bottomofdray -_ - Z u House for layers—winter ar rrangement House for layers—summer arrangement Winter quarters for laying stock - = Pen for moving fowls House for early harched pullets House for breeders = = Yard and houses for breeders’ - Movablefence - - - - Feed shelf - : Horamer for feed shelf - Sash pulley - 5 Office and TT aton house = House for sitters - - = House for sitters—interior Plan of yards for sitters - Coop forsitters - - - Apparatus forsitters - - Apparatus for sitters - - Ground plan of hatching bose Section of covered yard - Interior of hatching house - Feed shelf and gate

c = a Houses for Sitters - - = & Z = Houses for Sitters in Mild Climate - - Management in Mild Climate = - S Coops for Chickens - - = - = 3 Fowls for Layers and Sitters - = = The Kinds of Food - = 3 Z = is Breeding and Incubation - - - = Management of Sitters - - - - - Management of Young Chickens - - - Additional Buildings - - - - - The Intensive System - - - - - The Exerciser - - - - - 6 “ The Tilt Box - - - = s & = Outdoor Exerciser - - - - - - Success with Ducks - - = 2 = Perfecting the Details - - = : = For Soft Feed - - - - = = 3 Alternate and Parallel Systems soe - Healthy, Vigorous Birds - - - - Business Poultry Farming -~ - ai A Artificial Incubation - - - - - Requisities of a Good Incubator —- = oper Care‘of theMegs™ =) | =28-fe ane The Incubator Room - - = S 2 Brooders’ - = 2 = ees = a Method of Heating and Ventilating Brooders The Brooder of the Future - - . = Vili AN EGG FARM. CHARTER I. INTRODUCTORY. During the last thirty years, farming has been divided into specialties. The history of modern industry shows that it is only through division of labor that the preci- sion and skill can be attained that become necessary as competition constantly grows keener. Improvements in methods, and the invention of labor-saving machinery, are sure to follow the establishment of an industry as ¢ specialty. Sheep farms, farms for milk, others for but- ter. or cheese, small fruits, vegetable truck, etc., are not only common, but there is a further division—a gardener raising as a principal crop nothing but onions or celery, an orchardist nothing but peaches, and so on. Eggs and poultry for the great cities are now produced in part by extensive establishments systematically con- ducted, instead of there being an entire dependence upon the old, haphazard way of a few on each farm. The production of eggs, rather than poultry meat, must always be the key to the poultry interest, because raising pullets for layers brings so many supernumerary cocks, that these, with the fowls past their prime, always keep the dressed poultry side of the market better supphed than the egg department, and therefore special estab- lishments for raising table poultry, winter chickens and ducks in the northern states excepted, will not, in the long run, be demanded. 2 AN EGG FARM. An account of ‘‘the state of the art,” to date, of poultry raising as a separate branch of industry, should include, not merely the progress made, but a forecast of the future. It is only by comparing the present with twenty or thirty years ago, that the magnitude of the great. revolutions in industrial affairs can be realized. In general, it may be said that the princinal movements have not yet spent their force; but great as the changes have been, they will, in the next few years, be vastly intensified. A generation ago a little of almost every principal article of food was raised on every farm, and all consumed within a few miles, comparatively, of where it was produced; while now food production has not only been divided into separate branches, but the main divisions have been split into an almost endless number of subdivisions, and articles are common on every table that have been carried thousands of miles; this differentiation will go on further and with greater rapidity than has happened already. The tendency of the times is to improve transporta- tion, not only by the main railroads, but by the smaller lines and the common roads, a tendency which promotes the selection of the very best locality, as regards soil and climate, for carrying on any particular branch of food production. This choice of the best place, aided by the great modern development of cold storage, and the con- tinually increasing facilities for transportation at reduced rates, will continue to augment the production of poultry in the South Central states, or what may be called the northern tier of the Southern states, and especially the region to the south, southeast and southwest of Kansas City, end enhance the importance of the extensive or colony plan of management best adapted to a mild cli- mate, and which will be described in the following pages, and the intensive plan, pursued on a compara- tively small plat of ground, will also receive due atten- INTRODUCTORY. 3 tion, since it has, by the late invention of labor-saving machinery, been made more feasible than previously, while the art of artificial incubation has also been per- fected. Modifications of both the intensive and exten- sive systems will be fully described to suit the varying needs of localities as diverse as those in our country of magnificent distances, while the false and unnatural plans which have ended in ruin during the twenty years that have seen the principal progress in poultry affairs, will be treated but briefly and as a warning. In managing animals of any kind, we must follow nature, for she will neither follow us nor be driven. The domestication of animals was only possible at the outset by proceeding on a natural groundwork. To illustrate: Man domesticated dogs that, when wild, fol- lowed one of their own number as a leader, by installing himself as leader instead—so naturalists state—and the cat will never be domesticated in such a way as to fol- low her master when he changes his abode, because originally a solitary animal. Just so the domestication of fowls was effected by building upon an original foun- dation. In understanding the nature and needs of poultry, it will assist if we vestigate the condition and habits of the wild parent stock in India, for the nature of all animals remains essentially the same for long periods. ‘The transfer of our domesticated birds from forest to farm has affected their life and most important habits surprisingly little. The tame fowls have the same cries of warning to each other, and other language, that observers have found them to use in their native jungles ; they still hide their nests in some corner, just as if they were selecting a nook in a thicket; and they are attached to the premises where they live, as they and all other gallinaceous birds are to some small district, when wild. The wild jungle fowl is by no means for- eign to our subject ; and in attempting to manage poul- 4 AN EGG FARM. try by thousands, only a proper regard for original nature will prevent failure. According to this nature, they live during the breeding season in distinct families under polygamy. Each family group has, by tacit agreement, a part of the forest for its beat, and the exclusion of strangers of the same species secures privacy and tranquillity. They have their freedom, and in that word are comprehended the needful exercise, sun, pure air, shade, and varied diet. Some plans upon a large scale have comprised small separate flocks without freedom, and others have embraced large flocks in freedom without separation ; a third plan, and better than either of the foregoing, being to keep smal! flocks separately, yet in full freedom. Small flocks at liberty on distinct farms haye been kept successfully during centuries, because the owners were unconsciously imitating the natural groups of the wild jungle fowls., It has been found that when a flock of twenty, if! free range on the farm, gave a handsome profit, angl the mer has been “menensed to hundreds, all in ong. Y flock, with the idea of correspondingly multi- plying the gains, an unnatural mob has been formed, the hereditary instincts violated, and laying checked. The confusion has not, however, lessened the amount of feed consumed, and pecuniary results have been the wrong way. When it is attempted to divide the num- ber, and place them in separate inclosures, the results are still far from satisfactory. Small flocks kept yarded may be multiplied on the same farm to any desired extent; but their wants can be all supplied only through an amount of labor that eats up the profits, unless the mechanical apparatus we shall describe in the following pages is used, the invention of which was the most important step ever taken in poultry culture since fowls were first domesticated. In this land of high wages, the expense of attendance determines, to a great extent, INTRODUCTORY. 3) the success of the whole project ; hence the importance oi the new system of poultry keeping by machinery. Keeping fowls as a business should be regarded as a species of manufacturing, grain being the principal raw material, and eggs and poultry meat the finished prod- ucts. ‘The value of the products, of course, exceeds that of the raw material; but if the labor cost is not carefully watched, it may eat up the difference. The menace which will always hang over the keeper of poul- try on a large scale, is the competition of the ordinary farmers, villagers and suburban residents, who enter the market incidentally merely to dispose of surplus. Eyery owner of a small flock of fowls pours his little rill of poultry products into the great market stream any- how, irrespective of profit, and this makes it hard for the big establishment. It is, in this respect, like farm- ing, in which so many are working for a living that it is next to impossible for anybody else to farm on a large scale for money. Or it is like the instance of the girls behind counters in the large stores, who usually receive very small wages, in some cases not enough to pay for decent board, the reason being that there are so many girls wanting places who have nothing to do and who can board wits their parents. The increase of the number of small flocks of fowls, consequent upon the diffusion of population in the suburbs by means of the trolley lines, adds to the difficulties of the large scale operator. The big plant cannot stand this sort of com- petition unless labor-saving contrivances are used. This is a ‘‘machine-ridden” age. Industrial inven- tions have revolutionized society, yet the transformation is far from being complete. One man now performs the work formerly done by fifty men, in making textile or metallic goods, or of thirty men in producing, milling and transporting breadstuffs; but the mission of inven- tion, as concerns feeding mankind, is far from perfect 6 AN EGG FARM. fulfillment. he raising of animal food is to be vastly improved. Crops have been cultivated cheaper, and yet cheaper, as year by year better agricultural implements and machinery have been devised, but in tending domes- tic animals, whether they are horses, cattle, sheep, swine or poultry, but little, comparatively, has been accomplished to diminish the amount of labor. Now it takes more time to tend the farm animals of the United States and care for their products—butter to be churned, wool to be sheared, steers to be fattened, colts to be broken and trained for sale, and so on—than it takes hours to raise the grain and forage these animals eat, harvest the same and haul it to mow or granary ready for consumption. Here isa great field for labor-saving inventions, a field white for the harvest. Machinery must be used in doing chores. Where horses or cows are kept in considerable numbers in the same stable, mechanical apphances have already been employed by the writer to supply them with water, hay and grain, lessening the labor very materially, and a way has been found to clean horse stables by machinery. Sheep for fattening are now fed in immense numbers with grain by specially constructed feed hoppers; milking machines are being perfected, and swine can be fed and tended, horses curried and brushed, and young horses have been broken and trained by the writer very satisfactorily indeed, no matter how incorrigible they were at the start, by the aid of machinery, at a great saving of time. The first outlay for almost every modern machine is much greater than was the cost of the old-fashioned hand tools it superseded. But the sum total of the cost involved by the time the machine is worn out doing good, is less under the machine system than it was under the hand tool system sixty years ago. Otherwise, mod- ern machinery would not be labor saving. ‘The reaper and binder does the work of a file of men with cradles, INTRODUCTORY. 4 and another file to rake and bind. The price of the ponderous thing is greater than what cradles and rakes would cost. The farmer pays his harvesting bills for eight or ten years in advance when he buys a reaping machine that will last that length of time; that is, he hires fewer harvest hands for eight or ten years. His grain is cut, virtually, before it issown. It is cut ina machine shop one thousand miles away; the reapers wear aprons and paper caps, and work cutting the farm- er’s grain in a factory he never sees; their wages are higher per diem than what cradlers would get, but his harvesting costs him less the new way, or there would be no labor saving about it. Just so in the new system of poultry keeping by machinery; there is the mechan- ic’s bill at the outset. The machines will last many years; those which are indoors will last during the poultry man’s lifetime. If the wages of the mechanics who construct them, including interest, amount to less than the wages of employes saved or superseded during the twenty or fifty years the apparatus lasts, interest on the wages included, then there is labor saving. Now, in any line of industry, no good machinery, well adapted to accomplish the work for which it was designed, ever yet failed to save labor, and the poultry machinery described in this book saves a greater per cent of labor than does the average farm machinery. @EEACP Ania ollen LOCATION. A location near a city secures certain important adyan- tages. An article produced daily the year through, and which is prized for being fresh, should be raised as close toa market as possible. Thus the highest prices may be obtained, the special aim being to supply the demand for better eges than any can be that are packed and sent great distances. Under the system which now supplies, to a great extent, northern cities, there is the time spent in collecting eggs from various sources, to which must be added the time for transportation, and the time they are in the dealer’s hands after arrival. Then the jarring is more or less injurious, and after it, eggs will keep but a little while. They pass through so many hands that no one in particular is responsible for the character of the article. Under a better plan, eges are delivered directly to consumers, families bemg visited regularly once a week. The egg route has this advantage over a milk route, that it need not be traversed so often, only a sixth of the whole being traveled daily; thus the expense of delivery is not great. As a team must be sent to town every day to collect stale bread from the bakeries, waste bits from the meat markets, etc., eggs can be sent, when only a day or two laid, with no extra trouble. If disposed of at stores, an arrangement should be made with the dealer whereby they may be kept in a separate lot, and sold under the name of the producer. Consumers readily appreciate eggs, butter or other prod- uce that comes from a regular, responsible source. 8 LOCATION. 9 When a lot is mixed with lots from other farms, its individuality is lost ; if good, it may only be helping to sell the poor article of somebody else, and the producer does not reap the benefits of his pains in increased cus- tom. No produce can be supphed to city dwellers to better mutual advantage to seller and buyer, than new laid eges delivered direct, the dubious ones in the mar- ket causing much loss and vexation. Poultry farms, at the west, have the benefits of cheap land and cheap grain; and at the south the season is earlier, and on the Atlantic coast, especially, cheap transportation by water is available. But the value of manure in some places at the north is so great, that it is more economical to bring grain here from the west than egos, the latter being so troublesome to send by rail. Butchers’ waste, procured fresh, being almost absolutely necessary, 1S an important consideration in favor of proximity toa city. When it is seen that high prices for eggs depend on the latter being produced near by and delivered fresh, and that the labor is no greater to raise them close by the market than at a distance at lower prices, with a deduction for transportation and breakage, it will be readily seen that there are certain special advantages in a location near a big northern city. The site should not be far from a railroad freight depot or wharf. The amount of western grain needed is large. Hauling this many miles by team is too costly. Enriching wornout northern farms by feeding out grain from the prairies, is an indirect way of importing their rich mold. Therefore, we take care that this importa- tion is judiciously contrived. A mill near by, for grind- ing, is desirable. A tract of arable land may be found (though rarely), surrounded on all sides by either woods, swamps or rocky pastures, so that there need be no dan- ger that the fowls will stray into tilled fields of adjoin- ing proprietors. In case such a farm could be procured, 10 AN EGG FARM. the great expense of a fowl-proof fence all around it would be saved. If the tract is unfortunately bounded by cultivated lands, then it must be so large and of such cheap quality, that a border twenty or thirty rods wide may be afforded, to be kept in permanent pasture. The land should be upon a slope, for there must be a quick surface drainage after heayy rains; but the pitch should not be so steep as to prevent easy wagoning. A southern or southeastern inclination gives a proper sunny exposure; and if there is a belt of woods on the north to break the winds, so much the better. If near swamps, sea marshes or damp river valleys, the site should be so ele- vated as to be out of the reach of the worst raw, chilling fogs. We have enumerated all the above qualifications as necessary to a site for an egg farm, and it may be added that most of these apply whether the plant is in the northern or the southern states. Their combination with certain essentials of soil, which we shall state in another place, makes the matter of selection one of con- siderable difficulty. Many more important points are to be attended to than in choosing a place for ordinary farming or gardening. A SOUTHERN LOCATION. While proximity to a northern city has become more important year by year, in one sense, because a greater proportion of the whole population of our country, and of all other countries as well, is, as time rolls on, found in the large towns; yet there is, however, another aspect to the case; for transportation has received such an immense development that it is possible to utilize extremely favorable distant sites, formerly unavailable, for poultry raising. By going a tier or two of states further south from our northern farms, poultry plants may be established under more favorable auspices, in many respects, for supplying the large northern cities, LOCATION. 11 than can be afforded by sites near at hand. Just as early fruits and vegetables have, within a few years, comparatively, been raised in prodigious quantities at the south for shipment to New York, Boston, Chicago and other northern markets, under a regular organized system of gigantic proportions, we may look, in a short time, for something on a correspondingly large scale in the movements of poultry products. By seeking a milder climate, the construction of expensive winter shelters and the cost of fuel for warming them and carrying on artificial hatching and rearing, may be avoided. The climate of the Gulf states, and of all the extreme south, will never be as favorable for poultry as the region of the latitude of North Carolina or southern Kansas. The high trans-Missouri plains, owing to the prevailing drynéss and great purity of the air, afford the best sites for poultry farms in the whole country, the southern portion of this great area being the best. In. all the region from the Dakotas to northern Texas, fowls of all kinds thrive amazingly. It is easier to raise a forty-five pound turkey in Nebraska than a thirty-five pound turkey in New England, from the same strain. Southern Kansas and vicinity, where winters are less severe than further north, lessening expense, as popula- tion increases in the cities of the northeast and of the extreme south, where the climate is unfavorable for poultry, and as railroad lies are multiplied, running north and south between British America and the Texas Gulf coast, will become the best locality in the United States and in the world for the raising of poultry prod- ucts in prodigious quantities. Grain is cheaper in this region than in any other, and is likely to remain so for a long time. Unless the proportion of freight rates =Wonia be mate- rially altered, which is unlikely, it will continue to cost 12 AN EGG FARM. less to transport eggs and fowls from this region of cheap corn to points where both corn and poultry products are comparatively dear, than to ship to the latter vicinity the grain from which these products are formed. Sey- enty years ago nearly every pound of provisions in the whole land was consumed within twenty miles of where it was raised ; but now, since ‘‘many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased,” there is a growing tendency toward shipments to great distances. It is common for the market to contain food supphes, the principal articles of which are from various localities a thousand or two thousand miles apart, while some are from even the most distant parts of the globe. ( >| Al Bia \ ail ==) Ps] _ 2 = = = SS yyy f pong S Muti YOU) eer iAf n¥™|y FA FS Sppba Yin a "MOOLS ONIAVT NOW SHALUVAO WHOELNIM aSLOLD WAL: ———— ee = F= SS <2, C002 m 0mm LLL Hi - r£p[rerw plied with gravel at that season, as they should be to induce them to pulverize every portion of the manure and mix it with the dry earth, in search of the gravel 42 AN EGG FARM. which is very frequently voided. There can be no objec- tion to saving labor by inducing the birds to perform the work of scavengers, which will give them salutary exercise, for it is not intended that they shall be deprived of as much gravel as they need, but only forced to use the same many times over. The bin, as it may be called, should be strengthened with braces across the corners, and kept from spreading by the pressure of its contents by strips nailed from side to side. After the building has been moved in spring to a new station, the bin is to be pried up until the earth drops through it, having no bottom, and when empty it may be readily im 1) | FIG. 12. PEN FOR MOVING FOWLS hauled by team, like a sled, to the place where it is to be used, as will be explained, in connection with chicken raising. The building is hauled onto this bin in the fall and off in the spring, by taking the wedge-shaped platform for drying earth, previously figured, for a skid, and attaching the team to a rope twenty feet or more long, and using smali rollers. It is a quick and not over troublesome operation, for it must be recollected that the house is not large or heavy. Figure 12 represents a pen to move fowls in when their houses are to be moved a considerable distance, to sum- HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 43 mer quarters and to winter quarters. When this pen is put in the place occupied by the feed rcom at the end of the passage, Figs. 9 and 11, the fowls are baited into it, the door, A, corresponding to an opening in the side of the end of the passage, C. The partitions in the pen separate the flock into squads, to prevent too many fowls huddling together and trampling each other during moving, at which time a canvas covering should exclude the light. Chains may be passed around the ends of the crosspiece for draft. The artist has made the runners turn up too much, a bevel merely, like that on the sills of the movable houses, being all that is necessary. During the winter, a low structure, 6 ft. wide, 12 ft. long, and 1 1-2 ft. high on one side and 3 1-2 ft. on the other, seen at the left in Fig. 9, serves the purpose of a feeding room, and the rest of the year is used as a Shelter for chickens. Its winter location is about 4 ft. from the larger building. J, #, #, #, represent doors, which overlap each other to shed rain, and when closed rest upon the highest or north wall, and open upwards and to the south, resting upon a rail attached to posts set in the ground. In each door is a window 3 ft. square, glazed, as are all the windows in the various fowl houses, greenhouse style. This feed house is movable, being furnished with planks set edgewise, with runner-shaped ends for side sills. Inside, a feed box, slatted on both sides, rests on cleats attached to the end walls, 20 in. from the north wall, and near the top of the room, so that dirt cannot be scratched into it. It has a shelf 7 in. wide on both sides in front of the slats, on which the birds stand while feeding, and contains a trough made by nailing boards 3 in. wide to each edge of a board 5 in. wide. A door, /, in one end of the feed room, large enough to admit a fowl, communicates with a similar door, G, in the south side of the main build- ing, by a movable covered passage 5 1-2 ft. long, 1 1-4 44 AN EGG FARM. ft. high, and 1 ft. wide, it being like a box with a lid, and but one end, and with an opening on one side. This passage is not shown in the eut, but appears at CO, Fig. 11. Every night in winter, after the fowls are at roost, the door, Fig. 9, should be closed, and the window shutters of the main building likewise. In the morning a mixture of vegetables, boiled and mashed, scalded meal, and a little meat boiled and chopped fine, is_ placed in the feed trough, and the daily rations of hard grain buried underneath straw, which covers the ground of the feeding apartment to the depth of eight or ten’ inches. The fowls are prevented, by the shutters, from looking on. Next open the passage, and in a minute the fowls will all be at the feed box. After finishing the soft feed, the grain, consisting in part of buckwheat or cracked corn or wheat screenings, so as to make as much work as possible to find it, will be scratched for at intervals all day long. A little practice will enable the attendant to give just enough, and have none left over night. Placing grain for scratching indoors is only for inclement weather, however. During a few of the coldest spells,—such as usually occur three or four times in the winter, and last three to seven days,—and during storms, fowls prefer to remain indoors all day ; but they should never, except in the morning, before feeding, be prevented from going out if they choose. Altogether, there are not usually twenty days in a year during which fowls will voluntarily keep inside all day. Snow should be cleared from a plat of ground at each station, with the aid of the team, and the scraper and shoyel previously described, or a road erader. If the winter is open and mild, have a pile of straw out of doors with grain buried under it, using the broadcast seeder and hay tedder before mentioned, and whenever there is no snow start the broadcast seeder and scatter a very little finely cracked corn with the HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 45 meal sifted out, or millet seed, far and wide on portions ot the range not provided with straw, to encourage the habit of running around and searching. Keep your fowls always on the move. As soon as the buildings are moved to the new stations in spring, and the feeding rooms are also drawn off to be used in housing young chickens, the feed boxes are taken out, they merely rest- ing on cleats without being fastened, and carried to the stations, where they stand on the ground out of doors during summer, for use each morning, chopped yegeta- bles, meat or other soft feed being placed in them, out of sight of the birds, as before. The winter quarters for the laying stock are further represented in Fig. 11. In this eut the same building is shown asin Fig. 9. The passage leading to the feed room is shown in one cf these cuts, and the feed room is shown in the other. In Fig. 11, certain useful con- trivances for windbreaks are illustrated, these being highly prized by fowls in cold weather. When the house is located for winter, the doors in the north roof are covered with building paper in overlapping sheets, tacked on slightly so that it may be removed in spring. Straw is laid over the paper to the depth of afoot. : Sitg : FIG. 13. HOUSE FOR EARLY HATCHED PULLETS. nearly circular, and 25 ft. broad at the narrowest point, is raised by scraping with the team. It should be 3 1-2 ft. high at the center, and slope gradually to a level with the surface of the field. Upon this mound a cellar is dug 7 1-2 ft. by 14 1-2 ft., and 5 ft. deep, the bottom being 6 in. higher than the average of the surface beyond the mound. The cellar is walled substantially with stone, laid in cement, and floored with the latter mate- rial. Stations furnished with such cellars are upon a part of the farm where there is a gentle slope, and, HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 49 wherever necessary, a tile drain is put under the founda- tion of the walls. The floor of an underground fowl house must always be a little higher than the adjoining field, not on account of drainage alone, but for ventilation. No room is fit to be occupied by stock that cannot be ventilated at the bottom. In this cellar the walled passage at A admits air within eight inches of the floor, which is covered with dry earth to that depth. The walls are topped with plank sills, upon the outer edges of which the run- ners of the itinerant building rest, calking being resorted to as in the previous case. It will not answer to house fowls in such a place unless there is plenty of glass above, and the south roof, therefore, contains five long windows, instead of two short ones, as in the other cases, each door being furnished with one. There is a shutter, B, to correspond with each window. Other- wise the house is of the usual pattern, and the winter sheds and feed room are attached to it, though omitted in the figure so as to show the embankment plainer. The house and mound have a bleak look in the illustra- tion, but the sheds will make the whole sheltered and cosy. In the cut, the embankment is represented too steep: The slant should be such as to withstand heavy rains. ‘The usual boarded passage, not shown in the cut, connects the feed room with the tunnel at A. There are sunny days enough in winter to keep the earth bed inside perfectly dry, and the air will be no damper than in an unglazed apartment entirely above ground. Straw mats of the greenhouse pattern are used at night upon the north roofs of all the buildings in winter. The amount of solar heat accumulated during a clear winter’s day in a tight building roofed with glass is surprising, and this is to be retained as long as possi- ble, always remembering, however, to give ventilation its due. Summer and winter the admission of air must 4 50 AN EGG FARM. be gauged by every change of wind and weather. It is one of the advantages of business upon a large scale, that operations which it would not pay to attend to with one flock, may be afforded where there are many. Unless the mats are put on before sundown, and some- times on a mild day on a part of the windows at noon, so much glass will prove injurious because the fluctua- tions in temperature will be too violent. The buildings are kept over the cellars only in winter, and are drawn on and off the sills above the walls by the use of small rollers, and a horse attached to tackle. The cellars must not lie idle after the houses are moved, but be roofed with the platforms for drying earth, and a few movable greenhouse sashes, and used as a shelter for chickens. CHAPTER VI. HCUSES FOR BREEDERS. The quarters for the breeding stock combine houses very much like those for layers, only smaller, and yards made of movable fences. ‘I'he houses for layers are mov- able, with no yards; the houses for sitters are stationary, with movable yards; and the houses and yards for breeders are both movable. The breeders are kept in fives and tens, no flock ever to exceed the latter number. The buildings are of two sizes, one 3 1-2 it. wide, 4 ft. long, and 21-2 it. high; and the other of the same width and hight, and 7 1-2 ft. long. There are no run- ners, and the doors are few in number, though compris- ing the whole roof; each house, Fig. 14, is furnished with but one window, and but two or three nests are necessary, and one perch. Otherwise the houses are like those for layers on a reduced scale. ‘They are designed to be moved by two persons, adjustable handles being attached at either end for this purpose. In this way, being without floors, they are shifted to different parts of the yards, and set on ridges of earth raised by the plow. In winter, each stands upon the edges of a dust bin of 2 in. by 8 in. plank. The movable fences for the yards of both sitters and breeders are made as follows: Pickets, 2 in. wide, 1-2 in. thick and 6 ft. long, are nailed to two rails 3 in. square and 12 ft. long. At both ends of every rail, U-shaped pieces of stout hogshead hoop iron are fast- ened by screws so as to form staples through which round posts, 71-2 ft. long and 21-2 in. in diameter, ol 52 AN EGG FARM. pointed at both ends, are thrust, and set in the ground. The rails in the alternate sections are at such distances apart that the tops of the pickets shall be in line, and the staples not interfere with those of the adjoining sections. Each post is supported, so as to resist the winds to which the fences expose so much surface, by a brace upon the out- side of the yard, Fig. 15. This brace is made by sawing a rail stick in two, and furnishing each end with a sta- ple like those upon the rails. The staples are fastened upon the braces in an obtuse angle, and the ends of the braces are beveled, the better to fit the posts. One of these staples passes around the post between the two staples of the upper rails, and through the lower one, SMM WO AWN XI TOM SMSO WAY NUM FIG. 14. HOUSE FOR BREEDERS. which reaches to the ground, a short stake is driven into the earth, with its top inclining away from the fence, Fig. 16. The spaces between the pickets are 2 1-2 in. wide for breeders; for sitters, which are of a larger breed, 3 in. are allowed. The pickets are nailed on the yard side of the rails, to prevent fowls alighting on the rails. The fences which divide the breeding yards are boarded for 2 ft. at the bottom to keep neighboring cocks from fighting. This boarding is, however, not shown in the cut, neither is the runway shown, which, as will be described later, is attached to the end of each yard, which is at the rear in Fig. 15.. Panels of wire netting attached to wooden frames may be used instead HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 53 of pickets, if desired, in which case the U-shaped pieces of stout hoop iron should be attached to the portions of the frames corresponding to the top and bottom rails of the picket fence. The wire netting fence stands better than the picket fence, because it does not take so much wind as the latter. Before describing the runways for the purpose of exercise, which are attached to the yards,-the latter being so very small, the absolute necessity of plenty of this exercise for the choice selected breeding stock will be enlarged upon. Dr. Holmes, when asked the age at which the education of a child should begin, answered : «“A thousand years before it is born.” All breeding animals must have exercise. Better breed strong stock - YARDS AND HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. in the first place than putter at doctoring sick fowls afterwards. When breeding ewes are confined in close quarters all winter, the lambs from them in the spring are born as limpsy as a wet rag. Said a Vermont raiser of high-class Merinos: ‘‘ When I induce my ewes to go a half mile or so to a stack for their hay, and in order to get their grain make a journey back again, and repeat this round trip over and over, every day all winter, their lambs are born as solid and firm as a rock.” Even the domesticated hares-or rabbits, which stand close confine- ment better than any other animal, give much stronger progeny if allowed room to exercise during the breeding period and previously. Mr. Thomas Wright, the great 54 AN EGG FARM. pigeon authority, says: ‘‘ Nature designed the pigeon for exercise, and when it is deprived of it entirely it rarely lives many years and never breeds well for any considerable length of time,” and adds: ‘‘In visiting lofts where the pigeons have flying privileges, we may expect to see young-looking old birds, but if we go where the aviary affords but little exercise we shall see old- looking young birds.” The exercise that fowls get on a free range is worth more than what they find there to eat. As for exercise, in the ordinary poultry yard it is bet- ter than nothing, but it amounts to but little because the yard affords no vegetation and no insects for them to hunt. But poultry in confinement, even in a very small house and a very small yard, by means of the apparatus we are about to describe and which is attached to the yards for breeders, take more. exercise year out and year in than they get on the best range in the world, and they are exceedingly == contented and happy. Their feeding <~ time is all the time. It is prolonged ' through the whole day. cies 16 woviecn Nake two breeding flocks that ane Bue exactly alike as regards breed, age, size, thrift, vigor, and everything else. Give both flocks the same shelter, and food of the same sort and quantity exactly. Yard one flock in the usual manner, providing no incentives to exercise other than the yard affords, it being, as is usual, as bare as the middle of the street. Furnish the other flock with exer- cising apparatus and you will get eggs for hatching pur- poses entirely different in character from the eggs of the other flock. The vitality of eggs under different cir- HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 5d cumstances should be well understood by all who rear poultry. The matter is well illustrated by plant life. In the vegetable kingdom, there are all degrees of fertility. By this, we mean that a plant may bear some seeds that are plump, containing the germs of a future generation of plants, and which, if placed in the earth, will germinate and produce their kind, while there are other seeds on the same plant that are somewhat shriveled and shrunken and will not grow, although at first sight they do not, to any great extent, seem inferior to the plumpest and _ best speci- mens, aside from their dried-up appear- ance. At the further end of the series there are mere hulls without any vestige of meat or kernel to give promise of the reproduction of the species. Between the extremes of the empty hull and the plumpest grain there is a series embracing every gradation. It has been found by experiment that even if the same con- ditions of soil, warmth, and moisture are present, some grains give healthy plants which reach maturity, while others just start to grow a little and then die with- out making their way to the surface of the soil, where they might receive the genial rays of the sun. There is something very much akin to this in the hatching of eggs. There are some that are perfectly and absolutely barren; there are others that are fertile and capable of producing vigorous chick- ens, and between these extremes there is every shade and 56 AN EGG FARM. grade. Very often poultry men find chickens dead in the shell. Some die after the egg has been sat upon eighteen, nineteen, or twenty days, the chicks appearing full size and ready to burst the shell; some, however, die on the twelfth or fifteenth day, and others on the fifth or sixth day. In some cases, it appears as though the germinal speck just started in its growth and then was nipped in the bud. When a poultry man of an inquiring turn of mind breaks the eggs that have failed to hatch, he finds germs in every stage of growth, from the first trace of the development of organization up to the apparently perfectly formed chick, which looks as if all it had to FIG. 18. STRIKER FOR FEED SHELF. do was to break the shell and be warmed and dried, in order to run around and pick up its own lhving. ‘There are very many cases of arrested development and death in the shell at different stages that cannot be attriouted to any treatment the eges have received after they were put under the sitting hen or into the incubator, for other eggs, subjected to exactly the same influences, hatched and produced vigorous chickens. Now, what is the rea- son for all this? Surely is it not the character which the egg itself received from the hen that Jaid it or the sire that fertilized it, or both? ‘There is such a thing as inherited weakness, which may characterize an egg or 2 HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. before it is laid and give a tendency to the germ to die socner or later, before it has become fully developed. The necessity for securing a high degree of vitality in the eggs intended for hatching is the more imperative on account of the abnormal condition of our domestic fowls as regards the great numbers of eggs they lay. If the hen steals her nest, lays there twelve or fifteen eggs and stops to incubate, these are invariably of high vitality. By robbing nests daily, we force an unnatural number of eges. To counteract the tendency to weakness of the germs, machinery is invoked, although it might seem at first thought that inanimate mechanical appa- ratus could have no intimate connection with vital processes. To secure exercise in the yards for breeders, Fig. 15, runways, not shown in the cut, are attached to the rear of the yards. These runways are one hundred and fifty feet long and two and one-half feet high, built in moy- able sections. Extending across, over the tops of the fences in the breeders’ yards, Fig. 15, is a continuous shelf, not shown in the cut, suspended over the yards by wires or cords, so that it may swing freely endwise. It is prevented by upright strips from swinging sidewise. A section of this long shelf is represented in Fig. 17, although it should be suspended by cords passing under the shelf in loops, mstead of passing through the shelf, as in the cut. Grain is placed evenly the whole length of this long shelf and a hammer is kept handy at one end of the shelf. By tapping horizontally on the end, the whole shelf is slightly jarred, and a very little grain is dropped into each yard. At the end of the runways farthest from the houses, these runways communicate with another series of small yards over which is sus- pended another swinging shelf supplied with grain. To obviate the necessity of the attendant going the length of the runways to operate this distant shelf, a ham- 58 AN EGG FARM, mer is suspended on a pivot between two posts. This ham- mer is raised by pulling a wire, one end of which is within the reach of the operator, who stands at the shelf. near the houses where the hand-hammer is. One end of a short cord is attached to the distant hammer, Fig. 18, passing around two sash pulleys, Fig. 19, so as to change the pull from perpendicular to horizontal, and the other end is attached to the wire above mentioned. One end of the shelf meets the blow of the hammer between the posts. After a little practice, a blow can be given each time with just sufficient force to jar off a little grain. If predatory pigeons or sparrows are feared, have wire net- ting attached to the shelf over the grain, a few inches above it. A small bell may be suspended near each shelf and rung after the hammer stroke, by means of a wire terminating at the same point that the hammer wire does, as above described, so as to be within easy reach of the attend- ant. Spool wire, Fig. 102, is the fbest. Fowls quickly learn the meaning of sound signals, for, as everybody knows, they may be called by a whistle or by drumming on the feed pan or by any sort of noise cus- tomarily repeated at feed time. The bell-is not abso- Intely necessary, for the birds hear the hammer stroke and soon learn its meaning. The breeding fowls and breeding yards are few in number, and as these fowls are very choice and their perfect thrift is of the utmost importance, the feed shelves are to be jarred quite frequently during the day, and, therefore, the yards should be located near the feed storehouse, or the place where the eggs are put after gathering, or at whatever point the attendant will pass, or be at, the most frequently during the day. Or the hammers for both the shelves may be pivoted and have cords and wires attached, these last being extended to HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 59 the watchman’s house, Fig. 20, or storeroom, or other permanent building, and operated by clockwork every twenty minutes. Of course, bell wires may also be pulled by the clockwork, but this will not be found worth while; for, as has been said, the sound of the hammer stroke will answer quite well as a call, although when a clock is not employed, calls are a pretty good thing, since they can be so readily put up and operated. Under each shelf, a pile of straw should be kept to make work for the birds in addition to the running back and forth which the feed dropping induces. One ay i MD COTTA SCAT uD FIG. 20. OFFICE AND WATCH HOUSE. great advantage of the long runs is that the birds will make frequent trips of their own accord to see what there is good to eat at the other end, the remembrance of a series of feasts being always vivid in their minds. Even if bells, hammers and shelves are operated but once every hour or two, or only three or four times daily, the fowls will keep running back and forth fre- quently. The difference between a given amount of ground space in a yard of a square form and in one long and narrow, as regards the exercise conferred respec- 60 AN EGG FARM. tively, is simply enormous. In a square yard, or in one which is, say, twice or thrice as long as wide, the birds will not ramble much. They find that there is nothing to be gained and soon become discouraged and mope in complete listlessness. If it were not for the great expense of building material and the difficulty of moving so much fence, the yards could be made 10 or 12 ft. wide and 100 or 200 ft. long, instead of having runways. But the low, covered hurdles are so handy and can be shifted so quickly, to sweeten the ground by plow and harrow every month, in addition to the annual moving to another field entirely, that their invention was a great boon conferred on the poulterer. The importance of sweet, fresh earth in yards and runways cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The poultry man’s nose and inhaling organs are 5 ft. or so from the ground, and he does not notice a taint in the soil, which would be very perceptible were he breathing as near the ground as the fowls are. Were it not for the careful breeding, by selection and pedigree, we would not yard the breeding birds at all. The disadvantage of the yards and runways such as have been described, is that the straw on which the grain is dropped cannot be stirred by team and hay tedder and horserake. But, since the breeders’ yards are few, the time taken in stirring the litter is unimportant. It will be found that the attendant’s boots are handier than a fork, if the straw is comparatively new and unbroken, for he can easily kick it loose several times daily, when it becomes compacted under the feet of the fowls. The ideal way is to not only drop grain upon straw by mechanical apparatus, but to stir the straw also and mix straw and grain together by machinery. ‘This can be done to great advantage under the intensive system, to be described further on, but as it is desired to have the houses and yards for the breeding birds movable, for HOUSES FOR BREEDERS. 61 putting the land in crop every other year, the shelves and hammers, which are easily set up with or without bells, are all the apparatus with which we would burden the moving. In this connection, it may be observed that the advantage of the low down form of wagon for moving fences and hurdles to a distant spot annually is very apparent. CEA RAMS Ry: Wali HOUSES FOR SITTERS. The stock used for hatching purposes is managed dif- ferently from the layers, and needs different accommo- dations. The houses for sitters, Fig. 21, are near the center of the farm, where the granary and cook room are located. They accommodate 100 fowls each, are not movable, and are set upon a stone or brick underpinning, 10 in. high. ‘They are 10 ft. 4 in. from the ground to the peak, and 20 ft. long by way of the ridge, and 16 ft. wide. The roofs are shingled, and the ends of the puildings covered with boards nailed upright and bat- tened. About one-third of the roof towards the south is glazed, the windows being partially darkened as warm weather approaches. The form of these houses, like that of all in the establishment, with eaves near the eround, is adapted to afford as much ground room as possible in proportion to the lumber used. The roof of each house is crossed outside by a picket fence running at right angles with the ridge. This fence forms one side of the yard with which each house is furnished, and though it extends only 18 in. above the ridge of the building, the sitters, not being of a high-flying breed, will not get over it. By this arrangement, exit is afforded to the fowls and to their keeper at either end of the Lailding, into a yard which is located at either end on alternate years. The two ends of the house, one fronting east and the other west, are both provided exactly alike with doors and windows. The large doors are 6 1-2x3 ft., opening outwards, and the smaller ones 62 HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 63 attached to them are 7x9 in. The windows are 2x3 ft., and are hinged, opening upwards for ventilation. In hot weather the windows and doors in both ends of the building are opened wide, and to prevent the fowls escaping at the end where there is no yard, wire netting is fastened across the window casings inside, and there is an inside door of the same material hung to the stud, to which the outside door is hinged. Figure 22 gives an interior view of the house. There are four perches, each 15 ft. long, and of the width and TTA ETAT i Ti Mae TMM jy! | piercer FIG. 21. HOUSE FOR SITTERS. thickness of those for layers. They are placed 18 in. higher than the top of the underpinning, those nearest the nests being 3 1-2 ft., and those nearest the eaves _9 1-4 ft. from the center of the building. A space 2 1-2 ft. wide at each end of the room is left unoccupied by the perches. Three tiers of nests occupy the center of the room, each tier consisting of two rows placed back to back, and running in the same direction as the 64 AN EGG FARM. perches. There are 12 nests in each row, or 72 in all, and as each nest is 1 ft. square and 1 ft. high, they occupy 12 ft. in length. This allows a space of 4 ft. at each end of the building between the nests and the doors, and as the latter are planned of a sufficient width to admit a wheelbarrow, and the perches are made so as to be easily moved, opportunity is afforded to wheel in or out the dry earth which fills the bottom of the room halfway up to the top of the underpinning. ‘There are nests enough so that eighteen hens may be set at once, and leave room for fowls that are laying. The nests are FIG. 22. HOUSE FOR SITTERS—INTERIOR. placed so that the bottom of the lower ones are 6 in. higher than the perches, this hight enabling attendant to avoid stooping, as there is much work to be done about the nests of sitting hens; while they are not so high as to prevent the fowls reaching them by flying upon the nearest perch, or as to render a ladder neces- sary. The nests are made so that the hens enter them at the front, where a 3 in. strip set edgewise prevents the eggs from tumbling out. An alighting board pro- jects 2 1-2 in. in front of each row of nests. HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 6d The partitions at the backs of the nests are made of wire netting, one-inch mesh, to keep out rats, ‘those at the sides of the same and of a two-inch wire netting, alternately, for purposes described in another place. In this way a circulation of air is allowed for the health of the sitters. Sufficient attention is not gener- aily given to this point. Fowls in a state of nature being accustomed to scratch holes in the ground under bushes, to form their nests and incubate where there is plenty of air, pant and show distress in hot weather when forced to occupy close boxes. Large doors of wire netting, two-inch mesh, not shown in the illustra- tion, prevent the fowls roosting at the entrance to the nests at night. These doors are closed after gathering the eggs towards evening, and opened again the first thing in the morning, and are made in two parts, fold- ing together, so that there may be room for them over- head, when raised. A piece of rat-proof netting is placed in front of a nest occupied by a hen engaged in hatching, and fastened by buttons, to keep out laying fowls by day and rats by night. To keep the fowls from using the upper part of the room as a roosting place, wire netting or lathwork, a part of which is shown in the figure, extends from the top of the upper nests to the roof. Underneath the lower tier of nests is placed a feed box, made like those with which the houses for layers are furnished, and others of the same construction should be placed on the ground at the ends of the perches, and at right angles with the latter. Five houses for sitters, each with its yard, will be required for an establishment of the size we are describing. The arrangement of the yards is shown by Fig. 23. The fence, A B, is made like the buildings, C, non-movable. The fences on the remaining three sides of the yards are moved yearly. Suppose that last year the yards were located at #; then this year they are at D, and # is 5 66 AN EGG FARM. devoted to crops. A strip of ground is left untilled near the doors of the buildings for a wagon path. To keep the yards free from taint and afford scratching ground, a part of each is plowed occasionally during the season when they are occupied by the fowls. All the fences running east and west, as / B, are composed of gates, so that by opening, for instance, at #’ G, through the whole range of yards, a strip of each may be plowed, and in a few days the operation may be repeated at another part of the yards. To these yards, movable runways, made in sections, are annexed, not shown in the ground plan, Fig. 23, and these runways extend to distant yards, where there are feed shelves, hammers, and so on, exactly like those in the yards for breeders, previously described. The paramount consideration is the welfare of the sitters when engaged in incubation. For the management of sitters in the buildings just described, see Chapter XIV. HATCHING BY WHOLESALE. There is a better plan than the one just described for houses and nests for sitting hens in the southwest, where the poultry business is destined, for reasons briefly stated HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 67 in the introduction, and which will be more fully given further on, to reach a greater development than in any other part of the United States or of the worid. Numerous unsatisfactory methods of managing sitters on a large scale have been tried. The plan of confining each in a small, separate pen, hke that shown in Fig. 24, or some modification thereof, has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. It may be occasionally tried to advantage by the villager, who keeps only a dozen fowls or so and has only a very limited space for them, but on a large scale this separate confinement plan will not do at all, because the sitter does not suffi- ciently air her plumage, nest and eggs, and what is of still more importance, her bowels get out of order for lack of exercise, resulting in foul nests. This trouble does not always occur, it is true, but it will happen in a sufficiently large proportion of cases to be very objec- tionable indeed. No person can long endure the sight of a lot of sitting hens, some badly out of condition, and none just right, if he has a keen sense of what is thrift. We mean that instinctive demand that his charges shall be in the pink of condition, which distinguishes the best keepers in all departments of livestock raising, and with- out which nobody can make a good poultry man anyhow. Nature has provided that the sitter shall bustle around at a great rate, and race up and down the range as if determined to crowd in a half hour the exertion she spread over a whole day when a laying fowl. If denied this running exercise, sitters are liable to be afflicted with constipation, alternating with the other extreme, resulting in nests of unspeakable filthiness. Study nature, and you will find that a sitter allowed a free range never fouls her nest, and nobody nas to bring a basin of warm water to wash her eggs. Any system of managing sitters in great numbers that calls for the washing of egos and renovating filthy nests, cannot com- 68 AN EGG FARM. pete with incubators. There is another thing about the sitting hen and her stolen nest. The delights of liberty keep her from returning to her nest prematurely. The eggs, and the nest itself, are thoroughly aired and puri- fied from exhalations, and as the sitter keeps her feath- ers bristled nearly all the time, her plumage likewise undergoes as thorough a treatment as did your mother’s feather bed when she used to give it a good sunning. The nest and the feathers upon the eggs are sweet in the case we have supposed, but they never are perfectly sweet and fresh when sitters are individually confined in small, separate pens in rows or tiers, an abomination in the sight of men and angels. Running and flying, rather than scratching, are demanded, although all are employed. There is an intimate relation between exer- cise of the legs and normal action of the bowels, this being true not only with fowls, but with all other spe- cies of animals which have locomotion and digestion, human kind included. Another objection to separate rooms is, that if feed is placed so that the hen can leave her nest to eat at pleas- ure, rats are baited to the spot, or if each room is made rat-proof, it will be too expensive. 'To feed and water individual birds in separate apartments takes much time, and if several are placed in one room, they must be looked to, or two will take to the same nest. But if surveillance is attempted, it will be handier to carry it out by placing many im a large room. Incubator manufacturers have fattened on the short- comings of sitting hens under improper management, . but a little ingenuity will achieve a success that will vindicate the methods of mother nature. Art is at its best not when supplanting nature’s ways, but when assisting them to have free scope and be glorified. If a one-hundredth part of the mechanical ingenuity which has been lavished on incubators during the last thirty HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 69 years had been spent on contriving good methods of managing sitting hens, in place of the separate confine- ment plan, there are thousands of persons all over the United States, who have failed in attempts at artificial incubation, who might have followed nature’s method with success. Incubators have their uses, but they are only for the winter or to supplement sitters. A given number of eggs can be attended to under Plymouth Rock sitting hens, and a larger per cent of strong, healthy chickens hatched out than by the use of incu- bators, and with less labor of the attendant, the grain for the birds costing less than the oil for the machines, and the whole equipment of buildings, nests, yards, runways and fixings, all told, costing decidedly less than incubators of the same egg capacity and the cellars to contain them. The incubator idea has been overworked, and the method of nature underrated. The patent office contains hundreds of inventions for regulating heat in incubators, over which persevermg mechanics have racked their brains, but the animal economy in a state of health, either in case of man or the sitting fowl, reg- ulates heat to a marvelous nicety that puts all mechan- ical devices to shame. Summer or winter, awake or asleep, whether we are sitting still or at violent exercise, though we may feel cold or hot at times, yet the ther- mometer shows that the temperature of our bodies is essentially invariable, cases of severe sickness excepted. Then look at the wonders of the plumage of a fowl. ) AN EGG FARM. car must be of the best, so that the latter may be moved at a touch. A wheelbarrow is sometimes used in a poul- try house alley, but it is a nuisance, because, among other objections, two hands are used in propelling it, but a car can be pushed by one hand, or by the attend- ant’s body, leaving both his hands free. The best way is as good as any other way. The car is provided with conveniences the most handy that can possibly be con- trived for transporting the fresh, moist earth used in the nests of sitters, also eggs and, on occasion, mother hens with their broods of newly hatched chicks. The laying hens, destined for sitting when they become broody, must occupy the same building as those : 7 ai. ff FIG. 24. COOP FOR SINGLE SITTER. actually sitting, because it takes time to move sitters from place to place. A sitter incubates in the same nest she used while laying. To keep laying birds from access to nests of sitters a trap system is employed, each sitter shutting herself in. In other words, when the sitter is off her nest the trap is set, and when she goes on it is sprung and she isa prisoner. The construction of these traps will be described in detail, because they are the controlling feature of the system of management, with reference to which all the rest is contrived. By but little more than a simple turn of the wrist, the attendant can perform many of the most important FOR SITTERS IN MILD -CLIMATES. ae operations about the nests, from either end of a building one hundred and fifty feet long, without goimg down the alley. Figure 25 shows the operation of a treadle, T, at the bot- tom of one of the separate passages, leading to a separate nest, this treadle being operated by the weight of the hen, which releases a figure 4 catch and closes the pas- sage door, thus confining her and shutting laying fowls out. In this cut, the sides and top of the nest and of FIG. 25. APPARATUS FOR SITTERS. the passage leading to the nest, and other things in the vicinity are omitted; the purpose being merely to show how the hen shuts herself in. The treadle, T, eleven inches wide, or just enough scant to play freely in an eleven-inch space, and twenty inches long, forms the bottom of the passage, which is large enough to admit a fowl and allow her access to the nest, 6. In this cut, an edge view is given of the door, /1, pivoted at 7, and raised by the cord, a, which passes over the pulley, p. =3 io 2) AN EGG FARM. Attached to the door is the door lever, &, this lever being held down by a figure 4 catch. This we call the first position of the door. The hen enters on the treadle at T and walks toward the nest at 0. The treadle, being moved downward by her weight, turns on the pivot, v v, which has bearings on the side of the passage not shown m this cut. To the treadle is attached a rod, jointed at ¢ and pivoted at e and at z When 2 moves downward, as indicated by the arrow, the motions of the other parts FIG. 26. APPARATUS FOR SITTERS. are also in the directions of the arrows, ¢ going down- ward and toward the right and the figure 4 toward the left, releasing the door lever, and causing the door, 4}, to fall by its own weight and close the passage. When the door is shut, it is in the second position, and it stands, not perpendicularly, but on a slant, as shown at h?, Fig. 26. In this cut, the top and one side of the passage and nest are shown, which, of course, hide the FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. 79 treadle rod, but Fig. 26, being designed only to show the working, is not an exact representation of the nest and the passage to the nest, there being in reality a liberal employment of wirework in top and sides of these for the sake of air. Now, as there are 144 nests in a horizontal row or tier, each with its passage, door, treadle, and other parts; to set all these traps by hand, in other words, to go through the alley and depress each door-bar singly to make each engage with its catch, would take too much time. x x « ¥ t # * + % x x x x % * * ¥% % * ye FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. 83: interval, sitters’ first position (wide open and traps set). Finally, after a still longer interval, the layers’ nests to third position (nearly full open) and then everything to remain till the next afternoon. The whole program is elsewhere more fully described. We now invite attention to Fig. 27, which is a ground plan of the hatching house with its yards attached ; it being an equivalent of an incubator cellar and an equip- ment of 10 incubators of 300 egg capacity each, though a ARRURBAWY AK HY XUMMK HSK Mes eee srcecess Se eo % x% x x A x x x R x x» x x x x k x x x x M x FIG. 28. SECTION OF COVERED YARD. it costs much less and turns out more and better chicks, with more certainty and less work. J’, ¥ represent large yards and y, y, y, y small yards. The building is 11 1-2 ft. wide and 155 ft. long, or 144 ft. exclusive of the rooms, m, at the ends, but the length is very materially reduced in the cut to give space to show details plainly. The small yards, 5 1-2 ft. wide, are roofed over for pro- tection against sun and rain, but there is no air chamber. 84 AN EGG FARM. A transverse section of one of these covered yards is shown in Fig. 28. In both Fig. 27 and 28, the small FIG. 29. INTERIOR OF HATCHING HOUSE. crosses represent wire fences. In Fig. 27, the rooms, m, m, are where the operator stands to work the trap- setter and to control the layers’ nests also, as mentioned FOR SITTERS IN MILD CLIMATES. 85 in the description of Fig. 25, and to operate the feed shelves, six in all, which are suspended in the main building and in the small yards over the dotted lines in the cut. The construction and working of these shelves is explained elsewhere. See Figs. 17 and 18. A trans- verse section of one of the shelves hung up in the main building is shown at J, Fig. 29. See description of various modifications of feed shelves, the simplest being the best. In Fig. 27, the long, narrow space, @, 1s occu- pied by nests and ¢ by nest passages, both being of the kind pr eviously. described. Cs SON = CAx eh R355 re S ‘et So ee, oNS $9 Oe. ws eS FIG. 31. ROW OF NESTS SEEN FROM BELOW. birds among the layers having broody inclinations from taking possession of nests belonging to the sitters. Figure 31 shows the convenience for the attendant’s work at the nests, the view being taken from the sunken alley and giving the position of a row of nests on one side, the bottom of the nests being two and one-half feet higher than the ground at the bottom of the alley. One rail of the railroad track 1s shown at w, and one of MANAGING THE SITTERS. 95 its supports .s shown at wu, it having been set in the stonework when the wall was built. The doors in front of the nests are of wirework, the mesh being one inch, to keep out rats, attached to a light wooden frame, d? showing a closed door, and d? one which is open; 0 is a nest with its front exposed as it would be for gathering egos or for other purposes. One side of the wooden rim four inches wide, which surrounds the nest on four sides, is represented at z. Wirework, two-inch mesh, separat- ing the roost from the alley, is seen at gg. Compare this cut with Figs. 25, 26, 27 and 29. As was hinted before, when we were describing the reg- ular daily program of the management of sitters, if there were many fowls to be lifted from their nests the task would be an onerous one. Not only do we propagate a sitting breed exemplary in all motherly conduct, and cull and reject obstinate laggards, but whenever we do haye to catch a bird which overdoes the virtue of con- staney, the conveniences must be such as to reduce the bother to the very minimum. Below the aperture, 7, is seen the edge of the roost floor, s, upon which the delin- quent bird is placed after she has been taken from the nest. When the nest, 0, is opened, 7 is opened also. Take the fowl in both hands, with the thumbs confining her wings, and place her on the floor, s. Elsewhere an entirely different method of handling a sitter is described, one hand only being employed, and her wings being left free, which is the way to proceed when the bird is to be lowered and placed on the floor at your feet, but not the correct way when she is to be raised and put through asmall door. The distance between 6 and 7 is small, which expedites the operation, and also both of these are within easy reach, d being 2 1-2 ft., and s 5 1-2 ft. above where the attendant stands. The trap-setter shaft is 7, and m the layer nest shaft, correctly repre- sented as being one but slightly higher than the other. 96 AN EGG FARM. In all the other cuts these shafts were purposely placed wide apart, to give a plainer view of the cords, arms and other parts. In Fig. 29, for the same reason, the roost, 7, was entirely omitted. It is 144 ft. long, and its floor, set on a slant downwards toward the outside of the building, is only 3 1-4 ft. wide, so that it will not intercept the grain which falls from the shelf. One perch only is needed, and this stands 18 in. above the roost floor and is 144 ft. long. CHAPTER. X. COOPS FOR CHICKENS. The construction of the coops for young chickens will now be described. A chicken coop must be adapted to warm weather and cold, and especially to rains, be easily cleaned, and made rat-proof at night. The old-fashioned triangular pattern, Fig. 33, secures all this, and also gives small chickens a chance to escape under the eaves from the feet of the hens. Two hens are put together with their broods, for reasons which will be given in another place. The size proper to accommodate a double brood is 2 1-2x3 1-2 ft. upon the ground, with roof 3 ft. from eaves to peak. A bit of scantling is fas- tened to each roof fora handle. The door, a, is hinged to open upwards. There is a small door at the rear that will allow chickens to pass, but not grown fowls. D ea je Ona FIG. 32. THE FIGURE 4. SEE CUTS 25, 26 AND 29. An opening for ventilation is made near the peak, and covered with wire cloth. Take inch boards, 6 0, Fig. 34, and nail strongly, planed side up, to the cleats, cc, and 97 98 AN EGG FARM. clinch. Let both ends of each cleat project three inches, and the outside edge of each two inches. This is the movable floor, and must be of such size that the coop shall rest entirely upon the projecting ends and edges of the cleats, then when the doors are closed, all rain will be shed outside the floor. In Fig. 35, a section of the coop shows the floor in its place. When the doors are W777 . ae Zt UL, 7 MLL: closed at night, leave the large one, a, Fig. 33, ajar one- half or one inch, according to the weather, for air, and fasten it with nails for pegs stuck in holes bored at various distances through the cleats, at d d, Fig. 34, which will make the coop perfectly rat-proof. Once a week, after opening the door, a, to enable the chickens to escape through the slats out of the way, slide the coop slowly length wise of the cleats away from the floor, which must be scraped thoroughly ; then give it a shovelful of dry - earth and replace. You will always have a dry, iodor- ous apartment, and will not shut up chickens in close, foul air. In every small coop or box for live animals there must be openings for the admission of air and escape of noxious emanations, not only at the top, but at the extreme bottom. This matter is often overlooked in shipping coops, to the great detriment of the occu- en L. FG. COOPS FOR CHICKENS. 99 pants, the openings at the top being erroneously deemed sufficient. All the chickens destined for the itinerant stations must, as mentioned on Page 19, be fed indirectly. For two days only are they and the hens fed upon the floor of the coop. Then for a week they are fed in the box given in Fig. 36. It has no bottom, and the top, not shown in the figure, is temporary, and composed of loose boards. Place it so that its door shall meet the small docr in the coop, having first dropped in the feed at the corner, and covered the box with the boards in such a manner as to admit a little light. After a week the chickens, being strong enough to venture some distance, are fed from a- box of- galvanized iron 6x16in., and 3-4 in. deep, Fig. 37. A wire grating, F’, with meshes one inch square, protects the feed from the feet of the chickens, but admits their bills. The grating is covered at pleasure by a lid, G, these being hinged to opposite sides of the box. When such boxes are placed in a row, Fig. 38, each filled with feed,one for each coop, with the lids down, a snap-hook is attached to aring which is fas- tened to each lid, and a wire connects with all the hooks, as in Fig. 38. One pull opens all the lids, and the chickens are at dinner. These feed boxes are carried to the granary to be filled, using a wheelbarrow, in which many may be packed at a time. The coops are twenty feet apart, in a single row, and the wheelbarrow is rolled along the line, and the boxes, with lids closed, are put on the side of the coops near the small doors, which are shut, m order that the hens may not worry when the chickens are feed- FIG. 34. 100 AN EGG FARM. ing. If the distance is considerable, use the low-down wagon in place of the wheelbarrow. The hens are fed and watered in cups, fastened to the inside of the coops as high as they can reach. The cups are filled with whole corn once each twenty-four hours, after dark in the evening, so as not to at- tract the attention of either hens or chickens. When the chickens are a month old, a part of their feed may be buried near the coop early in the morning, before they are let out, so that they may scratch during the day, although this is not essential, for when there is nmlenited eS, young chicks will aware take suffi- cient exercise. Whenever it is rainy, the box used the first week for feeding, Fig. 36, is again resorted to for that purpose. The additional time required to feed chickens indi- rectly is slight, if operations are systematized. All the — —=_—— YZ Lh ——_[_${£_{_{__== FIG. 35. FIG. 36. FEED BOX FOR CHICKS. chickens of the breeding or pedigree stock, and of the sitting class also, are reared at a separate part of the farm, and fed directly. When the hens are removed from the chickens, the latter huddle together nights upon the floor for some COOPS FOR CHICKENS. 101 weeks, but when old enough to perch, the box, Fig. 36, is placed upon the movable coop floor, and the coop is placed upon the top of the whole, the box being of the size of the boards, 0 J, in Fig. 34, so that the eaves and sides of the coop overlap sufficiently to shed rain. The box has two perches permanently fastened to it, one of which is seen in Fig. 36. This roost is rat-proof, and half a bushel or so of dry earth keeps it clean. CHAPTER XI. FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. The layers must be of a breed that affords chickens easily reared, for success in the nursery department 1s all important and they must be at the head of the list of prolific layers of fair sized eggs. None but a non-sit- ting race will answer, for, needing to be broken up fre- quently, sitters make fully double the labor during half of the year; and the feathers must be light, because dark ones show badly when chickens are dressed. There is at present no breed that fulfills all these con- ditions so well as the White Leghorn. It may degener- ate in time, as other races of fowls have done, by being bred for fancy instead of utility, but it possessed at its first importation more vigor than any other non-sitting breed. In breeding poultry, show and utility do not get on well together in the long run. ‘To fanciers unques- tionably belongs the credit of originating improved breeds, but afterwards, in fixing conventional points for the show room, the stock is often ruined in their hands. Many breeders of livestock,—not poultry alone, but in . other departments,—do not fully understand the relation between fancy points and useful ones. ‘The confusion in the minds of some writers on this matter is evident. ‘Why should not a fowl that scores high in shape of comb and tail and in color of legs and plumage, lay just as well as one that scores low in these things ?” some one asks. The answer is that a fancy comb and a fancy plumage in that individual fowl have certainly no direct 102 FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 103 power to prevent her from laying well, but this is only part of the story. That fowl has a history of descent. It is harder to breed to the point where good laying is a trait of the strain if you select your breeding stock each generation on the basis of fancy points as well as of lay- ing qualities; for while choosing your breeders, you necessarily pass by on account of faulty plumage some of the most eminent layers that would have helped your strain mightily. An illustration will not be amiss, there is so much ignorance prevailing on this point. Frederick the Great had a body guard of soldiers of gigantic stature. The question might be put, is there any reason in the world why a red haired or a brown haired man may not be as tall as black haired men? None in the world, surely ; but if the monarch desired a guard of the very tallest FIG. 57. FEED BOX WITH GRATING. men his realm could possibly afford, then the average hight of the battalion would be greater if there were no restrictions on color of eyes, hair, and so on, than if one specified shade only was admissible. Suppose the requirements were black hair together with blue eyes and great stature, the greater the better, how would the average hight of the selected men turn out? As such eyes and hair do sometimes go together, the guard might thus be recruited if the realm contained popula- 104 AN EGG FARM. tion enough, but the average hight of its men would be less than if the selection had not been ueauualce pet. by the specifications we have supposed. Apply the same reasoning to cattle. The Jerseys are now of every imaginable color—solid, broken, black, white, red, fawn, brown, roan, buff, spotted, brindled, ring-streaked, speckled and grizzled. Suppose it were desired to select breeders for a hundred years from all the pure Jerseys in the world to produce a strain of the largest sized, pure-bred animals possible. ‘Two entirely separate herds are to be built up, neither of which shall draw from the other, but each to draw freely from the whole world beside. One herd must be produced of the greatest sized animals possible and all of a solid bay, and the other herd of the greatest sized animals possible, but entirely irrespective of color. Which herd, at the end of one hundred years, other things being equal, would contain the largest cattle ? A drawback to the Leghorn family is the great size of combs and wattles. Possibly this trait may be gradually bred out in time without impairing the useful traits of the breed, but it is doubtful. It has been noticed that the most vigorous birds and the best layers have these appendages the most fully developed, and it is probable that in the Mediterranean regions, where they originated and where they were bred at the monasteries for cen- turies, the monks of the middle ages being enthusiastic poultry fanciers, and the breed being extremely ancient, the conscious selection of the best layers for breeders resulted unwittingly in the selection of birds with the biggest combs. Or, the mere fact of the keeping of the breed un- mixed for hundreds of years, would, of itself, have resulted in a large combed breed, even if the keep- ers were not consciously selecting eggs for hatching from the best layers (if large combs and_prolificness FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 105 naturally go together); for the best layers being the most fully represented by newly laid eggs in the nests, would, also, by obvious doctrine of chances, or, more properly, by mathematical law, be the most fully repre- sented in eggs for hatching purposes and in number of chicks hatched and reared ; unless, indeed, extreme pro- lificness was accompanied by deficient vitality of the germs. It would be inevitable that the numerical pre- ponderance of eggs for hatching laid by large combed, prolific birds would operate to develop a strain of both large combs and. prolificness, until a limit was reached beyond which the process could not go. This limit is discovered in the fact that the production of an unusually great number of eggs laid by a fowl is accompanied by Hanae aay: ‘ai ii pes = i i4 Ha = Gp es i < \ 1 MN soe ic oe ue by oo ANNAN OTN ADR NAKA a aay eA . oe Pe a on yi Me = " ra 4 Hi Ra mt Ht nu i ce Msi va a FIG. 38. ARRANGEMENT FOR OPENING FEED BOXES. a lack of vitality in the eggs, excepting those at the beginning of the laying, which experience shows are comparatively exempt, hone probably even these are somewhat affected. There are two other ways in which the great size of combs of fowls from the Mediterranean may have been brought about. The combs were highly prized for food, and, at certain eras, the monks were more given to luxury than to austerity; or, in periods of rigid disci- pline, while living on bread and water they may have 106 AN EGG FARM. sold the combs for the revenue of the house, and, there- fore, may have kept up a careful selection of large combed birds for breeders. And there is, besides, the consideration of a warm climate. The wild parent stock of our domestic fowls live, in part at least, high up on the sides of mountains, and very likely the chmate of Italy and vicinity may be warmer than that to which their progenitors were accustomed. As time progresses, the question of influence of a warm climate on size of comb will be determined by noting the appearance of the Leghorns now kept quite extensively in our southern states. The drawbacks of large combs and wattles are, freez- ing in our northern states, and the discomforts and strain resulting from carrying so much weight on the head. It appears as though the circulation of blood in the head is somehow affected by these excessive appen- dages, for it has been observed that a Leghorn haying frequent spells of giddiness and staggering can some- times be quickly and permanently cured by trimming the comb, and we would always recommend the trim- ming of both comb and wattles for both sexes, Fig. 39, when two-thirds grown, especially in view of freezing, when zero weather occurs. Use shears or scissors instead of a knife so as to pinch the blood vessels and mitigate the flow of blood. The operation is not so painful as it might appear, we will state for the benefit of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nature eyi- dently provided that the comb and wattles should be comparatively destitute of feeling. As, during the thou- sands on thousands of years the males fought for posses- sion of the females and the comb and wattles were the parts seized upon in the struggle, a lack of sensitiveness in these appendages would be perpetuated and aug- mented on the principal of natural selection. So indif- ferent is a fowl that after being dubbed it will uncon- “OI ‘66 ‘SNHOHDUT ALIHM ,, daadNnd,, FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 107 108 AN EGG FARM. cernedly fall to eating its own comb and wattles, if allowed the privilege. This dullness or fewness of nerves of feeling in the combs, when understood, may alleviate the pangs felt by many persons at the mention of what has been wrongly called a cruel practice. It is easier for a fowl to stand dubbing than to endure a frozen comb. The layers are relied upon to produce the principal part of the income, and as they are chief in ‘point of numbers, the detached stations where they are kept form the main part of the establishment, to which the breeding and sitting departments are merely tributary. Most of the layers must be kept only until the age of from fifteen to twenty months, and then killed for sale, and their places supphed by young pullets. This course is necessary, because the yield of eggs is greatest during the first laying season if the hens are of an early matur- ing breed, and are fed high and stimulated to the utmost, as they must be to secure the highest profit. For, though hens are still vigorous at two years, it will be found that after a course of forcing to their greatest capacity through the first season, they cannot generally be made to lay profusely during the second. If we chose not to put on the full pressure of diet the first year, but to feed moderately high for two or three years, a fair yield of eggs would be afforded during each. But such a course would not pay as well as to keep pullets only, and maintain a forcing system constantly from the time they commence to lay until they stop, and then market them before they eat up the profits in the idle- ness of fall and winter. Pullets grow fast during the early part of their lives, and give a return in flesh for what they eat then. After they commence laying, their eggs are prompt dividends, and, besides, their bodies increase in weight until the age of a year or more. Young hens may be killed a fortnight after ceasing to lay, and if they have been skillfully fed, their FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. 109 flesh will prove excellent for the table as compared with fowls that are two or three years old. It is no wonder that there is ttle liking for the adult fowls the markets ordi- narily afford, for they comprise many that are very old and comparatively unfit for food. But regular customers will soon approve fowls a year old, which have been sup- pled with the most suitable food, and brought to just the proper fatness, and delivered freshly killed and neatly dressed, and our experience proves that the fami- lies upon the egg route will order all that the establish- ment has to dispose of. The high pressure mode of feed- ing and turning off while yet young, is then the true policy. The point is, there is a certain consumption of food to enable any animal to keep alive. The ordinary vital operations, aside from laying or increase of size, de- mand force, obtained through food—which is money— and we should aim to support only such fowls as are all the while giving returns in either growth or eggs. The long period of molting and recovering from its conse- quent exhaustion, costs, as does the maintenance of the vital fires during the cold of winter. It is a matter of quick balancing of profits and expenses with animals, which, like fowls, consume the value of their bodies in about ten months. If it is urged that the stimulating diet and unnatural prolificness will subject the stock to disease, the replv is that the regimen is not continued more than six or eight months, and in that time evil effects will not ordinarily follow, for the birds are allowed freedom, sun and air, and special provision is made for daily exercise. As none of the fowls to which this forcing system is applied, leave descendants, no evil effects are accumulated and entailed upon the stock. The layers are from the eggs of fowls that have not been subjected to any such pressure, and during the period of their principal growth they have been given a nutri- 110 AN EGG FARM. * tious but not especially stimulating food—like. acolt at pasture. When they arrive at the laying age, they are then kept as is the horse, which is kept, broken te work, and put to constant and severe labor; ete fed as high as he will bear. ee FOWLS FOR SITTERS. Si7 The sitters are of a breed chosen for persistence and regularity in incubation, fidelity to their chickens, and gentleness of ibsnosiiten: The Plymouth Rocks are our choice, and cannot be excelled for hatching and rearing. ~ The white variety is preferred, because when a fowl,i$ dressed, white pin feathers show less than colored ones. Also, as stated elsewhere, there are occasions when we want to designate individuals by a dab of fresh red or blue paint, which shows well on white plumage. The sitters are not kept at detached stations like the layers, for several reasons. One is, they should all be near together, because of the great amount of attendance necessary in connection with hatching. Then the build- ings should be large enough for the keeper to enter, in order to take care of the nests and chickens, but the size of the structure and the risk of jarring e¢gs will prevent moving. Nor can the system of indirect feed- ing and no yards be pursued, for the sitters should be fed at the attendant’s feet, and tamed so as to submit quietly to the handling they receive while hatching and rearing. ‘Their yards are sufficiently large to admit of exercise, and for the same reason their dry grain is buried in the ground or under straw. In very cold weather, they are confined to their houses for warmth, and are given a stimulating diet to promote winter lay- ing, not so much for the value of the eggs as to render it certain that there shall be a considerable number of — birds ready to sit in February, and many more in March. The fowls chiefly depended upon for this consist of the earliest pullets of the previous year, and also the old FOWLS FOR LAYERS AND SITTERS. WAIL hens that had been employed much of the time the pre- ceding summer in hatching two or three broods. ‘The prevention of laying, by hatching and rearing, causes birds thus occupied to lay earlier the next season. By a little management, there is no difficulty in procuring plenty of offers to sit from February to June. One-half the sitting stock is kept until two years old, and of the pullets of the sitting class raised yearly, some are hatched in February and March, and some in the first week in September, the better to secure sitting at various times in the year. Except in winter, the sitters should not be fed with a view to encourage laying, but the aim should be to keep them on as moderate an allowance as possible, and not have them become poor. Their specific purpose is incubation, and they should be made to do as much of this as possible. By uniting broods, when a hen has hatched one nestful of eggs she may be given another immediately, and, if managed rightly, she will not be injured by sittmg a double term. Hach hen must hatch two broods per year, at least, and some will hatch three. In this way, the stock of five hundred sitters will produce ten thousand chickens yearly, or an average of twenty apiece. CHAPTER XII THE KINDS OF FOOD, When poultry are kept upon a large scale, they can obtain but few insects, for the latter are attracted and supported by vegetation, of which there is next to none near the adult fowls, though care is taken to rear a part of the chickens among growing crops. The ample grounds around each station house, and the areas inclosed by the yards for sitters and for breeders, give space to secure cleanliness and exercise, but that is about all. As far as affording insect foraging is concerned, a paved court in a city, or a continuous rock, would be almost as good. Ground room out of doors upon our farm, whether inclosed in yards or not, is principally for air, sun and exercise. These secured, it matters not whether there is more or less space, so long as there are so few insects to be procured. We hear much about the number of fowls proper to an acre—some say fifty, and others one hundred; but in order to give one hundred a good forage, they should have the range of no less than four or five acres, containing grass and a variety of other crops. Now, if we give up as impracticable, as we must, pas- turage of this sort, and afford nothing but a field entirely bald, save for a few patches of clover and such other green stuff as may be plucked when young and tender by the birds, under such circumstances one acre is as good as four. We go further, and say that fifteen or twenty square rods of ground, and the grain for the fowls buried to induce exercise, will answer the purpose 112 THE KINDS OF FOOD. 1S better than an acre without such an artificial provision of natural conditions. But the feed, which must be all brought to the fowls, costs, in money if purchased, or in labor if raised upon the cultivated part of the farm. In fowl keeping upon a small scale, where one flock has for a range as large a portion of a farm swarming with insects as they choose to travel over, food is obtained for nothing. The food for fowls is more expensive than that of any other livestock, in proportion to the value of the animals themselves, necessitating economy in its choice. There are many things ‘‘good” for fowls, but we must use principally those only which supply all the needful nutritive elements, and are, at the same time, the cheapest. There are three classes of articles of which the natural and indispensable diet of fowls consists,—grains or seeds, green plants and insects. Corn and wheat screenings— corn especially—should be the main reliance to fill the first division ; boiled potatoes and raw cabbage in win- ter, and newly mown grass, clover or alfalfa in summer, are the most suitable vegetables, and chandlers’ scraps and butchers’ waste, procured fresh, are the most eco- nomical animal food, excepting near the coast, where clams and various sorts of fish can be obtained at a trifling cost. While depending mostly upon the above, because they are the best and cheapest, a great many other things must be given occasionally for the sake of variety, such as oats, buckwheat, rye, barley, wheat and brewers’ grains; dried corn fodder and clover rowen in winter; various vegetables, such as carrots, beets and yellow turnips, boiled and thickened with corn meal or wheat bran; raw onions chopped fine; and for animal food, sometimes near cities young calves may be obtained from milkmen at a low price, and the carcasses boiled and fed. This last remark apples chiefly to cities at the east and northeast. 8 114 AN EGG FARM. In the cattle regions of the west, calves are too valu- able to be thus sacrificed, while in the last named local- ity the by-products of the great packing houses form a ready and valuable substitute. It must be an invariable rule to give every bird, whether young chicken, layer, sitter, or fattening for the table, a portion im each of the three divisions,—grain, fresh vegetables and animal food,—every day in the year. It has been asserted by some that there is no substitute that can fill the place of insects for poultry. We say that beef and mutton, or lights and livers, or fresh butchers’ waste of any kind, are as much better as oats are better than grass for horses of which much work is demanded. A partridge or wild jungle fowl can produce her normal number of egos from forest fare, but not such great numbers as are laid by a Leghorn, Hamburg or Houdan. A portion of the grain fed must be ground. The nat- ural mill of a fowl’s gizzard, containing hard gravel for millstones, is capable of grinding all sorts of grain per- fectly, but at too great expense of muscular exertion which, though involuntary, is severe, and employs force. that had better be uscd for growing eggs or flesh, and therefore meal and bran have their uses for the poulterer. But the soft feed idea must not be overworked. The reasoning that a beginver naturally falls into is that it is a great pity that so much force should be applied at such a tremendous disadvantage in reducing hard grain in the gristmills of the birds when the miller can grind for thousands. But the wondrously powerful muscles of the gizzard are there to be used. Always go cau- tiously in any plan to tamper with nature in feeding, hatching, rearing, or anything else connected with poultry. Experiments have proved that the ‘‘ balance of power,” or equilibrium of functions in the fowl’s economy makes the vigorous exercise of the gizzard very beneficial. The explanation is, in part. that the secre- THE KINDS OF FOOD. 115 tion of the digestive fluids is promoted by the grinding process, just as the flow of saliva in a person’s mouth is influenced by the act of chewing, even if nothing is chewed but astraw. A good illustration of the fallacy of unnatural expedients was afforded in feeding experi- ments with hogs. It having been noticed that numerous bits, large and small, of undigested corn were passed from these animals, when it had been fed raw and unground, it was supposed that a greater amount of nutriment would be afforded by a given weight of ground corn, as compared with an equal weight of the same erain unground. But by carefully weighing both the corn and the swine, the surprising result was reached that the whole grain gave the greatest gain in growth. The powerful muscles of the hog’s jaws imply use, and the secretion of saliva certainly, and the flow of other digestive juices in the stomach probably, are by nature’s methods, persistently fixed in the lapse of ages, connected with the workings of the aforesaid muscles. The variety in feed for fowls previously hinted at is in accordance with nature. When on free range they glean a little of everything, and the particular article most feasible for the poulterer to feed is optional with him. Brewers’ grains, the waste at fisheries where great num- bers of fish are dressed, chandlers’ greaves, and many other things are unavailable over large areas of our country. As for the ‘‘balanced ration” we hear so much about in connection with all species of domestic animals, we must feed what we can get and that which is the cheapest, which in our favored land is principally corn. The workings of the internal economy of a healthy animal, especially an omnivorous animal like the fowl, will “‘balance” the ration by selecting from our national grain the nutritive elements required by the varying needs of the system. Feed millet and wheat for a change, but corn, being 116 AN EGG FARM. the cheapest grain we have, is the proper food for chicks, and for laying fowls also,-and you need pay no attention to the everlasting hue and cry about this noble grain being too oily. It isn’t oily enough, and for either man or beast is improved by the addition of lard or some other form of fat. Ask one of these anti-corn cranks to explain the almost universal craving of humanity for butter to be eaten with bread. For a negro laborer at the south, corn meal, with fat bacon or pork, makes a per- fect food, with the addition of a small quantity of fresh vegetables or wild fruit, the last as condiments merely, or to furnish acids to assist digestion, for they do not supply any strictly nutritive elements which the main diet lacks. The corn without the fat would be almost as incomplete as the fat without the corn. When the negroes or poor whites are without pork to accompany their universal diet of corn bread, they crave a shorten- ing of lard in the latter, and failing to obtain this, some- times use the oily kernels of black walnuts, or even the oil obtained from certain species of fish. ‘‘ But fowls are not men,” we hear some one exclaim. True, but both are omnivorous. Fish, flesh, cereals, vegetables and fruit are the appropriate food of both; the digestion of both is improved by the acid of fresh green stuff, and the perfect nourishment of both demands oily food. Even in the tropics fat meats are sought by those who toil; bread and fruits will not suffice. Conversely in the Arctic regions, although much has been written about the fondness of the Esquimaux Indians for oils and fats, recent careful observers have stated that if these Indians can get lean meat they will eat it in con- nection with fat in very nearly the same proportion as is usual among their white brethren in temperate zones. If it were not for the time and expense involved, corn boiled or fried in some form of animal or vegetable oil or fat would be the best possible staple for fowls, winter THE KINDS OF FOOD. iL and summer. But the edicts of labor saving are against this diet, as well as somewhat against the use of the fresh scraps from the butchers’ shops, and. chandlers’ greaves, for the former must be chopped, and the latter are pressed in cakes so solid as to need considerable preparation before being used. The supplanting of the village butcher by the big packing house, moreover, makes it impossible to get chandlers’ scrap cake in many localities, while the feasibility of feeding the packing house tankage, which takes its place, has not as yet been sufficiently demonstrated. For one thing, it is sold in a perfectly dry state and finely ground, so that it keeps well and can be fed with very little labor. CHAPTER XIII. BREEDING AND INCUBATION. The proper management of the breeding stock is a very important part of the scheme, for there must annu- ally be raised a large supply of pullets of the right qual- ity. The profits of the establishment depend largely on the excellence of the fowls, and as they can be multiplied very fast from a chosen few, no pains should be spared to secure the very best as a source from which to stock the whole farm. There is but one way to do this, and that is to keep individual birds in experimental yards in order to test their merits, recording the degree of excel- lence and the pedigree of the best with as much care as would be given to breeding cows or horses. We will suppose it is designed to produce a strain of Leghorns that shall excel in prolificness, laying at an early age, and in other requisites. Procure a pullet from A and a cockerel from B, and put them in yard No. 1; purchase of C and D one bird from each, for yard No. 2, and so on, always taking care that no speci- mens are obtained from any locality where disease has prevailed. If there is any doubt on this matter, quar- antine your purchases on premises at a distance from your main establishment for two or three weeks. The smaller breeding yards are used as experimental yards, and to allow each cock a proper number of mates, two or more Plymouth Rock pullets, whose eggs can be dis- tinguished by their color, are added. Give each Leghorn a name or number, and enter in a book all details neces- sary for testing progress in improving the breed, such as 118 BREEDING AND INCUBATION. Aelee) weight, the age at which laying commenced, and the yield of eggs during the first year, at the expiration of which banish all but the best hens. The second year set the eggs of the reserved extra fowls, and keep the chickens produced by each pair separate from all others. At the age of five or six months, cull out the most prom- ising pullets and cockerels, and pair them for testing and recording pedigree aud prolificness as before. By mating the produce of the original birds from A and B with the produce of those from C and D, finally the four stocks will become blended in one. Proceed in this manner a number of years, and when in the course of time a very extra prolific and vigorous hen has been found, which reached full size and commenced laying early, and whose ancestry have excelled in the same respects for several generations, as shown by the book, then from her eggs cocks are raised from which to breed to replenish the main stock of layers at the itinerant stations. These cocks are put in the larger breeding yards, each with a flock of ten hens, and no accounts are kept of the prolificness of individuals among their descendants. After new stock is introduced to the experimental yards, as must be done yearly, care is taken for a series of years to avoid breeding akin, and as purchases will be made from fanciers who, to fix the conventional points, have most likely bred close and impaired strength, cross- ing will immediately give a decided increase of vigor. Towards the last, however, when sufficient stamina has been gained, and the stations are to be stocked, close breeding is resorted to, even the mating of brother with sisters, which is the closest kind of inbreeding. This is to increase the yield of eggs, the philosophy of the mat- ter being as follows: Just as a fruit tree girdled or severely root pruned will give a profuse yield and then die, and as various domestic animals will for a short 120 AN EGG FARM. time be more prolific after removal to unaccustomed climates, so the violent attack on vitality which occurs when there is in-and-in breeding is met by an energetic attempt of the organism to propagate in unusual num- bers and thus maintain its kind. There has been much confusion on this point, for while scientific naturalists have insisted that no animal can thrive under continued close breeding, practical poultry keepers have pointed to the prolificness of in-and-in bred fowls as a proof that there was no deterioration. The fact is, mdividual per- fection and rapid increase are, to a certain degree, incompatible. Under our plan of aiming chiefly to secure great quantities of eggs, we purposely give the constitution of the birds a shock in order to increase fecundity, having first, however, carefully built up, for some years, by careful selection and good sanitary con- ditions, sufficient strength to withstand the assault. This course may appear inconsistent, but experiments have shown us that it is correct. The Plymouth Rocks are bred in the experimental yards with a different basis of selection. The best sit- ters, and those with the shortest legs and plenty of fluffy plumage and ample wings, are preferred. Note the behavior of the hens that are bringing up chicks, and cull out patterns of motherhood and set their eggs. In the breeding and experimental yards, the fowls must be fed and managed in every respect with the greatest care. Over-fattening is to be deprecated above all other things, and may be avoided by burying all the grain, to make the birds exercise by scratching. The supply of grain should be moderate; meat should be given very often in very small quantities, and the allow- ance of fresh vegetables should be ample. Free range would be very desirable for all the breeders, but as it is impracticable, scrupulous care must be taken to furnish artificially natural conditions. Though the birds of the BREEDING AND INCUBATION, 121 laying class in the experimental yards are rated accord- ing to their proliticness, yet the test is merely a relative one, for they are not forced to profuse laying by stim- ulating feed. SETTING THE EGGS. Vigor and thrift in chickens depend, in the first place, upon the quality of the eggs set. Those obtained from breeding stock managed as described in the preceding section, will hatch strong and healthy chickens, observ- ing one precaution. Care should be taken never to set egos laid near the close of the season, when the hens have been very prolific, for such will produce chickens deficient in vigor. The production of eggs in great numbers is, in the best laying breeds, abnormal. The wild jungle fowl, in common with all birds in a state of nature, lays no more than she can cover, and this is true of domestic hens of sitting breeds, that steal their nests. It is the daily removal of the eggs by the keeper, and the supply of an abundance of nutritious food, that causes great prolificness. There are some species of wild birds that will produce from three to ten times their usual number of eggs, during a season when their food is abundant, if their nests are continually robbed. But when hens lay twenty or more per month, for sey- eral months, the eggs are impaired. This is one reason why chickens hatched in summer are sometimes so defi- cient in vigor, compared with those produced in early spring. For the sake of economy it is important to have as few non-impregnated eggs as possible. Over ninety per cent will be impregnated if the breeding cocks are strong and sprightly, and no more than ten hens are allowed ina flock. It is a good plan to keep two cocks for each group of breeding hens, and shut them up alternately, one day at a time, in a small but comfortable coop, entirely out of sight of the hens. The 122 AN EGG FARM. eggs should not be kept more than three or four days, or ten at the most, before being set. Those laid the same day should be given to one hen, so that the whole brood may hatch simultaneously, for new-laid eggs hatch several hours sooner than those that have been laid a considerable time before being set. Artificial hatching and rearing are not economical. Even if incubators hatch as great a proportion of eges as hens, there is no way of rearing the chickens artifi- cially, and securing ventilation, warmth, cleanliness and room for exercise, without greater outlay in labor and building materials than is necessary when hens are employed, provided the rigors of winter are over. The cost of fixtures for heating, and of fuel, and of suitable contrivances for providing exercise for the young broods, maks the plan entirely impracticable, except m case ot high prices for broilers; and as for blooded fowls, no bird designed for a breeder should ever be reared in a brooder. The nests of sitters should be made at bottom of damp earth, packed to a concave shape. Make the sides steep enough so that the eggs will he close together and so that the hen can roll the outside ones towards the center easily, but do not pack the earth so dishing that eggs will he two deep in the nest. It is not necessary to place them upon the ground, or to sprinkle the eggs with water, if this rule is followed. It is proper that the eggs should be in some way exposed to moderate dampness during incubation, as otherwise too much of the water in their composition evaporates. An elevated box furnished with nothing but dry litter is not suitable. Cover the earth with staw, bruised until pliable, and broken short. Long straw is apt to become entangled with the feet of the hen, causing breakage of eggs. It should not, however, be cut by a machine, because the sharp ends of the pieces will come in contact with the BREEDING AND INCUBATION. 3 skin of the hen, or that of the delicate chickens. In very cold weather line the nest with feathers. We have successfully hatched eggs by preparing a nest thus, in a room where during part of the time of incubation the temperature was below zero. Set hens in large numbers at a time, having kept some of them upon artificial eggs until all are ready. Of course, an entry must be made ina book of the family or strain, and other particulars of each clutch. Examine the eggs after the hen has been upon them ten days, by the. well-known method of placing them between the hands and attempting to look through them at a strong light; or a better way is to use an egg tester, such as is commonly sold by manufacturers of incubators and by poultry supply houses in all the large cities. Return to the hen only those eggs that appear opaque or clouded; those which show clear, orange-colored yolks, being unimpregnated, will not hatch, and may be used as feed for chickens. When hatching is progressing, remove gently once or twice the empty shells, that might otherwise overcap the unhatched eggs, but further than this do not inter- fere, as a chicken worth hatching will contrive to get itself hatched. Sometimes the membrane surrounding the chick is so tough that the prisoner cannot get out, and in such a case the attendant can afford assistance, it is true, but apart from the objection of taking too much time to putter in this way, there is another trouble, namely: By saving chicks from tough membraned eggs you perpetuate a tough membraned breed. When dealing with the pedigreed chickens and selecting the choicest specimens to put in special broods by them- selves, take those which not only get into the world without any trouble, but those which hatch out and become strong and lively the earliest. Let the chicks remain in the nest forty-eight hours without being fed, 124 AN EGG FARM. allowing the hen, meanwhile, water, and a little corn, just a few kernels, placed in dishes by the nest. When removed to the coops, put in each double brood thirty chickens—less if it is cold weather, and forty sometimes in summer. The large lice that often infest the bodies of sitting hens will leave for the young chicks and gather on their heads, unless care is taken. This trouble must be abso- lutely prevented. The liquid lice-killer, of late inven- tion must be applied freely to the edges of the nest several times during the first fortnight of the sitting term, the wirework over the top and front of the nests being covered, meanwhile, with paper or cloth as closely as may be without stifling the sitters. Or powdered sulphur, if bought at wholesale rates, will prove cheap enough, and is not dangerous to the sitters. No cover- ing of the nests is necessary when this is used, and it can be apphed during the third week if desired, or at any other time. Two thorough applications will utterly destroy the enemy, an interval of four days being allowed between. Use two full handfuls each time. No matter how much lies at the bottom of the nest and on the straw and earth at its sides, it will not injure the hen or her newly hatched chicks. Apply it at night to the hen, and then keep her confined until the latter part of the next day, so that the fumes of the sulphur can take full effect. When you begin, disturb the hen slightly so that she wiil bristle her feathers, and then from a dredge box dust the sulphur down to every portion of her skin, from head to foot, not omitting a liberal dose upon all the eggs, so that the under parts of her body may get full benefit. ee ee a CHAPTER XIV. MANAGEMENT OF SITTERS. A special management of sitters in a mild climate, with mechanical contrivances for minimizing labor, has already been given, and we will now describe the management of the incubating hens kept in the buildings represented in Figs. 21 and 22, and adapted to cooler latitudes. This building, like the one for the southwest, secures plenty of room for the sitters to move about in when off their nests. It cannot be too strongly insisted upon, that it is natural for a sitting fowl to run about very actively when she has left her nest. She will always make the most vigorous use of her legs on such occa- sions, when allowed full range. This extraordinary activity, in comparison with which the movements of a laying fowl appear moderate and sedate, keeps her in health and is particularly necessary in order that the bowels shall remain in good condition. Without a great deal of running hither and yon, your sitting birds will be afflicted with spells of constipation and looseness by turns, and will foul the nests, that is, a considerable per cent of them will, not all, and make so disgusting a mess that you will wish you had never seen a sitting hen in your life. The management of sitters kept in quarters shown in Fig. 22, will be understood by reference to Fig. 40, which gives a nest rack viewed from the front, there being three tiers of nests with an alighting board under each tier. This rack may be seen in the center of Fig. 22. The nests are guarded against the depredations of rats 125 126 AN EGG FARM. by the fine wire netting, as described. The use of the coarse netting that alternates with the fine, is as follows: Half the labor of managing chickens is saved by confin- ing in the same coop two hens with their broods. They will agree perfectly, if well acquainted beforehand. We take a hint from nature here; such wild birds as live chiefly on the ground sometimes incubate and lead their broods in company. Wild turkeys, and their tame descendants as well, are an instance in point. While sitting, adjoming hens form a particular acquaintance HNL | Iie FIG. 40. MANNER OF NUMBERING NESTS FOR SITTERS. through the coarse meshes of the netting, and, at the same time, they cannot interfere with each other, or roll the eggs from one nest to another. Without a special system of management, a consider- able number of sitting hens cannot incubate and feed in the same apartment without confusion, but by the fol- lowing plan each is made to know her own nest and return to it after feeding. In the first place, the laying hens, before offering to sit, are induced to choose nests scattered evenly through the whole building, by properly distributing nest eggs and keeping half the nests closed. The nests on both sides of the house are divided verti- cally into three sections, one at each end of the room ee w 2 MANAGEMENT OF SITTERS. _and one at the center, by painting each division a special color—the center black, and the ends respectively red and blue. The contrast assists the fowls very much in determining their places. No more than three pairs of sitters should be allowed to each division, or eighteen clutches on each side of the building. The six birds belonging in the middle divi- sion remember their places very readily, because they are so far from either end. 'To prevent those at the ends from making mistakes, as soon as the laying season com- mences, one end wall of the room is covered with straw, or evergreen boughs, and the other left bare. } : SS & ct S et 4 1 = iS = we = lac} Las} = = oe Ss 6 in. will do. There isa little knack in soldering such material. Press the strips flat on a floor or board, allow- ing each to lap at one edge 1-4 in. over its neighbor. You hold the wire cloth down firmly, by pressing end- 154 AN EGG FARM. wise with a small stick, close by where the solder is put, so that the wire cannot spring, while another person does the soldering. In three seconds the solder will chill, and you move your stick 5 or 6 in. to the next point. Figure 61 shows one of the end pieces to the dropper or feed cylinder. It may be either octagonal, square or a L € d Sees SiSssse rerassssaeessacas tS ala Soeees = = SS I SS ees ‘Gones=s: ain a : | oe } > cones “+ Bee: se pore ah = OF = Ey : ppgmeG 2icetee see Se aa a lI + : Lo : Se = SS Sits aSIETEaEE = === a FIG. 59. STRIPS SOLDERED TOGETHER. circular, and if of the latter shape, should be five and three-quarters inches in diameter, being cut from a seven- eighths inch board. It has a hole, f, in the center, to receive an iron shaft, consisting of a half-inch iron pipe. The shaft may be of any length desired, and to it may be attached as many cylinders as needed to feed a row of separate flocks in a long, narrow house. Figure 60 shows how the tin and wire of Fig. 59 are fastened to 09 “OI ‘NHGONITAD GHHA THE EXERCISER. 15 Ou the end piece, Fig. 61. In Fig. 60, @ represents the tin which is tacked closely at the bottom of the cylinder, but flares out into a flange at a. bove a, there is an open space, through which the cylinder is charged with grain. The flange assists in putting in the proper quan- tity quickly, the grain slid- ing down, of course, so as to rest on the tin at the un- derside of the cylinder. In Fig. 60,the cylinder is shown in correct position for fill- ing. The cylinders are fast- ened to the shaft so as to move with it, not on it. The grain should be in the form of small particles of assorted sizes, from the di- mensions of a pinhead to a kernel of wheat. Cracked corn with the meal sifted out is excellent. The cylinder should be made to perform only about a hundredth of a revolution at a time, the motion, at first, after charging with grain, being in the direction to raise the tin upward, con- sequently the millet, wheat and cracked corn will come in contact first with the fine 156 AN EGG FARM. mesh and afterward with a coarse and still coarser mesh successively, all the time losing grain of a coarser size, the coarsest particles of the whole falling through the open Space next to the a flange, a, by the time EZ the cylinder has made EZ S =&, a complete revolu- tion. The operation of revolving a cylin- OF der and its succes- sive positions are plainly shown in Figs. 92,93,94 and 95. 4 The sticks; 0; 0; EE Fig. 60, are to keep Su Sue the cylinder in shape, FIG. 61. END PIECE OF FEED CYLINDER while IU 18 being slip- IN POSITION. ped onto the shaft. This shaft of half-inch iron pipe must haye a hole drilled through it to receive a common wire nail, as shown in the left of Fig 60; the nail being clamped against the wood by means of small staples. At one end of the shaft or axle, attach a crank, which must be moved only the very slightest distance at a time, so as to spill the desired quantity at a dose into each pen of birds located under each cylinder, and supplied with straw, chaff, or litter, upon which the feed drops. Hight or ten hours or so must elapse before you make the axle accomplish a complete revolution. In a frac- tion of a second you can sift down a dose for a half dozen flocks or for a score of flocks, according to the length of the building and the axle. It takes no longer to feed several hundred birds than to feed twenty. A mere jar with the thick of the hand against the handle of the crank does the business. This jar should be given two or three times an hour. THE EXERCISER. ID) Fh In a large establishment, where an attendant must be on hand pretty much all the time, anyhow, this oper- ation by a crank will be chosen, but the fancier or amateur, or ordinary keeper of one or a few flocks, will do well to attach clockwork to the dropper, and to the chaff box described further on, so that the feeding may be carried on regularly, while he is at his office or store or eyen out of town. The easiest way to make a crank and attach it to the axle of the dropper, is to use a half- inch iron pipe six inches long and another piece four inches long for a handle, and two elbows, one of which is to be screwed to one end of the axle, see Figs. 120 and 63. Or, if a black- smith can be obtain- ed more readily than a plumber, one end of the hollow axle may be plugged with iron and a wrought iron crank, Figure 67, may be attached with a nut and “washer. Or a ready made crank with a wooden handle, Fig. 69, can generally be procured at a hard- ware store. Or, if you are near an ag- ricultural implement factory or a railroad shop and can get a handwheel, such as is represented in Fig. 68, it will be better than any sort of crank. FIG, 62. CRANK FOR WOODEN SHAFT. CHAPTER XIX. THE TILT BOX. A pile of straw, leaves, chaff, excelsior, hay, or almost any sort of litter must be located under the cylinder. lf the litter would always remain loose and huffy so that the grain would rattle down in interstices, then no fur- ther machinery would be needed. But it will not remain loose. The scratching of the birds will soon reduce long straw te short bits, and their trampling wil! turn the pile into a compact mass, on top of which the grain will lie and be devoured at once, and therefore no exercise to speak of will be secured. An agitator or litter-stirring apparatus is therefore necessary, as well as a grain dropper, so that the litter and grain may be thoroughly mixed together. There are a half dozen different methods of construct- ing simple machinery for mixing, but the simplest movement consists in using chaff, short cut straw or other stuff for litter that is short and heavy enough to roll and tumble readily, and placing it in a box or bin that is made to rock like a cradle. Let the floor be in a level position at the start, then rock the box till the floor stands at an almost perpendicular position, causing the litter to tumble, then rock the box back again to a level. The grain is dropped just before the litter begins to slide or tumble. By a simple device, to be presently described, the fowls are called out of the tilt box before it is rocked, and are not admitted till it is level again. The operation of rocking or tilting will be understood by referring to Figs. 72 and 73. Suppose the box is at 158 THE TILT BOX. 159 rest, as shown at A, Fig. 73, the litter being represented by the dots being level. The first step is to tilt to the position, B, and then stop a second and drop feed from the cylinder, 10, before the litter tumbles, then pass to the full tilt, C, Fig. 72, which makes a windrow or ridge, then immediately go back to the level position, ), when FIG. 63. END OF ROW OF FEED CYLINDERS. the windrow wil! be found intact at y, with grain mixed through it ready for the fowls to enter and go to work. The shape of the windrow is not destroyed by the motion of the tilt box in returning to the original position. After the birds have worked about twenty minutes, scratching, the litter will be back to its original level, 160 AN EGG FARM; or nearly level, position, as shown at A, Fig. 73. There is wire netting from zw to w and from w to v, which gives light and air, and also permits the feed to drop through when the cylinder is jarred slightly while the box is at the half tilt. The portions of the box at u, v, w, x and y are boarded, and to put titter in the box or take it out, make v and the wire strip next it in the form of a door, to be hinged to the board, w. The tilt box is supported upon and rota- ted by an axle, 4, of iron pipe, which rests cn joists, these being about two feet above the floor of the build- ing, so as to give the box room to tilt. A row of tilt boxes, each for a separate flock, may be attached to one continuous axle, and all tilted simultaneously, a row of feed cylinders being sus- pended above them to correspond. It, for the sake of economy or convenience, a wooden axle is preferred, the tilt boxes may be nailed to a sawed stick 3x3 or 4x4, or larger, according to the number of tilt boxes it is to turn, the stick being rounded where it rests on the joists; or a straight pole from the forest may be substituted, Fig. 74, and clamped to the box by bolts, 6,0, passing through pieces of hard wood, @ and c. Clamps consisting of single blocks of wood and two bolts, Fig. 98, may be used to attach small (chick size) tilt boxes to iron axles. The feed cylinder and tilt box are useful for adult birds and for chicks reared artifi- cially in brooders, the size being according to the size of the birds. Various other mechanical movements designed for mixing grain and litter together have been tested, but none has been found as satisfactory as the tilt box. ~-- TRS So SSS ‘f Se SSS : Wink S Sess FIG. 91. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF AXLE SHAFT. In the vertical section given in Fig. 100, the imaginary line of cleavage passes through the exact center of the windlass or spool stick, m, lengthwise, and also through the handle, a, lengthwise. Instead of a pouch or cylinder, what may be called a sieve may be used for dropping feed. Figure 101 illus- trates one of these turned bottom up, to show that the bottom is made with a double slant, and consists of wire . mesh of different sizes, like that in a cylinder or pouch, and a strip of tin in the center, this last serving as a floor to hold the grain when the sieve is charged. A long row of these sieyes may be fastened to an iron pipe by bolts passing through holes drilled in the latter. isp ‘SAXOD CHAT MOOGLAO HOA LAVAS “6 ‘OIA AN EGG FARM. PERFECTING THE DETAILS. Oy Figure 104 shows the lid, Fig. 105 gives an end view of the sieve, and Fig. 106 a series of sieves in position, each over a separate pen, two stout wires being stretched under the sieves to hold them level. The hoppers of tin in the lid, Figs. 104 and 106, are to facilitate charg- ing with grain, the lid being necessary to keep off spar- rows and pigeons. Tigure 108 gives a top view of a sieve when the lid is off. To drop the grain, strike with a hammer on the end of a pipe that is shown in the foreground in Fig. 106. This end should be plugged with iron to prevent battering. This pipe may be quite a long one if desired, and the feed will drop in nearly the same quantity at every sieve affixed throughout its entire length, the jar being practically of the same force at one end of the pipe as at the other, unless the pipe is of extreme length. A coiled spring or.a bar spring, not shown in the cut, should be attached, to bring it back to the first position after each blow of the hammer. This sieve will do very well in lieu of cylinders for both indoor and outdoor exercisers for grown fowls, but cylinders deliver grain in more accurate doses than sieves, and the former are therefore preferable for brooder chicks —for things must be done exactly thus and so with small chickens. For indoors, where cords or wires can be conveniently attached overhead, this whole line of sieves may be suspended, swing fashion, instead of resting on a framework. In this case no spring is needed, the whole series of sieves returning by force of gravity to the original position after being jarred by the blow of the hammer. This method of suspension and swinging is the same as described earlier in this book in connection with the use of feed shelves. A hammer to be held in the hand for striking a row of sieves or a shelf nearby, should weigh one to three pounds, according as the shelf or the pipe connecting the sieves is 100 to 300 ft. long. For a row of distant “TWHANITAD GNV HONOd TAVHS “F6 (OMT ‘CANIOAUM ATLUVd LAVHS ‘6 ‘DIA EGG FARM. AN PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 199 sieves have a pivoted hammer, Fig. 18, Page 56, and a cord which reaches from the hammer to C, passing over two sash pulleys, Fig. 19, Page 58, on the way. This cord can extend 100 or 500 ft., or more, for that matter, to where the operator is. It may extend inside your dwelling, say to the kitchen, where the cook can give it a pull from time to time, or it may run to an office, workshop or store, or be attached to strong clockwork that is wound up to run all day, and, just as clocks are made to strike the hours or half hours, so the pulls on the hammer-wire connected with your feed dropper may be timed with equal precision. The tilt boxes for both brooder chicks and grown fowls will need larger and stronger clockwork, such as is attached to large orchestrions or music-producing machines, or apparatus used in gas works, in hotels, fac- tories or private dwellings, where the motive power is very heavy weights. Better yet, the machinery govern- ing the periodical pulls will be propelled by a steam engine, electricity or water power, as progress demands; for the idea of feeding and tending fowls, and larger species of domestic animals as well, by machinery, is destined to be expanded indefinitely. To return to Fig. 18, of course the sticks to which the sash pulleys are attached, and also the uprights, must be immovable. Now, will the reader please turn to Page 170, and imagine that the whole of the appara- tus of Fig. 75 is placed under the sash pulleys, close to the uprights in Fig. 18, Page 56, in such a position that when the hammer is dropped it will strike, kerchug, on the iron plate, 2. To the board, a, attach the iron pipe which supports such a row of sieves as is shown m Fig. 106. The timber, 2, is immovable, but #, m and a, with the 100 or 200 ft. or more of pipe attached, are all movable, and the coiled spring is compressible. Now, when the hammer strikes, everything in Fig. 75 moves AN EGG FAR) 200 “MHONITAD ANY WONO d LAVHS "G6 “DI A PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 201 excepting 7, and every one of the long line of sieves supposed to be attached is slightly jarred, and then the Spring makes a moye, forcing the whole line of sieves back again. You can drop grain one hundred times for cach charging, and only a spoonful each time. Pipe, sieves, operating wire, pulleys, cord, spring, concussion plate, 4, hammer, ete., combine to effect the same purpose as is indicated by the wire, weight, spools and long pipe with cylinders in Figs. 82 and 84. The feed shelf serves the same purpose as the sieves and the cylinders heretofore described, except. that it is not as accurate in distributing feed. The shelf has this adyan- tage,—it is not necessary to use grain of different sizes, as is Indispensable when the cylinder is employed. When you strike at one end of a wooden shelf or beam several hundred feet long, the jar is felt in some degree throughout its entire length, but is weakest by consid- erable at the point most distant from the hammer. In order, therefore, to transmit the shock better, fasten an iron pipe, rod or bar to the boards. In Fig. 111, e rep- resents such a bar fastened to the board, a. The con- cussion plate, 2, receives the blow. The board, a, in Big. 17, Page 55, is supposed to be a continuation of the board, a, in Fig. 111. After a blow and a swing forward, the whole long shelf swings back towards the hammer, and meeting the stopper, 7, 16 remains at rest awaiting another whack. The simplicity of the employ- ment of the force of gravity to effect the return to place, instead of the use of a sprine, commends this style of feed dropper, and besides, tin and wire mesh are needed for feed cylinders and sieves, but not for feed shelves One stroke with the hammer is enough for that time Te keep the shelf in place, fasten two casters to the board, f, these boards, with the end pieces, being attached to some part of the building or to the frame 202 AN EGG FARM, ORS. PEN AND YARDS WITH ROW OF FEED CYLINDI HIG. 96, PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 203- supporting the tilt box, so as to be stationary. As will be obvious, e, a, ¢, h and d are movable, but f, g and 7 are immovable. Two ordinary furniture caster wheels, Fig. 112, travel on the upper side of a, and another pair roll against the under surface of a, the shelf swinging and rolling back by its own weight after a stroke. If the shelf is one hundred and fifty feet long, or more, it should be widest nearest the hammer, and as you go towards the farthest end and the jar is less, each suc- cessive section: board should be narrower. Begin with a board ten or twelve inches wide, and diminish to a width of five or six inches. In case of a shelf over a line of exercisers one hundred and fifty feet long or upwards, the boards must not only be narrow as you approach the end of the shelf furthest from the hammer, but they must be hung so as to be slanting. When they are fas- tened together put wedge-shaped cleats between, so that each board shall be slightly steeper than the preceding one. Figures 113 and 115 show these cleats and the varying slants of the boards, e being a slender iron bar firmly attached to the boards, the same as e in Fig. 111. This bar is not absolutely indispensable unless the shelf is.extremely long. It is not to strengthen the shelf, but, as previously remarked, to transmit the jar of the hammer better than wood alone will do. In Figs. 105, 113 and 115, the boards, are foreshortened in the cuts so as to occupy moderate space and show the idea of the cleats and the slanting position, but the reader must imagine them to be, in practice, ten, twelve or fifteen feet long each. If a feed shelf is indoors it is supposed to need no cover to protect the grain from pigeons, sparrows, stray fowis and rain. For outdoor use, however, fasten shal- low boxes upon your shelf, with lids opening upwards, and a slot cut through both the shelf and the bottom of the box at one side, as in Fig. 109, only the cut gives a 204 AN EGG FARM. box not long evough and deeper than is necessary. If not convenient to hang this shelf up out of doors, you can put a caster or two under it every fifteen or twenty feet, and to send it back to first position after a shock, a spring, 6, can be arranged to engage with the bar, e, or a spiral spring can be rigged at either end of the feed shelf on the plan shown in Fig. 75. See also Figs. 117 and 118. Figure 119 shows how the ham- mer can be made to move JM while WV remains stationary. The stick, NV, and the other scantling near CU, as also the one above J, should be fastened to stout posts if outdoors, or if indoors to the frame of the building, so as to be firm. Two such pulleys, only one of which, however, could be shown in the eut, serve to steer the cord, C, in operating the hammer, and also to turn the cord or its wire continuation to a course at right angles to the hammer han- dle, so that it may be extended to where the operator stands, hundreds of feet away. Either a long feed shelf or a row of feed sieves may be attached to M, and these may be supported entirely by casters, or by swing cords, wires or jack chains. Notice a cord, R, in Fig. 119, this Pee ie: || being one of a row of cords. The spiral spring, Fig. 107, is not visible in Fig. 119, but may ER. FIG. 97. HOME MADE SHAFT AND CYLIND PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 205 be seen in Fig. 110. When the suspension plan is adopted, side casters only just enough to steer the shelf are used ; for nearly all the weight should be suspended by the cords or wires. Figure 122 shows a homemade style, a hard baked brick or a brick-shaped stone being used to add its weight to that of the hammer, which consists of a block of hard wood. This brick, B, is kept in place by pieces of inch board. A is the shelf, at the end of which is attached the concussion block, W/. As will be readily understood, 1 and A move at a blow, compressing the spiral spring against the stick, J, which, with its attachments, is immovable. FIG. 98. BLOCK AND BOLTS TO FASTEN TILT BOX TO AXLES. CHAPTER XXIII. FOR SOFT FEED. Now we have described thus far feed cylinders, feed sieves and feed shelves, whether with or without feed boxes attached, and these styles will all answer for dry feed, but not for meal dough, cooked vegetables, soaked erain, brewers’ grains, fresh meat or any other form of moist feed. Ordinarily, it is true, dry feed is to be pre- ferred for both young and old birds. They will soak their grain just right by drinking just the proper quan- tity of water. Dry grain not only affords exercise, but is better any- how as the main reliance, apart from the matter of exer- cise, except for fattening fowls just at the finish. For special purposes, however, as for feeding ducks, for instance, or other waterfowl, which demand a large pro- portion of soft feed, a feed trough controlled at a dis- tance, like the cylinder sieve or shelf, is needed. Figures 123 and 124 give side views of such a feed trough, and Fig. 125 shows a transverse section of the same, the letters in the several cuts referring to the same details. Regarding ducks, see Chapter XXI and Fig. 86. A good way is to have a water tank, Fig. 86, at one end of a long runway, VY, of low, movable, covered hurdles, which may be shifted so that the ground may be plowed to freshen it, and a trough, such as we are about to describe, at the other end. In both the side views of this feed trough, Figs. 123 and 124, will be seen a row of upright slats, through which the birds thrust their heads to feed. The fowls stand on the floor, a. The 206 FOR SOFT FEED. 207 feed is placed in the box or trough, 7 v, the lid, », being raised for that purpose. The pieces of scantling, 7, s, w, are the frame of the feed trough. The feed rests, of course, on the bottom board, v. When the doors, d, are FIG. 99. WOODEN SPOOL, FRAME, ETC. dropped, as in Fig. 123, the fowls can put their heads between the upright slats and reach the feed, but when these doors are being raised toward the position shown in 208 AN EGG FARM. Fig. 124, the birds will naturally withdraw their heads, the doors being raised gently and gradually. The construction of the doors is as follows: The board, d, Figs. 123 and 124, is of equal width at both ends and the tapering board, ¢, is nailed to it firmly. rt AR AR as oun Keeney: FIG. 100. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF FIGURE 99. This board, c, is protected at e by a bolt or pin, so that d and ¢ both rise together when the cord, 7, is pulled. At f, g, there is a slot cut in the board, d, to enable it to be raised or lowered without beine stopped by the pin, e. A flat, horseshoe-shaped niece of iron, f, g, is attached FOR SOFT FEED. 209 to the board, d, next to and partly surrounding the slot, to give d strength when the cord 7 is pulled. All the cords pass over side pulleys fastened to posts, and all these cords are attached to a wire, h, so that when this wire is pulled all the doors, d, ¢, are raised, as in Fig. 124. At the top of each post is another side pulley over which passes a cord, one end of which is attached to a weight and the other to the door, d, the latter being slightly the heavier. These weights render it easier, of course, to puil the wire, . Wecall ha ““wire,”’ because, for out- door use, a wire is better than a cord, the latter being affected by rains. In fact, it is well to sub- stitute for the cord, 7, a small chain such as are on the market, latterly made on purpose for pul- ley work. In all three cuts, w rep- resents a trip gong bell, Fig. 126, operated by the bell wire, 2, which may be of annealed steel, No. 16, sold on spools, Fig. 8 FIG. 101. A FEEDING SIEVE. 127. This bell or some other style of bell, or an aural 14 210 AN EGG FARM. signal of some sort, is necessary, as heretofore explained, to call the birds to their meals. BROODER HOUSK.—LAMP SYSTEM. 5 OF T 102. FIG. SS 1x %h In Fig. 125 is seen one of the slats, m, nailed by toe- ing, as all the slats are, to the narrow side board or rim, FOR SOFT FEED, Palal 6, which runs the whole length of the feed trough, to hold the feed and to keep the birds from wasting it. The door is guided by passing between Band c. The floor, a, is nailed to the crosspiece, 0, which is spiked to a short post. Of course, there are boards and wire net- ting to keep the birds from getting under the floor, al, and from flying above the slats; but ag these do not directly concern the feeding apparatus they were omitted from the cut. he wire should be kept constantly taut by a weight of one to three pounds attached to each end, where the wire should pass over a pulley wheel about six inches in diameter. The weight furthest from the operator should meet a shelf and find rest at tke - same instant the doors, d, strike the ground, the weight remaining on this shelf until the operator pulls the wire again. The weight near the operator should be only just heavy enough to take up the slack of the wire. CHAPTER XXIV. THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. The shape and arrangement of the tilt boxes should vary to meet the requirements of the poultry keeper. Instead of the openings on the tilt boxes for ingress and egress being at the end, asin Figs. 71, 76, 78 and 141, it will be necessary to have them on the side, in case of an extensive plant for winter chicks, when they are warmed ‘by hot-water pipes in the usual way. But, whether the openings are at the side or the end, the ingress and egress is cut off at the half tilt. When the exit openings are at the ends of the tilt boxes, a stationary box or apartment alternates with a tilt box in a row or series, hence, for the sake of con- venience, we will call this the alternate method. Another method we call the parallel method, in which the tilt box, if for grown fowls, may be twenty, fifty, or one hundred feet, or more, long, divided by partitions into sections for the various flocks, the stationary boxes being in a row adjoining and parallel to the row of tilt boxes, and the exit openings of the tilt boxes being at the side. The parallel system will be fully explamed further on. The description of the indoor exerciser for grown fowls on the alternate system is as follows: In the interior views, Figs. 77 and 128, P isa passage for the attendant. This house is built with its sidewalks mostly underground, therefore the windows are set high and not shown in these two cuts, although the camera has revealed the light from them on the floor of the passage. 212 THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 213 The small coops with slanting sides, Fig. 77, under the tilt box, 7’, are to shut birds in temporarily, for sale or other purposes, and have nothing to do with the exer- ciser, but are put there to utilize the vacant space under the front portion of the tilt boxes, the slant at the front of these coops being designed to keep them out of the way of the attendant’s feet. As is obvious, Figs. 77 and 128 both represent the same in- terior. In each cut, a station- ary box is in the foreground and stationary boxes alternate with tilt boxes all along the line through the whcle length of the building. Under the stationary boxes are laying apartments, fifteen inches “between joints,” in which are nests which are acces- sible to the attendant from the passage, P. The exits for the fowls to gain access to their yards from the stationary boxes are not shown in Figs. 77 and 128, as they are on the side of the building opposite the passage. The side of the tilt box repre- sented at 7’ rises at the begin- ning of tilting. By reference to the ground plan, Fig. 130, roy fut “COT ALVNUALTY MOH WHLSAS “HSNOH UAACOOUd ose 214: AN EGG FARM. and the transverse section, Fig. 129, the positions of some of the most important parts of the frame of this building are shown, the letters referring to the same FIG. 104. LID OF FEED SIEVE. sticks of 2x4 and 2x6 in allfour cuts. Figs. 128and 129 show the slant of the “shed roof.” Through- out Figs. 77, 128, 129 and 130 the same letters indi- cate the same things. In the ground plan, Fig. 130, the foundations of the brick walls at the sides are shown, the end walls not being included, as a portion only of a continu- ous building several hun- dred feet long is intended to be represented. The width of the building in Fig. 129 is 8 1-4 ft., ‘the passage, P, being 8 ft. wide. There is a space of 1 ft. between the tilt boxes and the wall to give room for tilting. The posts, a, d, c and o, support the roof, the tilt boxes, station- ary boxes and nesting rooms, @ and d@ being 2x4 and ¢ and o being 2x6. Figure 129 is a trans- verse section substantially at an imaginary line passing through @ in the ground plan, Fig. 130, the liberty usual in such cases, however, permits c,’ and g to appear in the cut, although these THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 215 three sticks are slightly further toward the rear or back- ground than the post, a. In Fig. 129, # represents an exit for the fowls, closed by a: small door opening up- ward, as shown by the dotted lines. Wis a window, like- wise hinged at the top and opening in the same way as the exits. The exit doors, leading to the outside yards | in a building hundreds of feet long, are all raised or lowered at one operation, and the same applies to the windows, although the device for accomplishing this im- portant purpose, a great labor sayer, could not well be shown in this cut. As the windows and exit doors fall and are held in place by their weight, augmented by a brick or a portion of one attached to each, or, as is the case in our own building, photographed for Figs. 77 and FIG. 105. END VIEW OF FEED SIEVE. 128, a box of sand nailed to each, the slanting position when closed is essential to the success of this plan. As is plain, eand f are purlines that extend the whole length of the building, being shown in three of the cuts. In Fig. 129, the shght notching at the edge of c shows where the iron axle of 7'rests. The building is underground as far as the tops of the brick walls in this cut and the roof is of inch boards covered with the best quality of felt paper and finished with two coats best cement applied hot, and on top of all is placed eight inches of straw, and on the straw cornstalks and brush to withstand the wind. This sort of roof and the underground feature secure warmth in winter and coolness in summer. When the temperature is 90 degrees outside it is but 80 degrees inside. ‘SHATIS CHUA HLIM SNAd *90T ‘OT FARM. GG AN E 216 THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 217 The tilt boxes are placed with the under surfaces of their floors 2 1-2 ft. higher than the floor of the passage, and-are 2 1-4 ft. high, with bottoms 3 1-2 ft.x6 ft., the 6 ft. distance being parallel to the passage. The sta- tionary box serves as a roost and is 5 ft. 3 in.x3 ft., the 3 ft. distance being parallel to the passage. The floor of the stationary box is 8 in. higher than the floor of the tilt box, to allow for the depth of the litter in the latter. The posts which support the tilt FIG. 107. sprRAL spRING. boxes, stationary boxes and feed cylinders, see @ and d in Figs. 77, 129 and 130, and a and ¢ in Figs. 129 and 150, extend from the floor of the building to the roof. Passing now to a consideration of the indoor exerciser on the paraliel plan, the reader is asked to turn to Fig. » 132, representing a perspective of a house for layers or a section of it, enough to show the idea, Fig. 117 being a transverse section of the same, Fig. 118 a longitudinal section, and Fig. 135 a ground plan, the same letters in each of these four referring to the same things. The parallel system is preferable in some important respects to the alternate system just described. The elevation, Fig. 132, needs little description, and we call attention only to the windows, which, as will be observed, FIG. 108. TOP VIEW OF SIEVE. are slunting when closed, as explained in the case of the building previously described. Jn ordinary windows, the sash are made smaller than the window frames, the latter enclosing the former. But when a large number of win- dows are to be raised or lowered simultaneously in a building, the sash should be larger than the window frames and the former should overlap the latter so that 218 AN EGG FARM. no swelling of the sash by dampness will cause it to stick. The sash must have weights, preferably flat bars of metal, fastened on to hold them down snugly in case of hard winds. If the casings were set per- pendicularly, a hard wind - would be apt to move the sash, in ‘spite ole uite weight, at times when the admission of cold air would be very undesirable. To the bottom of each sash an ordinary sash cord is attached, each cord passing through a screw pulley, Fig. 134, fastened to the underside of the roof. The whole series of cords is attached to a half- inch iron pipe, located a PROTECTED FEED SHELF. E few feet below the screw = pulleys, and attached to convenient portions of the building where it is the most out of the way. This pipe is, of course, as long as the row of windows and is set loosely im staples or in holes bored in wood so as to be freetoturn. For each cord, a small hole is drilled through the pipe to receive a nail, to which the cord is attached in THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 219 such a way that it will be wound up on the pipe when the latter is turned, by means of a large handwheel, Fig. 133, which is attached to one end a the De within reach of the operator. The cAlMlloue may all be opened a fraction of an inch, or several inches or wide open, with the greatest ease and dispatch in two or three seconds, and partly or wholly closed as quickly, and can be moved many times a day to suit varying wind and weather, a very impor- tant thing which would be impossible if each window were to be moved by hand. In a large establishment, like ours photographed for this book, there are several hundred windows, and it must be recollected that violent gales sometimes rise so suddenly that twenty men or fifty men could not close them all by hand quickly enough. The set of windows in Fig. 132 is on the same side as the tilt boxes, and a similar row of windows is supposed to be on the side not shown in this cut. The yards are also on the side not shown, but their position is indicated by y in Fig. 117. Figure 117 gives a tranverse section substantially through min the ground plan, Fig. 185. The yard fences, y, run in a direction parallel to the end walls of the build- ing and enclose as many yards as there are tilt boxes. The posts, c+ and ¢?, reach to the roof. ‘The short post, k, forms one of the supports to the passage platform, g. This platform is the principal line of travel used by the attendant, who ean, however, also go the whole length of the building between ct and the wall, but in doing so must open a door at each room he passes through. Nearly all the work is done in passage, g. Labor saying forbids handling doors, except when unavoidable, and, be it repeated, commercial poultry keeping can be prot- itable only when the utmost care and ingenuity are employed in every operation, from a to izzard, to save 220 AN EGG FARM. INS Resa aD ial ‘Kt i AG - ge yy FEED BOX ON WOODEN SHAFT. FIG. 110. labor. The fowls have the use of the floor, f, from the tilt box, ¢, to the wall at y. The dots at d show the position of a feed cylinder over the tilt box, and the dots at e show the position _of the call cylinder, which drops feed to keep the birds out of the tilt box while the latter is being tilted. The operation of this sort of tilt box with opening on side will be described in another place. The pit, p, is a foot deep, which is deeper than is needed for tilting, but as, in spite of all precautions, a fowl will sometimes escape and, roaming through the passage, g, blunder over be- hind the tilt box next the wall, space enough in the pit must be afforded to avoid crushing the vagrant. It will be plain enough that the tilt box tilts toward the wall and that the surface of the ground outside the building is not far from the top of the underpinning, hence p is described as a pit. The crosspiece, 2, sup- ports the floor, r. The tilt box aperture to admit the fowls is on the side next to 221 THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. FIG. 111. Ce Keift fer ye 7 7. 0 WL rc “se al iyg Wi GL L MZ SHELF WITH CONCUSSION BAR. 222 AN EGG FARM, k& and the wire netting, 7, is to confine a fowl during tilting, should one chance to 1emain in the tilt box, a thing very unlikely to occur, however, unless the bird is a new acquisition, an untrained recruit. The ljongitudinal section of the same building, Fig. 118, is substantially on a line through c? in the trans- verse section, Fig. 117, and through the same upright post, c?, in the ground plan, Fig. 185. In Fig. 118, the room between ¢? and c? is given to one flock, that is, the space is devoted to one apartment or stationary box, two call cylinders, e, e, being employed so as to drop grain over space enough to give all the birds a fair chance. There is only a single perch for each flock and this is not shown, as it 1s not in line, but it is placed over the roost floor, 7, and extends the whole length of the room from ¢* toc. A scantling, v, FIG. 112. CASTER = 5 WHEEL unpeR Teaching from w to w, supports the floor See of the nesting apartment, x, the top of this apartment being indicated by w, just over which runs the cylinder axle. ‘The movable nest boxes are made so that they can be easily reached by the attendant from the passage, g, in Fig. 117. . The ground plan, Fig. 135, calls for but slight deserip- tion after it has been compared with the vertical sec- tions. The space separated by the dotted lines in which the blocks, m, stand, is, of course, devoted to the con- tinuous tilt box divided by partitions into smaller tilt boxes. This multiform or compound tilt box is as long as the whole building, minus a little at one end, where the stairs are which lead to the attendant’s passage, these stairs being indicated by s, s, near which is the outside door, This multiform tilt box must have attached either the winch, Fig. 138, or the long lever, Fig. 88, and, in case the latter is employed, a short wing Oe ae al THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS, or ell must be added to the main build- ing, to give the lever room to describe an are. The rooms, or stationary boxes as we have named their equivalent in other cuts, for the separate flocks may be seen -on this ground plan if the reader will imagine a line drawn from each block, m, through &, c?, c', and thence to the wall. By referring to the transverse section, Fig. 117, it will be obvious that each flock will have a nesting apartment and a roost, a ladder being furnished for the convenience of the birds. The need of a piece of coarse wire netting under and at one side of the call cylinders will be evident, to keep the fowls away and, at the same time, allow feed to drop on the fluor. Among other merits of the parallel plan for arranging the tilt boxes, we enumer- ate: First, the birds have the benefit of the space under the passage, g; second, the nests, the perches and all the feed cylinders are very convenient of access by the attendant, and third, the tilt box is narrow in proportion to its length, thereby facilitating the tilting. Build all the boxes narrow and of thin, light lumber. The tilt box is, as before stated, one continuous box supported by the axle, J, which rests on the blocks, m, in such a position that when the tilt box is level its underside is one inch higher than the upper surface of the floor, f. The con- tinuous box, several hundred feet long, is divided into apartments by board parti- ero) Gut “SIT ) ~~ 23 224 AN EGG FARM. tions, these apartments being in length the same as from the center of one block, m, to the center of the next block, m. It is important to have the axle for tilt boxes for layers large and strong, if it isa long one. The strain S< t Bip: es BISA FIG. 114. A SUBSTITUTE FOR TILT BOX. SEE P. 161. caused by the section used by one flock of fowls is not great, but, by extending the multiform box through a long building, the strain becomes greater than would be supposed. The axle can safely be of smaller calibre at the end farthest from the operator. For a building one hundred feet or more in length, a two-inch iron pipe, THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 22d reinforced by the collar at each joint, Fig. 35, is suitable for the first fifty feet at the end nearest the attendunt. The lever, if one is used, should be six to twelve feet long, ac- cording to the length of the axle. A winch, Fig. 138, is preferable if the axle is long, and the handle of this winch should be strong and made to be grasped by both hands. Tf there are ten or twelve tilt box apart- ments attached to the same axle, they should be 3 1-2x8 ft. and 2 1-4 ft. deep. If fifteen or twenty apartments, they should be 3x10 ft. or 3x12 ft., according to the size of the flocks ; for it is readily understood that the narrower the tilt boxes, other things being equal, the easier it is to rotate them. After determining their width, you contrive the width of the building and the location of the posts, which last determines the size of the stationary boxes or apartments under the call cylinders. In Figs. 117 and 135 the tilt box is 3 ft. wide. Be sure to avoid making your tilt boxes too wide. Use thin, light-weight boards. In Fig. 117, and in all other instances in the parallel system, the birds must enter at the side of the tilt boxes, of course, as in Figs. 131, 142 and 144. Also the tilt boxes for brooder chicks should be rounded a little on the front side. In Fig. 142, S represents the stationary box, Y the yard out of doors, T the tilt box, and Y a curved flap to shut off ingress and egress at the opening between T and §. Compare this cut with Fig. 73 and observe the dotted line, which shows the half tilt and the full tilt. The feed cylin- 15 CIL (OIA “HVd GNV SEVATO HALIM SHATHHS 226 AN EGG FARM. der, or a feed shelf if preferred, is at 10 and the feed drops toward 7’ through the curved partition of wire, one-inch mesh. In both cuts, this wire mesh is indi- cated in various places by small crosses. As is obvious, APPARATUS FOR MOVING SHELF, 116. FIG. the chicks cannot enter the space over the tilt box be- tween Sand Y. The reader should study carefully the ground plan, Fig. 140. PP is a passage or alley for the attendant, dug in the ground two feet, so as to bring the floor, S, to a hight convenient for the attendant, THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS, QQ’ in which case, if S is on a level with the ground out- side the brooder house, a pit must be dug to give the tilt box room to turn, as in the case of the tilt box for grown fowls, Fig. 117, where 7 is the tilt box and p the pit. The construction of the floor of the passage for the at- tendant on the same level with the stationary boxes, brooders or layers, as in Fig. 136, we utterly condemn. “FIG. 117. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF HOUSE FOR LAYERS. (SEE FIG. 132.) The rules of convenience and labor saving are against it, and why so many manufacturers of brooders perpetu- ate the nuisance is past our comprehension. As well might the counter of the salesman or the workbench of the mechanic be on a level with the floor. The brooder is the poulterer’s. workbench. In the parallel plan for brooder house, the tilt boxes should be double, being built for two broods with a par- 228 AN EGG FARM. tition of wire netting, one-inch mesh. See Fig. 131. For the younglings, this is better than the continuous or multiform tilt box used for layers, Fig. 117. In the ground plan, Fig. 140, the wire partition dividing the double tilt boxes is represented by small crosses. Hach brood ‘has an alley, e, six inches wide, communicating with Y and S, this alley being closed to suit occasions by small doors, one at each end. ‘These doors, however, are not shown in the cut. FIG. 118. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF HOUSE FOR LAYERS. (SEE FIG. 132.) If the brooder house is a long one, similar in external appearance to the one shown in Fig. 103, and heated by hot water, the parallel system should be followed, and by a little ingenuity room can be contrived to locate tilt boxes in any brooder house that is constructed substan- tially like Fig. 137, although not built with reference to their adoption. If, however, each brooder is heated by a separate lamp, the alternate system, Figs. 102, 103 and 141, should be followed. In any brooder house THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 229 already built, that is arranged essentially like Fig. 136, tilt boxes can be introduced. Whenever tilt boxes are put into a building of this sort or of the kind shown in Fig. 102, it will be necessary to dig a pit in which the “OIL “Dia “HTHHS ONIAOW MOA SALIVUVIAV winch or lever may turn and the attendant stand while operating the same. If you hatch chickens artificially on a small scale, using only two, three or four brooders at a time, the best way will be to adopt the alternate plan and have no continuous axle with its lever or crank, and dispense also with feed cylinders or feed shelves. Rotate each tilt box 230 AN EGG PARM. separately, by hand, just as you would rock a cradle, each haying a separate axle made by nailing a stick, one and one-half or two inches square, across the bottom of the tilt box, at the under side, and letting it project a couple of inches beyond the ends of the box, these ends to be rounded, and each to rest in a notch of correspond- ing size cut in the edge of a horizontal bearing piece of inch board. A good shape for such a box is seen in Fig. 143. Of course, you walk to each tilt box in succes- sion, and do without feed cylinders by sprinkling a pinch of millet or other fine feed by hand twice every time you tilt the box, one pinch to call them cut of the tilt box to begin with. No signal will be needed to call them. Their quick eyes FIG. 120. CRANK MADE OF PIPING. will watch your every motion. You can set a tilt box, then a brooder or stationary box, for they are both the same thing; then a tilt box, then a brooder, - right alongside of an alley three feet wide, which is sunk two feet in the ground for the attendant to walk in, or you can set the brooder and the frame which supports the tilt box on legs two feet long, as in Figs. 78, 79 and 80. The brooders should communicate with little yards or long narrow runways, with small outdoor exercisers attached, but for the first fifteen or twenty days of the younglings’ existence there need be no going out doors at all, if you operate the tilt box often. The floor of the stationary box or brooder should be two inches higher THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 231 than the floor of the tilt box, to allow for the thickness of the two-inch layer of cut hay or chaff in the latter. You can use lamps and either hot water or hot air for your brooders, when you have but a small number. Now, if you have eight, ten or more brooders occu- pied at the same time, use the alternate system and sunken alley above described, and attach all your tilt boxes to a continuous axle furnished with a crank and use feed cylinders, asin Fig. 79. - The axle may be of three- quarter inch or inch iron pipe and must pass under the sta- tionary boxes, or brooders or hovers, as they may be called, on its way from one tilt box to the next. Under this plan, of course, you do not have to go from one box to the other, but stand at one end of the axle, where you tilt all at once. The quantity and kind of feed needed for each brood, according to the number of birds composing it and their age, is provided for when the feed cylinders are charged, which will ordinarily be but once a day, with the dry grain, which should be the main feed. Green stuff and meat may be fed in the usual manner, it being not adapted to the feed cylinder. One of the merits of the system of poultry keepimg by machinery is that the birds, both young and old, can digest plain, dry, uncooked grain and thrive upon it with very little else, excepting green stuff in slight allowance, gravel and water, if they are compelled to work hard for nearly all they get. Meat, vegetables, and the various prepared articles of food take too much time, besides costing ordi- narily more than grain. Feeding milk is an uncleanly practice, daubing and soiling beaks and feathers more or less. A little green stuff is useful, not, as some persons TO SPOOL. 232 AN EGG FARM. have claimed, on account of its nutritive constituents being better than those of grain, but because the acids of green stuff and fruit help all omnivorous or graminiv- orous animals, man included, to digest the grain food, which is the main rehance. No matter how nutritious SIMPLE APPARATUS FOR MOVING SHELF, 122, FIG, the diet on board ship, the sailors without fruit or vegetables will have scurvy after a while. If your establishment contains fifteen or twenty brood- ers, or upwards, stick to the sunken alley, but change from the alternate to the parallel system, Figs. 140, 142 233 THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. SOLD) UTS Ans es FIG. 123. FEED TROUGH—SIDE VIEW. a | SA 1 | | | ND | A | S| 2 A YA GR |} CR 1 7 | C1 i WE HAL NR MOMMA te MTN COO sf | € FIG. 124. FEED TROUGH—SIDE VIEW. 234 AN EGG FARM. and 144, and use hot-water pipes of the usual style, Figs. 136 and 139. What has been said, regarding three different methods of operation with chick tilt boxes, applies to layer tilt boxes with the exception that, when you have but two, three or four of these and walk to each, it will not be convenient to take hold of the tilt box directly, it being too heavy and swinging in too big an arc to be moved easily and followed conveniently on its trip, but a short wooden lever will be needed, which may be nailed to each box. If you have five or more layer tilt boxes on one axle, a call bell and a feed shelf, the latter operated by a hammer held in the hand will be cheaper than feed cylinders. A swinging feed shelf can be very readily suspended when it is indoors, the suspension cords or wires being attached to some part of the building. The chaff or litter for layer tilt boxes should be fine, and for chick tilt boxes very fine. Coarse, stemmy hay cut short is very good. It must be somewhat heavy, for if too light and fluffy it does not tumble well in tilt- ing. In Nebraska, Kansas, California and intermediate alfalfa regions, use the finely broken stems and leaves remaining after the alfalfa seed has been threshed out. There is nothing else so good for the purpose. CHAPTER XXYV. HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. The introduction of mechanical contrivances in tend- ing fowls marks a new era in poultry raising on a large scale. Hereafter the poulterer, working under the old system, can no more compete with those who have the new machinery than he can raise hay for cattle and use only scythes in competition with stockmen who have mowing machines. The ordinary scratching room, or ‘scratch pen,” would be all right if the time could be afforded to mix grain with the litter often and a little at a time, but nobody ever did or ever will do this thor- oughly by hand, daily, for any length of time. If done by hand it will be at a loss, and the more you do it without machinery the more you will lose. The country is full of abandoned incubators and brooders because the eggs used for hatching lacked, at the start, the vitality that nothing but exercise of the parent stock could bestow, and also such chicks as could be coaxed out of the shell died by inches for want of exercise in the brooders. Writers on poultry urge the sprinkling of millet on litter for the young broods, to induce scratching exercise; but doing this two or three times a day amounts to but little. It will slightly retard the mortality, the ‘leg weakness,” the general debility and the “‘plastering up” at the rear of the body of the poor unfortunates, but will not wholly prevent these troubles. Speaking of the disgusting and disheartening trouble last mentioned, complaint of which appears in the cor- 239 236 AN EGG FARM. respondence columns of the poultry papers over and over again, it hardly occurs in case of chicks running at large in one instance in a thousand, we might say. It is wrongly attributed to looseness of the bowels, while its real cause is weak- ness of the muscles around the vent. These muscles are weak because all the other muscles of the body are weak. When the mus- cular system is toned up by the exercise on a free range while constantly hunting, literally, for ‘‘grub,” one set of muscles concerned in eyacuation throws back, or separates, the feathers around the vent with force, while with equal force an- other set of muscles expels the droppings. Much of the so-called diarrhea is (WHALEN SSS FAAS SZ FIG. 125. FEED TROUGH APPARATUS. not diarrhoea at all. The chicks are weak for lack of exercise, the whole system is enfeebled, but the bowels HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 237 are not suffering a whit more than all the other organs. The troublesome symptom of clogging near the vane Is almost invariably caused by lack of exercise, but any- thing else that debilitates will cause it, and it is not necessarily an ac- companiment of diarrhcea, dysen- tery, or any other specially diseased state of the bowels, or of abnormal or vitiated droppings. These last-may be in fully as nor- mal a condition as any of the other waste products or various secretions of the animal economy. The feathers begin to be clogged, in the first place, by the thin matter that . . FIG. 126. TRIP GONG is voided last, the muscles concerned DE becoming tired toward the close of the orgasm. A powerful muscular action is necessary, to throw aside the numerous feathers surrounding the vent and to discharge the thin matter with sufficient force to prevent any drib- bling or soiling of the surrounding parts. The chick, debilitated in every muscular tissue by unnatural confinement, has not the strength to prevent the leakage of. a drop or two, which, adhering to the feathers, forms the nucleus of an un- sightly deposit, which increases with every evacuation. The vent itself is not clogged. The deposit is outside the pas- sage, not init. The poultry keeper is apt FIG. 127. WIRE to try a change of feed, thinking that the FOR GONGS. trouble consists in bad digestion, or he finds fault with the brooder and changes from bot- tom heat to top heat, or vice versa. But the main cause is lack of exercise, and no style of brooder or 238 AN EGG FARM. change of feed can possibly cure or prevent the symp- toms in question. Let us be understood. This is the first time, so far as the writer 1s aware, that the true nature of most of FIG. 128. INTERIOR ALTERNATE SYSTEM. SEE FIGS. 77 AND 130. the so-called diarrhoea, looseness of the bowels and clog- ging of the vent has been published. It is not claimed here that the bowels and the evacuations are in a per- fectly healthy state when the dribbling matter previously WOLSAS DLVNYALITV HIM ASOOH WO NOILOUS ASUAASNVUL “6Cl “Ola HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 239 described begins to adhere to the feathers. When there is deterioration of health and strength on account of dearth of exercise, or on account of jostling and crowd- ing at night in an insufficiently warmed brooder, result- ing in loss of sleep, every organ and function of the body is likely to be more or less impaired. What is asserted is that the bowels are not primarily or specially in fault. The whole digestive system may be as well off as any other part of the chick, and may be, in fact, the AN EGG FARM. 240 “HASNOH AO NVTd GNNOMWD “OSt “D1 Cary I eS os erst Bis SOS ee ee 5 fem re tao om ee oe) eee wo ee) ore me > EI oly oy | o} aa ef] I iy a y ' ' ! ‘ 1 i t 1 ) ! ' eS) CI @ HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 241 nearest to a healthy state of all the various organs; yet, since there is a great deal of muscular strength necessary to the proper per- formance of the act of evacuation, with- out such strength there will be soiling of the feathers, which will go on from bad to worse. : Reader, if you would test the cor- rectness of the above, take a score,—or fifty or more if you have them, —of brooder chicks that have been confined in a manner to prevent exercise. Select only those that have the unsightly protuberance adh er- ing to the feathers near the vent. Re- move the deposit, and keep removing it care- fully during the early stages of the experi- ue ment we are about to By describe, using warm water and patience, and taking pains not to injure either the flesh or the feathers. Separate your afflicted specimens into two broods, im- partially, as regards size and health. Give each brood 16 ‘OI “TET “xOd LILL Tl K r SS th It DNTTTITNS = = 242 AN EGG FARM.. the same heat, sun, fresh air, water, and everything else down to the smallest detail. Only and excepting this, You contrive plenty of exercise for one of the to wit: ' squads, and for the other, not. Remove the filth from ‘SHHUAVT WOA ASNO “OST “OL ABGE,. WH the posterior parts of all the birds in both squads if it This is so as. to be able to detect results after the exercise has been ek or so after separation. reappears, for a we The division into two allowed time to take effect. HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. 243: squads should be made before the specimens in either group become too debilitated to take exercise; because, you see, if exercise is to be tested, exercise must actually appear, in one squad, as a factor in the ex- periment. We will tell you beforehand, _good reader, how it will turn out. You will not only find that exercise will pre- vent accumulations near the vent, but by careful watching you will discover that your squad which possesses strencthen- ed muscles performs the act of evacuation in a vigorous manner, throwing aside with force the feathers of the parts concerned and holding them rigidly till the last portion of the urine, as well as the more solid matter, has been vigorously ejected, while you will also perceive that the reverse is true of the other squad, which exhibits only feeble orgasms, dribbling and befouling. FIG. 133. LARGE HAND WHEEL. When young chicks are under the care of the mother hen and are allowed freedom they are in motion nearly all the time in daylight hours. Plenty of exercise keeps up the proper rig. 134. balance between the muscular, the nervous, w“iny. the circulatory and the digestive systems, and tones up every portion and function of the body. In such a ease, there will be not more than one or two per cent of the young birds showing posterior parts befouled, and such birds were most certainly badly 244 AN EGG FARM. hatched and so handicapped in the race of life, or they met with some injury or setback. Sometimes a whole season will not develop a single instance of the unsightly pest in flocks aggregating hundreds. Under natural con- ditions domestic birds, like their wild cousins, will have perfectly clean plumage. Folks say it is necessary for young chicks to “‘get at the ground.” It is necessary for them to ‘‘ get at” exercise. In the instance of brooder chicks, throwing grain on top of a pile of litter does not amount to much. No matter how loose the litter may be when it is first put into the scratch box, the constant tramping of the chicks soon makes it a compact mass and the grain will not rattle down through it. Throwing them grain induces a momentary scramble but very little scratching. If the attendant stirs up the litter, using a rake or fork, it takes him over twenty minutes for sixty flocks, to do this properly and not stampede the birds, even when every door and other appliance at the brooders and scratching places 1s constructed so that it can be done as handily as possible, while unless the brooders and their belongings are made with special reference to this rou- tine it will take forty minutes. With the indoor exer- ciser 1t can be done in- one minute. That is, the machine saves the time of twenty men, at the very least. ‘The best farm machinery saves the time of only eight to twelve men. CHAPTER XXVI. BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. Throughout the industrial realm everywhere the mod- erm maxim is: ‘‘Use a machine instead of a man, wherever possible.” In field, factory and mine, and on shipboard, progress demands the best of facilities for doing those things which are to be repeated over and over ten thousand times. On the other hand, when an operation is to be repeated but seldom, you must beware Jest you lavish so much time on a machine to do it with that it costs more than the profits. As we have seen, the surplus eggs and poultry from farms and rural places will be put on the market irre- spective of profit, and the rapid extension of the trolley Imes changes many urban residents to suburban; in other words, they become producers of poultry products instead of consumers merely. Therefore, the prices of eggs and dressed poultry are low and will continue low. To get around the difficulty, the artificial method of hatching and rearing has been resorted to by would-be broiler raisers on a large scale, so as to get high prices by securing chicks in cold weather when the ordinary farmer cannot, or does not, doit. But the first trouble is that winter eggs do not hatch well because the laying stock is in bad condition at that season from lack of exer- cise, and the second trouble is, that when you succeed in hatching, the chicks cannot exercise in yards in cold weather, sleet and snowdrifts. You cannot secure exer- cise for them indoors without the aid of machinery, unless you spend more time than they are worth. With- 245 : 246 AN EGG FARM. out exercise so many will die that there will be no profits. In a nutshell, without exercise there cannot be thrift, and exercise in bad weather cannot be secured except at pecuniary loss, unless there are labor-saving contrivances. The large establishments will either raise chickens in moderate weather under an out-of-door sys- tem with plenty of range, and preferably in about the latitude of North Carolina and Arkansas, where the winters are short and mild, or adopt machinery, or allow large and, of course, expensive apartments for each flock, or shut up shep. The writer dislikes the ct mn oe c oe or c= 0 g cs U 0} a a & i) a iL ee & a asggsoee is: wennn en eern ee me oo ee eee ooewene oer m een, FIG. 132. GROUND PLAN OF HOUSE FOR LAYERS. (SEE PAGE 182). role of dark prophet, and calls attention to the sombre truth only in order to show a way out of the difficulties. The trouble with large rooms for each flock is the great cost. Already cases are appearing where $50,000, and even $100,000, is spent on one set of poultry buildings. Scores of large poultry farms have been abandoned because their owners did not, at the outset, correctly estimate the amount of labor needed to run them, which is, unless machinery is used, so enormous as to absorb the profits, or, more properly, to prevent all profits. There are ten thousand steps necessary on poultry farms as ordinarily conducted, possessing no labor-saving con- TA WEI oe BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. ‘WHOLSAS ONILVAH WHLVA LOH 248 AN EGG FARM. trivances, and the day is never long enough, from ear- lest dawn till work by lantern hgibt has been prolonged till bedtime, to attend to the hundreds of little details. On poultry farming as a business there is no one bet- ter qualified to speak than that luminous and yolumi- nous writer for the poultry press, intelligent and careful observer, and practical poultry keeper, W. H. Rudd, who, moreover, lives in Massachusetts, where poultry farms run on a more or less extensive scale are most numerous, and besides, his market and provision trade in Boston has, for thirty years past, given him an excel- lent opportunity to keep track of the progress in raising poultry products for the table as a business. He says: ** Where competent help is a necessity we are very doubtful whether it can beemployed at a profit; at any rate, we have never known of an instance whereit has been done.” Since his utterance, quoted above, there have, how- ever, been some very noticeable advances in poultry cul- ture. With the aid of the new labor-saving machinery, skilled labor can be employed, in connection, of course, with a proper number of cheap hands, at a profit in poultry raising. There is much light work and routine work that can be done by low priced labor when machines are the central and governing feature. With- out such machinery poultry will not be raised on a large scale in the future, any more than grain will be sown by hand, reaped with a sickle and threshed with a flail at a profit. It will be found cheaper to use comparatively small buildings with machinery, than large buildings without it. If help cannot be hired in a business, it-is no business at all, and it is *‘not business” to be in such a business. What would be thought of another dustry where no employes could be hired at a profit? The truth is, that in cases where a poultry raising establishment depending on yards has been run on a moderate scale 249 BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. FIG . 137. BROODER HOUSE, 250 AN EGG FARM. successfully without machinery, the owner working at nothing else the year round, either thoroughbred fowls and eggs have been sold at high prices and the business kept afloat in that way, or the proprietor has struggled and toiled with an amount of care, painstaking and unremitting industry, which, if employed in almost any other staple calling, in office, hotel, mine, factory or store, would have paid him better. In this last instance, talents and zeal have been virtually squandered, since they could have been employed to better advantage elsewhere. As re- cards the breeding and sale of fowls, or of livestock of any species, at fancy prices, it is an important branch of rural economy and brings about a vast amount of good in dis- seminating valuable breeds of animals all over the country, and finally at prices within WIG. 138 SHAFT WITH winon _ Uae each? OL tae mimiinimees But it is not a staple busi- ness. In the nature of things, but a few can work at it, and in the last analysis its foundation will be found to rest on the use which the breed serves in the hands of those who produce for sale at ordinary market rates. To illustrate, if the reeular dairy business is not profitable, then the raiser of extra premium Jerseys or Holsteins will have no customers. The raisers of prize winners must be few m number; for if like produces like, then by natural increase their excellent breed will soon be common ; while if, on the other hand, the superior quali- ties of their high priced specimens are not hereditary, ‘ASNOH WACOOUNT AO NVTA ‘GPT ‘Ole BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. RO2 AN EGG FARM. then the purchaser has been deluded, and the seller is laying snares instead of following a staple business. To return to the matter of hiring help, machinery is a great promoter of efficient service in all branches of industry. The tender of the machine must feed it con- tinually and faithfully, or the result is a ‘‘dead give away.” ‘The farm hand may lean on his hoe pretty often to see the pigeons fly, or the carpenter may dawdle over his jackplane occasionally to gossip, and not be noticed ; but if the former is running a gang plow and the latter a planing machine, the stoppage of either attracts atten- tion. The machine regulates the operative. In these latter days, the question whether there is, or should be, antagouism between employer and employe is often dis- cussed.. The fact is, the old saying, ‘‘ there is no friend- ship in trade,” is as true now as when it was first uttered. A seller tries to sell dear, and a buyer to buy cheap. The wage worker’s commodity is his labor. Unless he is trying for promotion, or something of that sort, he is apt to try to see, not only how much money he can get for his work, but how little work he can do for his money. To prevent shirking, piecework has been found a very successful device, and is followed almost invariably in great establishments where the nature of the prod- uct permits it, careful inspection of the articles pro- duced being necessary in order to prevent slighting of the work. Working on shares, practiced in connec- tion with farming to a great and increasing extent, is another way of enlisting the worker’s self-interest. Where neither piecework nor work on shares is practica- ble, then two other things remain which will assist in securing faithful service of wage workers at a period when the false and pernicious doctrine is rife that any- thing that makes work is a benefit to the laborer and anything that uses up work is his enemy. The two ara) fu & “OFT NVTd GNNOWD ‘HSNOH WAGCOONd AO BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 253 254 =F AN EGG FARM. . things meant are teams and machinery. Whenever a hand is driving a team, it must be kept going. Hence the great advantage in hiring help in prairie farming, where almost everything is done by teams, over hiring TILT BOX WITH FLAP. FIG. 141. in garden work and horticulture, which are mostly han- dicrafts. In factories where the hired hand does noth- ing but tend a machine, he will be sufficiently regulated without working either on shares or by the piece. In the large poultry establishments where the Exercis- BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 205 ers are used, the feed droppers, whether the latter are shelves or cylinders, will always speak for themselves and show whether they have been charged at the proper time and with the proper quantity, the orders being to do everything by rule, of course. The sound of the call bells, supposing that these are operated by employes and not by clockwork, will show what is going on at all times during the day, so that efficiency of the hired help is compelled. This is an advantage not to be despised, though an incidental one not considered when, for other purposes, poultry machinery was originally planned. While the use of the Exerciser is as efficacious in giy- ing vitality to eggs designed for hatching as in rearing chicks in brooders,. its effects are more palpable and more quickly discovered in the latter case. Divide fifty chicks four days old impartially into two groups of twenty-five each. Put one group into a brooder without the Exerciser and the other group into a brooder exactly the same in all-respects, excepting that the latter has the Exerciser attached; treat both groups scrupu- lously alike as regards sun, air, feeding, watering and everything else down to the smallest details, and then compare the two groups every week till two, three, four weeks have elapsed. The contrast will be simply marvelous. A great deal of exercise, not merely a little, is just what artificially reared chickens need. It goes right to the spot. Hitherto the brooder chicks of the whole United States have not been allowed, one case in fifty, a full plenty of exercise, in winter especially. There is, to many persons, a fascination about artificial hatching and rearing, besides the expectations of pecu- niary gains; so that thousands on thousands of dollars are invested in incubators, with an enormous amount of chagrin and disappointment as the almost invariable result. Lest the writer should appear to exaggerate on this point let an impartial and competent witness, Mr. 256 AN EGG FARM. Lockwood Myrick, be called to the stand, who, in the American Agriculturist, says: ‘There are few enterprises that present such an assurance of large and quick profits as that of raising broiler chickens artificially, that is, with incubators and brooders, instead of hens. With incubators a large number of chicks can be hatched at. once and at seasons when hens do not sit. The market for broilers is never glutted. They are marketed at three months old, the dressed weight (undrawn) ranging from three to three and one-half pounds per pair. Eggs cost a trifle less than two cents each the year through. The feed consumed by a chick in three months costs but ten to twenty cents per pair. 10 a ee ERIN ey as? -ee ROVERS \\ ONC MC Be le ap tele ee Y or trae YxwmaWaMAW MN ae Xx * \ Nn \ ca FIG. 142. TILT BOX—PARALLEL SYSTEM. “The business has been tried in all parts of the country, but proba- bly more extensively at Hammonton, South New Jersey. Within the last ten years it is said that more than fifty parties have undertaken the brooder business in this township. A better soil and climate for poultry cannot be found, and if success in the brooder business can be expected anywhere, certainly it should be found at Hammonton. And what is the result? Of all who have engaged in it only four remain, commercially, and of these but two run the whole year, and one of these expects to retire shortly. It is safe to say that there is not a single brooder man in Hammonton to-day who realizes $500 per year net profit, and that is without making any charge for his time. One party mentioned above who says he cleared that sum two years ago, evidently has not since. Another, after four years’ constant effort, says he has not received fifty cents a day for his labor. A third, who BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. PHB runs but a few months annually, says he cannot make $1.50 pet day for the time he és in it. “Evidently such a wide difference between the ideal and the real calls for an explanation and that can be given in two words, dead chicks. Incubators hatch from 50 to 60 per eent of the eggs. The trou- ble is not in the hatching, unless that means weakened vitality, but in keeping the chicks alive afterward. The death rate is awful, ranging from 60 to 80 per cent. When one-half a hatch reach to the broiler state, rarely done, the business is moderately profitable. If 60 per cent die, a prudent man can about pay his feea bills; when more than this die, as is usual, the business is unprofitable. This mortality is principally within three weeks from hatching. One of the first pain- ful duties that awaits the novice is the burial of chicks; they are often buried by the buecketful daily. “Practical men differ in placing blame for the mortality upon brood- ing or feeding. Many kinds of brooders have been tried, using top heat, bottom heat, heating with hot-water pipes and with single lamps, but the chicks die about the same with all. Feeding is a mat_ ter of great importance that has been most carefully studied, but no satisfactory ration has been found, or none than can entirely over- come the ill effects of imperfect brooding, and no brooder has been used that can overcome the ill effects of improper feeding if the trouble is in the ration. The “infant mortality ” is the great cause of failure. After investing $1,000 or more and losing a year’s time, the average man sells at a sacrifice to a new enthusiast, who in turn sells again or dismantles the houses and devotes the land to more profitable uses. In the light of Hammonton’s ten years’ experience, it is plain that until some better system of artificial brooding is devised, the business is a very hazardous one; it eannot compete with the hen.” The above is very unwelcome to a host of people who have been hoping to find in broiler raising a sure path to fortune. Chicks of all gallinaceous species of fowls are so constituted in their essential physical nature that a tremendous amount of exertion is absolutely necessary, not only to thrift but to life itself. They are so con- structed that without almost continual activity of their organs of locomotion the proper balance between their muscular system and their digestive and respiratory sys- tems is lost. Their whole constitution becomes impaired because the equilibrium of vital forces ordained in nature has been broken up. The Hammonton chicks died for the same reason that brooder chicks by the thousands have died all over the country. The heat and ventilation in the brooder and ili 258 AN EGG FARM. the ration might both be right at Hammonton and yet the ‘“‘infant mortality” be appalling. The riddle is solyed. Canaries and young chickens are among the most active animals in the world. Nature is not a clumsy architect. Their hearts, lungs and digestive organs sustain an intimate relation to their muscles, and the harmony of parts in the make-up of an animal must be respected. When older the chicks could sur- vive enforced idleness and inaction. But they are deli- cate little balls of down at an early age unless gradually made robust by working for what they get. If you fight nature you will be whipped every time. Raisers of brooder ; chicks all over the coun- try, who achieve a partial success, repeatedly testify that allowing the younglings the liberty of an outside yard — always checks the mortality perceptibly. FIG. 143. LIGHT TILT BOX. But it will soon become generally known that a tilt box of a few square feet of floor will do more good than a yard of many square feet. The magical results of the little outdoor yards adopted by the most successful raisers of brooder chicks have been hastily attributed to the stimu- lating effects of the cold or to the influence of the fresh air or the direct rays of the sun. Wrong. No possible allowance, proportion or variety.of heat, cold, fresh air, light or sun will save them without exercise. The curiosity and inquisitiveness of the little fellows led them to continually run indoors and out, like children, as children’s mothers well know, and in this way a little exercise was gained by the use of the outdoor runs, but not enough by 99 per cent. You can afford pupils plenty of exercise in a city schoolyard of very limited’ dimen- BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 259) ‘sions, by means of gymnastic apparatus; a caged squirrel allowed a wheel will thrive ; and brooder chicks or layers provided with a gymnasium will take even more exercise than if on afree range. . You can secure plenty of hatchable eggs in winter by providing the Exerciser for your laying stock and in this way get two or three months the start of breeders who are dependent on the advent of spring, gentle spring. You need not mind -the cold much, granted that your layers are through molting, if you keep their blood stir- ring, and, as regards the kind of feed, you may give them almost anything that comes handy. Attend to their muscles, and then their gizzards, which are bun- dles of powerful muscles, will work all right. There is mueh wasted talk about a ‘‘ balanced ration,” and much wasted time spent in weighing the constituents of hay, grain and other feed stuffs, and beef, fat, milk, eggs, and other animal products, expecting to be able to put certain raw materials into one part of the mill and take out finished goods at another part, as the manufacturer does. But the processes of nature are so subtle that you cannot always tell by what you put in exactly what you will take out. There is no way so good as actually try- ing. The test of sowing and reaping will instruct a farmer concerning the adaptation of his land to a crop better‘than elaborate analyses of the crop and the soil could ever do; and just so the only way to tell what a particular ration will do for fowls or other livestock is to try it. The state agricultural experiment station of New York, at Geneva, reported in Bulletin 132 an interesting experiment with a milch cow: “4 cow fed during ninety-five days on aration from which the fats had been nearly all extracted, continued to secrete milk similar to that produced when fed on the same kinds of hay and grain in their normal condition. “The yield of milk fat during the ninety-five days was 62.9lbs. The 260 AN EGG FARM. food fat eaten during this time was 11.6 lbs., 5.7 lbs. only of which was digested, consequently at least 57.2 lbs. of the miik fat must have had some source other than fat in the food consumed. “The milk fat could not have come from previously stored body fat. This assertion is supported by three considerations: (a) The cow’s body could have contained scarcely more than 60 lbs. of fat at the beginning of the experiment; (b) she gained 47 lbs. in body weight during this period of time with no increase of body nitrogen, and was judged to bea much fatter cow at the end; (c) the formation of this quantity of milk fat from the body fat would have caused a marked condition of emaciation, which, because of an increase in the body weight, would have required the improbable increase in the body of 104 lbs. of water and intestinal contents.” Commenting on the above the editor of the American Agriculturist well says : “To put in plain United States language that the average dairyman can understand, we state thus the case learnedly set forth by Dr. Jor- dan: This cow in three months gave in her milk 57 lbs. more fat than she consumed. Evidently the cow converted into fat part of the sugar, starch, fiber, protein, etc., that she consumed. That cows can really do this was not before known. This may explain why it is that rations deficient in fat or oil may produce milk rich in fat. The experiment also shows what wonderful and little understood pro- cesses go on in the animal system. Only a few weeks ago they removed a woman’s stomach and she is now well and thriving, thus completely upsetting much of the ‘physiology’ we have been taught for years. Assuredly, how iittle is really known about the animal economy! Facts like these emphasize the marvel of life force.”’ Yet there are very many persons who reason that the constituents of wheat resemble the white of an egg and therefore they must feed that grain to laying hens even if it costs twice as much as corn—being afraid that the latter contains too much oily matter, forgetting that the yolk has much fat, and serves as the first food of a chick, as the first food of a calf is rich m cream, and that an omnivorous animal can digest and assimilate what it requires from a variety of foods, among which corn stands pre-eminent for cheapness in this country. CHAPTER XX VIL ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION. The practice of this art reaches back to the dawn of history. The oldest written accounts are connected with Egypt. In “The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Man- deville, Kt.,” occurs the following, written in 1356; ** Also at Cayre (Cairo), that Ispake of before, sellen men, comounly men and women of other lawe, as we done here bestes in the market. And there is a common hows in that cytee that is all fulle of smale furneys;and thidre bryngen wommen of the toun here eyren (eggs) of hennes, of gees, and of dokes, for to ben put in to the furneyses. And thei that kepen that hows covern hem with hete of hors dong, and outen henne, goos or doke or any other foul; and at the ende of three weeks or amonethe, thei comen agen and taken here chickens and norissche hem and bryngen hem forthe, so that alle the countre is fulle of hem. Andso men don there bothe wyntre and somer.” The fact of the successful prosecution of this art in Egypt having become disseminated throughout Europe, there were incubators of various patterns constructed in France, England and other countries, from the middle of the fifteenth to the close of the eighteenth century. In 1777, a method of heating egg ovens by pipes of hot water was tried in France, according to that excellent work, ‘‘Incubation and its Natural Laws,” by Charles A. Cyphers, the best which has appeared since the modern incubators came in use, outside of the standard works on embryology. To John Champion, Berwick-on- Tweed, England, 1770, probably belongs the credit of first hatching eggs by the aid of fire. He used a room through which passed two heated flues, the eggs being placed on a large round table in the center. He claimed that as many of the eggs hatched as if they had 261 262 AN EGG FARM. been sat upon by a hen. He says: ‘‘ The two flue places do not open into the hatching room but into one adjoin- ing, where the keeper sits and the coal is kept. By this means the eggs are free from smoke and dust, by which they might otherwise be greatly injured. The two rooms have a door communication, that the keeper may every now and then visit the eggs, and see if they are in the proper degree of heat.” weeVavvek ene ~ AN EGG FARM. hatching ovens use no thermometers but learn to distin- guish different temperatures. by the sense of feeling, and attendants on incubators and brooders sometimes learn to attain very great precision in judging tempera- ture without a thermometer. The hen can do it with- out a thermometer and without learning how. We wink without learning how, because our ancestors did, and the hen knows when eggs are warm enough to take their turns in the outer ring, because her ancestors were liy- ing thermometers. The movements of the hen to roll her eggs give an increase of ventilation, and in very warm, damp weather when she is not rolling eggs she will occasionally bristle her feathers and open her wings a little to give her nest a slight airing, and if very hot and very damp will even stand upright a few seconds by spells. Then, if it grows still hotter, she will leave the nest entirely, sometimes remaining off for hours at atime. If, on the contrary, it is windy, she will stick closer than a brother, even when in need of food and water. In very cold weather she is especially faithful to her charge; for she not only refrains from standing up when rolling her eggs, but she does this while keeping her body unusually quiet and holding her feathers close. If the weather continues very cold she will remain on her nest three days or more without food. The ten- dency is for the eggs to assume positions in the nest with the small ends toward the center, although with all gallinaceous species of birds which sit on a dozen or fif- teen or more eggs this order is not observed perfectly, as it is in the case of such other species as lay only from three to six. All eggs hatch best when the large end is the highest. Nature being our instructor, we cannot excel her and may consider ourselves fortunate if we come somewhere near her. The most that can be claimed for artificial hatching and rearing is, that while it can never operate REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. QV7 so perfectly as the hen, its exemplar, yet it can when properly directed approach so near her work as to keep within the bounds of the fluctuations a well-vitalized egg or a weil-hatched chick can undergo without serious injury. The fact that departures from the perfection. of nature so wide as to be barely compatible with success, if not wholly fatal to it, are liable to occur, renders it advisable that the natural method should be adopted in general, and the artificial resorted to only under special circumstances, as, for example, at such times and places as do not afford sitting hens. The writer would not publish, regarding a good incubator, a parallel to the famous ‘‘volume” on the snakes in Ireland contaming only six words: ‘‘There are no snakes in Ireland,” or repeat to a party about to buy an incubator the advice _ of the redoubtable Mr. Punch to folks contemplating matrimony: ‘‘ Don’t ;” for both incubators and brood- ers have their uses and on occasions are indispensable. TEMPERATURE. The correct degree of heat for the egg chamber of the incubator is found by taking the outside temperature of the sitting hen at the point of her contact with her eggs, near which, during what has been termed the sitting fever, a network of blood vessels becomes specially distended, capable of furnishing plentiful heat to be received by the eges and nest. The internal temperature of the hen some distance from her skin is given by Charles A. Cyphers, whose close study and clear description of the process of incubation merit unstinted praise, as 109° to 110° at the beginning of her sitting term, decreasing slightly towards its close, to offset partially the develop- ment of heat within the eggs themselves consequent on the growth, blood circulation and breathing of the chicks. 278 AN EGG FARM. The warmth imparted to the eggs it is difficult to ascertain with absolute precision, as eggs in different parts of the nest vary, and different parts of the same egg vary also. Cyphers found it 102°, others place it at from 103° to 105°. The writer could never find a temperature higher than 102 1-2°. At the start, it takes about forty-eight hours to heat the nest and eggs through and through sufficiently to raise the latter to their full temperature of say 102° or 102 1-2° or 103°. The air just above the eggs in an incubator must register about 103° in order that the eggs may reach 102°, The bulb of the thermometer should touch a fertile egg, as an infertile one is not a reliable indicator, and the glass should be set in wood, not in metal. The germ being always.at the top of the egg, in close proximity to the hen’s body, undoubtedly reaches 103°, even when the average temperature of the egg is a degree or half a degree less. Either 102° or 103° may be aimed at in the regulation of the incubator and if secured with a fair degree of precision all will go well so far as the requisite of heat is concerned. Before putting in the eggs, your incubator should be regulated and heated to the correct degree several days in order to be thoroughly warmed through. Then after putting in the eggs let the regu- lator severely alone during the first week. The eggs will cool off the machine at first, and then it and they will gradually warm up, and thus the natural process will be imitated in which, as we have seen, the eggs are not brought to the full standard heat suddenly. It has been recommended by some poultry men to run the tem- perature at 98° the first day and increase gradually for four days. But two considerations appear here: One being that although the eggs, shells excepted, are such a very poor conductor of heat that it takes two or three days for the hen to warm them and the nest through and through ; yet the important part of the germ, being REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 279 uppermost and almost in contact with the hen, being separated from her only by the shell, which is a remark- ably good heat conductor, gets to about 100° the first day ; and the other consideration being that some hun- dreds of cold eggs suddenly put into a well warmed up air chamber, regulated to the correct temperature of 102° on a level with the eggs and 103° at the bulb of the thermometer, will lower the temperature of the air for awhile, so that, as our experiments, corroborated by those of others, have shown, no particular care need be taken to run lower at the start than later. The eggs, or rather the embryo chicks, develop so much heat, beginning at about the eleventh day and then pro- gressively till hatching is finished, that no more than one- half as much oil is consumed by the incubator lamp dur- ing the last half of the term as during the first. Hence the necessity of watching your thermometer and turning down the flame as an offset to the animal heat. When this heat is great the prospect is good for a good hatch, both as regards numbers and vigor. When the chicks begin to pip, 104° is a good temper- ature, and when they begin to leave the shells it may be 105° without harm, but rather positive good, for the chicks being at first quite wet, evaporation makes them colder than the air of the egg chamber. Avoid at this stage the common error of opening the egg chamber door unless necessary. The effect of a blast of cool air on the wet bodies of delicate chicks is as if you should step out of doors in winter directly from a warm bath. The door may be opened perhaps twice in twenty-four hours, for a very brief time, to remove some of the empty shells which might otherwise cap over partly pipped eggs, hope- lessly imprisoning the inmates, and also the older active, well-dried chicks should be removed and hasketed or put under a warm brooder hover, lest they caper around over the limp, prostrate, wet ones. 280 AN EGG FARM. Some operators advise a heat of 106° for the last stages of hatching and claim it is of no consequence if the chicks pant. But, although an adult fowl may go around panting on a summer day when the mercury stands at 106° or higher, and be apparently none the worse afterwards, the writer is quite sure that the same temperature injures delicate chicks, especially as they do not get as good a chance at a little fresh air as if in the nest, where every motion they make operates the venti- lating fans of down. Man in his clumsy attempts to ventilate mechanically sometimes has a shaft run through a room to revolve fans for his comfort, but he could never attach millions of exceedingly minute fans to his incubator walls to be moved by the occupants. Thus do perfect cosmic provisions mock man’s puny efforts. CHAPTER XXIX. CARE OF THE EGGS. As we have seen, the hen changes the position of the egos, thus varying the heat they receive, but under no circumstances can she ever make them too hot; unlike the artificial incubator which may be capable of reach- ing 105, 110 or 120°, thus killing the germs out and out, or, what is worse, causing imperfect chicks to be thrown on the unavailing care of their owner. Chicks may be hatched after a fashion and not be well hatched. The decree of nature is that the eggs may, from time to time, be held at a point several degrees below the nor- mal maximum without material injury, thus allowing the sitting hen to forage for a living, but a decided departure above that normal is detrimental or positively fatal. The effect of too much or too protracted cooling is to add to the whole term of hatching. The hen may be shut out of her nest for twenty-four hours in moderately cool weather and the eggs and nest become so chilled that no heat whatever can be detected by the sense of feeling, yet eleven eggs out of twelve may hatch—at the end of the twenty-second day, however, instead of the middle of the twenty-first, as the writer has repeatedly demonstrated. If the weather is decidedly summery, thirty-six hours of desertion may not be sufficient to extinguish life, a fact the ignorance of which has often led people to unnecessarily destroy partially hatched . eggs. On the other hand the thorough heating through and through of eggs to 108°, a situation which. as before 281 282 AN EGG FARM. noticed, is impossible in natural incubation, will ruin them. Stories are told of the heat in the incubator reaching 110 or 112° for a brief period without percepti- ble injury, but the air might reach that degree, and some portions of some of the eggs reach it nearly or quite ; yet some of the germs in some of the eggs might be heated not more than 106° or thereabouts, not quite reaching the point of danger, since it ordinarily takes hours to equalize heat thoroughly between the air and the eggs. It must not, however, be understood from what has been said that chilling, resulting in delayed hatch- img, carries no injury whatever to the chicks, for they are never quite perfect when brought out either ahead of or behind time. The eggs will endure greater variations of temperature in the air around them after the twelfth day than before. When eges have been overheated they may be sprinkled with moderately cool water so that evaporation may check the heat without delay. If through any accident the temperature has been for hours a degree or two below 102° or 103°, the machine should be run an equal length of time as much above, so that the chicks may appear when due. SHOULD EGGS BE COOLED? The question of cooling the eggs for a short time daily, merits attention. Referring to our teacher, we find that the hen leaves her nest for two principal things, of which it is hard to tell which is the more important. She must have food and drink, and she must run, and if of an active, wingy kind, like the Games, she must jump and fly also, that blood circulation and a good head of vitality may be kept up, and the bowels may not fail of regular action. Food and exercise are what she leaves her nest for, and not to cool the eggs. Whatever cool- CARE OF THE EGGS. 283 ing they get is unimportant, or else a slight but neces- sary evil, as is evidenced by the care she takes to stick to her nest for days at a time in cold weather or indulge in very brief absences, while she treats herself to liberal vacations of several hours’ duration when the mercury is in the nineties. We have tried thorough coolings, moderate airings, and none at all, repeatedly, and with results always in favor of the latter, when every other condition was nor- mal. We are aware that experiments of others have sometimes shown up in favor of cooling, but we are satis- fied that in such cases it will be found, on close investi- gation, that the eggs had first been subjected to too much heat, or too much moisture, or both. To cool several hundred eggs to a temperature of 80° or 85° or thereabouts, reduces the temperature of the egg chamber for quite a time when they are returned to it, as the thermometer and regulator will show you. But the warmth of the hen, whose blood has been quickened by her outing, till a fine glow has been established, very quickly brings back the heat of the important top parts, where the germs are, of the small number of eggs she has in charge, and the nest itself retains heat enough during her absence to keep the less important under parts warm. If the eggs are removed from the incuba- tor to be turned, the machine should be closed at once, especially if the incubator room is cold, for the egg chamber would otherwise part with its warm air very fast during the turning of the eggs and the shifting of them from one part of the tray to another part. The opera- tion of testing eggs should be performed in a room of the temperature of at least 70°, and %° or 80° is petter if the operator can stand it. The eggs, first, last and all the time, should receive as little cooling as possible; for, although the passage of fresh air through the pores of the shell is indispensable, 284 N EGG FARM. fluctuations of the temperature of the egg are not neces- sary to secure it, as was formerly supposed. ‘The benefi- cent oxygen of the air and the injurious carbonic acid gas, or carbon dioxide as the shorter and preferable term is, exhaled from the embryo as it grows, will exchange places through the shell and mix, urged by a force or tendency inherent in their nature. Chemistry teaches that this force needs no assistance from the alternate expansion and contraction of the contents of the egg consequent on heating followed by cooling, though poultry men once universally beheved this assistance necessary. TURNING THE EGGS. While cooling the eggs is to be avoided, turning them is absolutely indispensable, as abundant experiments have shown. The hen does not turn them systematic- ally at all. Her efforts are limited to shifting them from the outer edge of the nest to the center, and in accomplishing this purpose she necessarily turns them more or less. They may turn halfway over, or three- quarters, or perform one or more complete revolutions, and possibly, though not probably, land in the same position as before starting. There is no ‘‘ this side up with care,” but they take their chances, and, as the hen rolls some of them, if not all, several times in twenty- four hours, by the laws of chance they are prevented from always landing on the same side even if they some- times do. In addition to the rolling performed with her beak, she moves nearly all the eggs a little while settling down on returning from a foraging expedition, on which occa- sion she makes a careful though quite vigorous shuffling to give room for her feet and shanks. The hen, unless very tame, does not ordinarily meddle with her eggs when you are watching her, but when alone repeats her JARE OF THE EGGS. 2895 fussing oftener than is commonly understood. Hence the practice, which is correct, of turning incubator eggs twice a day, this being none too often. The structure of the egg, so well known nowadays as to hardly need repetition, is such that the minute germ spot which is the seat. of life and around which the chick forms, rises always at the top of the egg whichever side up the latter may be placed, like a cork in a tight barrel of water when the barrel is rolled over. In nature, when the new-laid eggs are not gathered, but left in the nest, they are always turned a little, when the number has reached four or five, by the layer when mak- ing room for her feet as above described, and sometimes, but not always, she rolls the eggs with her beak like a sitter. The maternal instincts are so jumbled in some cases by the taint cf the blood of a non-sitting breed introduced at some time, perhaps a long while ago, into strains of sitters, that adherence to the ancient heredi- tary proprieties is not always precise. As all gallina- ceous birds prefer to make their nests in a shady and rather moist and cool place and afford their treasures some change of position, the artificial storage of eggs for hatching shouid be in a moderately cool and not over damp cellar, and they should also be turned at least once a day. Rival manufacturers dispute over methods of turning eggs by the incubator operator. One says that they should be gently rolled, and not suddenly flopped by inverting the tray. But the vigorous shuffle of the hen’s feet above remarked, and the fact that eggs often hatch well after having been carried a dozen miles by wagon over extremely rough and rocky roads, or two thousand miles by rail, shows that there need be little solicitude concerning the results of revolving an egg tray, especially as nobody goes at it hammer and tongs, owing to the fragile nature of its contents. ry 286 AN EGG FARM. One celebrated machine, invented by a very eminent expert, has a clock attached which turns the eggs every twelve hours whether the attendant is in the room, or in the same county, or not. ‘There are other machines contrived so that the attendant himself may work an apparatus to turn the eggs without taking them out of the egg chamber. There is considerable work mvolved in turning and otherwise thoroughly caring for a large number of eggs in an incubator, trimming the lamps, etc.—decidedly more work than is needed in caring for an equal number of eggs under hens and managing the sitting birds, provided the natural method is followed under a first-class system. Hence it is natural enough for incubator attendants to welcome labor-saving, egg- turning ‘devices. But whatever method of turning is followed there are certain steps which must never be omitted. The trays must be turned end for end, and if there are two trays these must change places every time the eggs are turned, while if there are four trays, each should, in the course of two days’ routine, occupy each of the four corners of the egg chamber. Furthermore, and here is an impor- tant matter too often neglected, the eggs at the center of each tray must, at least once a day, and twice is bet- ter, be made to change places with those at or near its edges. There is a knack in doing this to reduce the bother tothe minimum. First: seize as many outer egos as can be grasped in both hands, and place them on top of those at the center of the tray, then gently crowd the top layer down, rolling them from side to side mean- while, to make them settle down and displace the others. This will roll every egg in the tray and fill the vacant places at the edges. Thus, the changing from the warmer to the cooler positions and the turning are accomplished at the same time, the trays being, of course, without partitions. CARE OF THE EGGS. 287 This systematic changing of trays and of the eggs within the trays is absolutely necessary to secure the best results both as regards the vigor of the chicks and the per cent hatched. For, be it remembered, there is a liability, and a very great liability as incubators go, of decided differences in the temperature of the various sides of the egg chamber compared with each other, greater differences when they are compared with the center, and still greater differences when the center is compared with the corners, these last being the coolest part of the machine. To hold the heat steady at the place the bulb of the thermometer occupies, 1s a different thing from holding it the same at all parts of the egg chamber. The cracks at the door, if there has been shrinkage, which is likely, considering the severe ordeal an in- incubator door has to undergo, and the necessary open- ings for ventilation, tend to make the air vary at differ- ent trays and different parts of the same tray. But if the maximum variation is no greater than between the center of a sitting hen’s nest under normal conditions ; if the operator shifts the eggs as faithfully as the hen does; if the average temperature for twenty-one days is the same in both cases, and if the eggs at the center of machine, or at the warmest point, wherever that is, never get too hot, then the incubator is all right so far as heat is concerned. It may be run thus accurately, but the chances are against it, and besides, in getting the heat right, which is only one of the requisites, the mat- ter of moisture is liable to be made all wrong, as will appear when we treat the question of evaporation fur- ther on. MOISTURE. An egg is composed largely of water, the white alone being 78 per cent of water, and the whole egg originally about 74 per cent, a considerable part of which evapo- 288 AN EGG FARM. rates during the hatching process when carried on by the hen. The shell is porous, permitting the escape of moisture. Although the normal situation for the nest, which is on the ground, is liable to be more or less damp, yet a spell of dry weather might dry up the eggs somewhat before sitting begins, and in some cases a nest of the common species of fowl, or of a grouse, quail, tur- key or any other of the hen’s gallinaceous congeners, is lable to be located on a sandy hillock among dry leayes, where very little moisture will reach it in the possible absence of rain and dew. In any case, the time after an egg is laid before the hatching of the same begins is, in a state of nature, only from a day or two to a fortnight or so, and the shell being but moderately pervious to moisture, no great diminution of water in its composi- tion occurs. After incubation begins, the heat of the hen’s body not only dries the nest and the ground for a little dis- tance under and around it, but by raising the eggs to the comparatively high temperature of about 102°, would in a little while render their contents too dry, except for a beautiful provision of nature consisting in the glazing of the shells. A few days after the hen begins to sit upon her eggs a secretion from her feathers or skin par- tially closes the minute pores of the shell. Incubator operators have tried to imitate this glazing by using oil from the oil gland at the rump of a fowl, and other sub- stances, but have never succeeded. Some of the secrets of Mother Nature are very subtle and elusive. Takea dozen eggs and place them under a sitting hen and another dozen from the same lot and put them in an incubator. After the twelve under the hen have become well glazed, place them in a pail of water with the oth- ers from the incubator. The result will be that the last named will absorb water through the shell, and sink, while the glazed eggs still float. But while nature has CARE OF THE EGGS. 289 provided means of checking evaporation from the eggs by means of this glazing during the early stages of incu- bation, yet considerable drying out of the water in the egg is useful at the later stages, and accordingly the shell gradually dissolves away from the inside, the lime in its composition being used to form the bones of the embryo. Water must now escape quite fast or the chick will have no room to grow cr breathe. Often the incubator operator after testing the eggs and removing all but the promising ones and finding everything going well, apparently, up to the eighteenth day, finds finally a disheartening per cent dead in the shell. In such cases the embryos are almost fully devel- oped and yery large and moist, packing the shell tightly, they having been waterlogged, swelled and _ literally drowned. They appear so large and strong that the operator is puzzled to know what has happened to kill such promising, healthy looking chicks. Of course the true cause of such a state of things was that the water pans in the incubator contained too much evaporating surface. Those people who claim that it is as easy as falling off a log to run a good, properly constructed incubator and that ‘“‘a child can do it,” should read the following statement of Mr. Rudd: ‘It is practically impossible to delegate the care of incubators to hired help. * * * * * Although employing from five to eight men on the farm, some of our own family always take entire charge of the machines.” And in regard to moisture, which is only one of several things which must be right, Von Culin Says : ‘¢Some one will say, ‘what a lot of fuss about moisture! Let me give you the whole thing in a nutshell. Find out just what degree of humidity is needed in the egg chamber for each week or day, make slide covers for your moisture pans, place a moisture gauge in the egg chamber and hang up your moisture schedule beside the machine. When you want more moisture slide open the covers, and when you want less, close them. Isn’t that simple ?’ 19 290 AN EGG FARM. “Yes, dear friend, wiser heads than yours or ours thought of that years ago, but it would not work then, and it will not work now. “Why ? For various reasons; among them: The Great Ruler of the Universe will not permit us to slide the covers of His moisture pans; and while we are obliged to circulate fresh air in the egg chambers of our machines, we are obliged to have it more or less humid or dry, just asit comes from the breath of nature. The hygrometer is useful to experiment with, provided it is a good one, but few of those which are sold to poultry men are reliable. Still some one says, ‘ Well, I know that the humidity of the atmosphere varies some, but I still believe I ean work it with the moisture gauge and the sliding covers on mois- ture pans.’ “Very well, we will ask you for one demonstration, and if you make that satisfactory, we will ask for one or two more—but one will prob- ably be ali you want at a time. “Let us suppose that you conclude that you want thirty degrees of moisture in the egg chamber the first week, thirty-five the second and part of the third, with ninety degrees from the pipping of the first egg? Allright. We will take for granted that your gauge is correct. Well, here we are at the beginning of the first week. You have not yet put any water in your pans but your moisture gauge indicates sixty-five degrees of humidity, and your thermometer one hundred and three degrees of temperature. What is the matter; why don’t you reduce the humidity? You place another moisture gauge in the room where you operate your incubator, and you find that the humid- ity there is ninety degrees. You hang a gauge in the open air out of doors and it registers ninety-five degrees. You only want thirty degrees in the egg chamber; how are you going to reduce it to thirty?” Allowing the incubator to approach a too high tem- perature and then reducing it by having valves opened by an automatic regulator, lowers the heat effectually, it is true, but at the same time carries off moisture at a great rate and the embryo is in danger of becoming too dry, a condition as fatal as the opposite one. Relying on ventilation to govern the temperature is dangerous. The regulator should check the heat when there is risk of too much, not by letting out warm air, which has received and holds moisture imparted by the eggs, and letting in cold air to suck still more moisture from them (for air in becoming warmed becomes thirsty ; that is, its capacity for taking water is increased and it will dry out the eggs fast), but by lessening the flame of the lamp. The flame may be lowered by having the regulator work an apparatus to check the draft of the CARE OF THE EGGS. 291 lamp by dropping a thin, very light, circular metallic plate over the top of the chimney, or by turning down the wick or shortening it by a sliding tube, the method by lessening the draft being preferable because needing less power and therefore being more delicate and certain in its working. Now here we approach a difficulty. No matter how perfectly the heat regulator works there must still be some change of air or it will become impure, because the eggs exhale a poisonous: gas, carbon dioxide or carbonic acid gas, when the embryos are growing, too much of which gas in the egg chamber would seriously impair or utterly ruin them. Now, as the temperature of the air will vary outside the incubator, and the moisture it contains differs widely in different parts of the country, and at different times and seasons in the same section, it is evident that no hard and fast rules can be set for supplying moisture. Each operator should obey the instructions given by the manufacturer for the use of his machine, remembering that the admission of air to the eggs in cold weather or very dry weather will evaporate moisture from them faster than when the air is warm or damp outside. For it must always be kept in mind that warming a volume of air increases its thirst, as we may say; that is, it increases its affinity for moisture and makes it drink from the most available source of supply—from moisture pans or wet sponges if they are present, or if not, from the eggs. The only way to success is to use your rea- son. If you change the air but little and slowly, as the hen does, and it there is summer weather or mild spring weather, or if the locality itself is a moist one, as on a damp seacoast for example, or if the location is moist, a damp cellar for instance, you will need to have but little water in your incubator, or none at all, and everything will be all right so far as moisture is concerned. On the other hand if the weather is cold, or rather if the 292 AN EGG FARM. room in which your machine is kept is cold, and you are in the arid or semi-arid region between the one hun- dredth meridian and the Sierras, you will need to sup- ply more moisture than the directions accompanying your machine call for. Nothing in the world will answer except careful trials, changing the amount of water, —or rather the area of your shallow moisture pans, since the evaporation depends on the extent of surface exposed and not on the quantity of water,—according to results and surrounding conditions. The care and skill, patience and judgment necessary to run an incubator are so great that those individuals possessing these qualities cannot afford to run one, as a general thing. They are wanted in other employments. Suppose you try what seems to be a reasonable quantity of moisture for your locality and for the number of rainy and foggy days that you have reason to expect at the season of the year, and you get a good hatch. It will not do for you to say : ‘* Now I have found the cor- rect notch and will stick to it.” You can safely stick to it so long as the weather remains as before, but if the atmospheric conditions change, you must be governed by circumstances. Yet it is said, “a child” can run the machine. ‘The fact is, the incubator dealers know that if the prospective customers were told that all is not plain sailing they would in many cases lose sales. The hen, as we have seen, sticks to her job in cold weather, and it should be observed that in windy weather especially, when uncovered eggs would dry out the fast- est, she broods her nest with unusual care and will endure hunger and thirst for days at a time rather than leave them for an instant. Who has not observed that there are times when if the sitting hen is removed from her charge she will immediately return in spite of a bribe of unusually tempting food offered her ? Hyen the most timid hen will at such times fight you to get back CARE OF THE EGGS. 293 to her nest. At the same time the eggs are not smoth- ered by this devotion, for the texture of her feathers is such that during high winds a little air will surely strain through them no matter how closely she broods, while the poisonous emanations will escape, and, unlike the incubator, she cannot possibly become hot enough under any circumstances to ruin the eggs, any more than the temperature of a human being in health can rise above a certain point. Her vital fires are absolutely limited as regards excessive heat, When the airis damp, warm and still, she leaves the nest at slight inducements and remains away quite a time, unless there are signs of an approach- ing storm, in which case she hurries to lay in a supply of food in the shortest time possible, and hastens back. Lest the reader think we are attributing too much to her powers of discernment, it may be remarked that not the sitting fowl alone, but animals generally. possess a keen sense of impending storms. The swine will carry straw to their bed at such times, and all wild animals, whether birds or quadrupeds, are very active in hunting for food, which they devour with unusual greed, as if impressed with the. urgency for laying up for a rainy day. Yet for this monitor, sensitive to coming atmos- pheric changes which man with all his intellect cannot discern, this engineer always on duty, this living ther- mometer, barometer, and aerometer, a wooden box is substituted and ‘‘a child can run it!” As regards the superiority of the natural covering to the eggs, afforded by the hen’s feathers, compared with the incubator walls, Cyphers, unlike numerous other writers who have a machine to sell, frankly acknowledges the inferiority of such walls, and points out with empha- sis that the down and feathers control physical forces which exert an important influence over the embryonic development. He says: “Other conaitions being equal, the degree of humidity ordinarity existing in the atmospheric air is sufficient for successful incubation, 294 AN EGG FARM. providing that the tension of the moisture in the two atmospheres remains the same, and that the rate of movement of the air surround- ing the eggs exercises a more powerful influence on evaporation than the usual variations of humidity. In the construction of our hatching chamber, therefore, there are four features of vital importance to be considered, viz., a non-conducting wall that will protect the eggs from outward changes of temperature; a provision for maintaining the atmospheric air within the chamber in a pure state; the mainte- nance cf as great a tension of aqueous vapor in the inner as in the outer atmosphere for their respective temperatures, and the control of the movement of the air around the eggs. “Tn natural incubation the purity of the air surrounding the eggs is maintained by exchanges with the outer atmosphere through the wall or septum that intervenes. This wall is composed of down and feathers, which allow of a spontaneous diffusion of gases or vapors through them, while they are sufficiently dense to hold any current in check by frictional resistance. It is therefore obvious that the nat- ural provision for maintaining the purity of the air around the eggs also provides, through the same medium, for the retention of warmth, for an equilibrium between the relative humidity of the two atmos- pheres, and for the control of the movement of the innerair. And as it is the nature of the fabric of which the wall is constructed that con- trols the physical forces of incubation, that is, the storage of warmth, and the purity, humidity and movement of the air surrounding the eggs, itis evident that we have not appreciated, or even understood, its function.” VENTILATION. This subject is, as we have said, intimately connected with the supply of moisture. Indeed the three factors, heat, moisture and pure air, are all closely related and act and react on each other, rendering perfect artificial incubation much more difficult than it would otherwise be; for in ventilating we may remove too much damp- ness as well as heat, and in warming newly introduced air we change its capacity for moisture, and make it ‘drink like a fish.” To hatch eggs in a good incubator is rather easy, though demanding some ability; to hatch them well so that they will be real good ones is moderately difficult, and to rear them in good shape, artificially, is decidedly difficult. Nobody ever succeeded in hatching eggs the shells of which had been made air-tight by a coat of varnish, or eggs placed in a hermetically sealed chamber, showing CARE OF THE EGGS. 295 that ventilation is an absolute necessity. But if air is admitted to the egg chamber in currents, excessive evap- ‘oration is liable to result, and this is not all; for there is danger that some portions of the chamber will be cooled faster than the others. It is hard to warm an apart- ment, large or small, uniformly in every part at the same level, even when the air is at rest, and still harder when there are gusts and eddies of cold air. The plant and animal both need oxygen. The latter while taking it in gives out carbon dioxide, a noxious gas, the excessive accumulation of which in the air around the animal would cause its death, though it is life to the plant. This gas is heavier than air, hence it was once believed that it would settle to the bottom of a room, as water seeks the bottom when it is placed in the same vessel with oil ; but this notion was exploded when the law of the miscibility of gases was discovered. Through this law, gravity is overcome by a stronger force, which compels two gases to mix, and if one is much heavier than the other, this mixing power is all the stronger. Aside from any currents of air whatever in the air chamber, the carbon dioxide exhaled from the eggs becomes diffused through all the air in the chamber. Then if no more of this gas should be produced, the air and gas in the apartment would be in what is called an equilibrium. Now suppose the air in the incubator should contain a greater proportion of the poison than the air outside does, and suppose it were possible to heat and maintain the air outside, in the incubator cellar, on a level with the machine, at absolutely the same degree as on the inside of the latter, and a small door should be opened between the air chamber and the cellar; there would, of course, be such a perfect balance of tempera- ture within and without the egg chamber that there would be no draft through this door. But now, although the heat is in equilibrium between the inside and out- 2.96 AN EGG FARM. side of incubator, the gas is not, and portions of the poi- son will at once begin to move from the inside to the outside and their places will be taken by constituents of the air which will move from the outside to the inside, even in the absence of any draft whatever such as differ- ence in temperature creates, and this process will go on until the air inside holds exactly the same per cent of poison as the air in the cellar. We are supposing, of course, that no more of the poison was formed within the eggs and exhaled meanwhile. The above illustration shows what is meant by the miscibility of gases. If the carbon dioxide keeps com- ing from the embryo, as it will, then nature will keep removing it, independent of air circulation created by heat, if there are exits. The poison from the eggs under the hen is bound to escape through the millions of inter- stices in the downy portions of her feathers, no matter if these enfold her nest so closely in cold weather that the frictional resistance keeps the air from passing through. This wonderful law of diffusion sets inertia, gravity and friction at defiance, being more potent than they. Manufacturers of the best modern incubators take a leaf out of nature’s book, and, avoiding upward ventila- tion, make the egg chamber perfectly air-tight at top and sides. The purchaser should correct shrinkage of mate- rial at door and doorway, if any occur after the heat has had time to take effect, so that the door shall shut closely. The manufacturer also bores a set o1 small holes through the bottom of the egg chamber, these being furnished with buttons which may be turned over them as desired. These holes permit the escape of the poisonous carbon dioxide. This escape will be slow, but constant, and the excessive drying out of the eggs, which a current of air would cause, is avoided. For an incubator of this sort, perfectly air-tight at top and sides, CARE OF THE EGGS. 297 with haif-inch holes bored in the bottom, Cyphers gives the followimg as the number of holes required for each hundred eggs to keep the air of the egg chamber reason- ably pure : “For the first ten days of incubation, under an outer atmospheric temperature of from 50 to 70°, three holes; under an atmospheric tem- perature of from 30 to 50°, two holes. From the tenth day to exclu- sion, under an atmospheric temperature of from 55 to 70°, six holes; under an atmospheric temperature of from 40 to 55°, five holes; and under an atmospheric temperature below 40°, four holes. The number of holes given above is for a chamber which is opened morn- ing and night. There is no way of shifting the position of the eggs or trays without opening the chamber, and unless their position is changed so as to equalize the heat received, it is impossible to suc- eessfully incubate a large number of eggs in one apartment.” CHAPTER XXX. THE INCUBATOR ROOM. The best place for incubators is in a room part of which is underground. It may be excavated in the side of a bank so as to have earth outside the walls on three of its sides, and may also be covered with earth on top of a waterproof roof. On level ground, a good way is to excavate two or three feet, so that the floor of your cellar may be reached by steps outside, the walls being of stone or hard-baked brick laid in cement mortar, and banked up with earth to the eaves, where there should be good eave troughs. The roof may be of any usual pitch and shingled, and instead of being cov- ered with earth the building inside may be kept free from the effects of the sun in summer and from cold in winter by making a tight, level floor over the main room from plate to plate so that there will be a V-shaped attic apartment, which should be first made rat-proof and mouse-proof, and then packed closely from top to bot- tom with hay or straw. This style the writer has found preferable to an earth-covered roof, because the cost is considerable if you make the latter water-tight, as it must be, and strong enough to support the weight of earth with an added burden of rain or snow. The ideal incubator cellar should never be warmer than 60°, nor cooler than 40°. In a room above ground with a liability of the weather temperature crowding 100°, and chicks or ducklings nearly ready to break the shell, the animal heat will sometimes run the tempera- ture up to 108° or 110°, even with the lights out, neces- 298 THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 299 sitating sprinkling the eggs every few hours to prevent their ruin. Too much ventilation of your cellar should not be allowed, for with every admission of air, changes of temperature are liable to occur. Have just enough to keep the air reasonably pure. The floor should be pref- erably of carefully smoothed cement, permitting an occa- sional scrubbing. It is best to have windows enough so that the thermometers may be read easily and the win- dows should be doubled, or at all events cased and fitted very carefully, to guard against both ingress and egress of air. For egg testing, it will be found an excellent plan to have a side door leading to a small room, which may be warmed to the temperature previously directed. THE INCUBATOR OF THE FUTURE. The teasel, with its elastic natural hooks, cannot be equaled for cloth manufacturers’ use in combing fine fibers of wool, by any artificial hooks or springs of the most delicate mechanism the art of man has yet pro- duced in trials lasting through centuries, and as this is a triumph of merely a humble plant, so the feathers of the sitting bird of the animal kingdom, higher up in the scale of life, can never be equaled by human ingenuity. Incubators of ordinary size, holding a few hundred or a thousand eggs, but too small for the attendant himself to enter, have been made better and better for thirty years, till the best of these are hardly susceptible of further improvement, unless, indeed, a way is found to make the walls of the egg chamber of feathers or of some other material permeable to carbolic acid gas, yet resisting air currents, and so good:a non-conductor as to retain heat well. There comes a time when an ordinary material product of man’s skill reaches its culminating point. Plows, for instance, have been improved from the initial crooked root or snag of wood through numerous stages 300 “AN EGG FARM. to the polished steel implement of to-day, every promis- ing curve of mould board having been tried meanwhile, until it is probable that the plows of a hundred years hence will not be a whit better than those we have, although it is likely that our descendants will propel theirs in Ways we cannot even guess. The incubator of the future will hold 15,000 or 30,000 eggs, or more, and will be large enough for the opera- tors to go into. Perhaps the room will be quite high, and the floor supporting the egg racks will be arranged elevator style, so that it may be raised or lowered almost instantly to secure the desired temperature, a graduated scale on the wall showing how much the altitude must be changed to change the heat to a degree or a fraction of a degree. By relays of attendants, the heat, air and moisture will be governed personally every hour and every minute, instead of being left to blind machine reg- ulation. Nothing but constant human supervision will ever conquer the difficulties that mark the gulf between the best incubators and the mother bird—for she is on duty all the time. Weare told that John Champion in 1770 used a room he could enter. He was the first white ‘champion ” of the large room plan, though this had been exploited by people of another complexion for hundreds and probably thousands of years previously. The wheel will come full circle and the artificial incuba- tion of the twentieth century will revert to the primitive large apartment. . Let us see how the large room for eggs and the wait- ing room for the attendants, who keep constant watch of all the conditions, can be combined with the electric signal already in use by incubator operators to transmit news of temperature from their machine to their office or sleeping room, and with revolving fans such as have already been adopted in the construction of at least one mammoth incubator, and- with a spraying machine to THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 301 govern moisture, which is a part of the same machine. Surely an attendant, clad to suit, or suited without a suit, can stay a short time in the egg room without par- ticular discomfort. There are quite a considerable num- ber of crafts which compel workmen to encounter a decidedly higher temperature, and cannot a man, if he can explore the region where the eggs are, and have enough of them in the works to pay for constant super- vision, change the air by gentle currents with nicely adjusted fans moved by cunning machinery completely under his control? The incubating room can be located in the center of a still larger room, the latter being held at an almost absolutely even temperature. The walls of the outer room can be built in such a way as to shut out all influence of outside winds, dampness and dry- ness, heat and cold. The large incubator room alluded to is at ‘‘ Aratoma Farm,” Stamford, Ct. The writer has never seen it nor communicated with its inventor or proprietor, nor with anybody connected with it, but has read a newspaper account of it. Everything points to the success of the idea. The big stores and factories run out the small ones, as the big fish eat up the little ones, and the box incubators will be devoured by the apartment incubator. Brooding hens, when properly managed, beat the small incubators, and by small we designate all that are custo- marily shipped by rail or wagon; but the mammoth incubator built where used will beat both. The highest talent can be afforded to run it, the highest degree of certainty in operation can be secured by it, at the mini- mum of cost for supplying heat, moisture and ventila- tion, because of the great number of eges it will hold. We have seen how the comparatively miserable, small, puttering incubator, in its attempts at letting out foul air, carried off dampness also and introduced cool air, which in becoming warmed robbed the eggs of their 302 AN EGG FARM. normal moisture. Now the problem of warming dwell- ings and accomplishing ventilation at the same time has been solved satisfactorily by introducing a current of air into the room which is to be warmed. An exit reg- ister must first be opened at or near the bottom of this room to let some cool air out so that the warm air will have room to get in. This warm air is procured at first while cold from the pure air outdoors through a large pipe, and made to come in contact with a coil of pipes heated by hot water or steam, after which it ascends, by the lightness the heat gives it, to the room where it is wanted. Similar apparatus can be used in the mam- moth incubator. The hot air and cool air also, led in through a separate pipe, can be forced anywhere by means of fan wheels run at high speed, and nicely adjusted registers can shut it off at will. The spraying machine can be brought to bear on the air that is being warmed, and as much humidity can be supplied as desired, and no more, at the pleasure of the operator, who may be guided by the air reservoir at the end of a fertile egg, as is done at Stamford, or employ a more artificial moisture gauge, such as is used by scientists. It is not apparent that gentle currents of fresh air of just the right temperature can injure the eggs, provided it is just moist enough. Also if these currents are cre- ated but seldom, the amount of ventilation will prove sufficient, owing to the great bulk of the air enclosed in so large a room. The means at the command of the operators will enable them to change the air as often as called for by experience. The heat and humidity in a box, a parlor, or a big cathedral even, can be con- trolled to a nicety by the aid of modern appliances, if a man has nothing else to do but tend them, and in no other way. If electricity, or animal magnetism, or some indispen- sable subtle or occult influence were bestowed upon the THE INCUBATOR ROOM. 303 eggs by the body or feathers of the sitting hen that could not be furnished by art, it might be impossible to construct the imcubator of the future satisfactorily. But so far as is now known, not including the purely mechanical affair of change of position, the only requi- sites for hatching are heat, moisture and ventilation. CHAPTER XXXL. BROODERS. Artificial brooding and rearing include three requi- sites—warmth, ventilation and exercise. In incubation there is exercise ; for the chick or embryo uses its limbs, cr their rudiments, from the sixth day on, including the vigorous kicks which complete the hatching. But as this exercise takes care of itself, it is not included in the list of incubation requisites, although moisture is. Cor- respondingly, some moisture is needed in the air the chicks breathe, but this matter takes care of itself and is not included in the requisites, though exercise is. Heat and ventilation are two requisites common to both incubation and brooding. If artificial hatching, as carried on in the ordinary commercial incubators, meets difficulty in regulating moisture, artificial brooding meets with a still greater difficulty in governing heat. If no regulator is used, the chicks are almost sure to suffer, at one time or another, from too much or too little heat, while if a regulator is used, adjusted to some particular degree of heat, as it must be, of course, if if is to be used at all, why every time the birds run under or out of the hover, they change the temperature, in spite of the regulator. We will try to explain this matter fully because it is so seldom understood. The fact is, volumes have been written on incubators, compared with single pages on brooders. One book has one hundred and seven pages on the incubator and one-half a page on the brooder. Notwithstanding, common consent has been given by DOA BROODERS. 305 experienced, practical operators to the proposition that it is much easier to hatch healthy chicks in an incubator than to keep them heaJthy afterwards in a brooder. As regards the beginner, often he has earnestly studied the construction and use of the hatcher, while taking it for granted that it was perfectly easy to run the brooder. Later he sends a communication for the question box of his poultry paper, asking why his chicks died off. lf chicks become either seriously chilled or decid- edly overheated at night, it always means injury and often means death in spite of all the benefit good food, pure air and exercise can -give, though these will enable them to withstand more calamity in the shape of improper temperature than they otherwise could. Yet, notwithstanding the importance of proper heat, in the majority of cases the manufacturers have not provided a regulator for the brooder, and their customers have not insisted on having one. Every brooder regula- tor is limited in the exercise of its functions by the chicks interfering with its operation, but it is better than none at all, and two are better yet, as will be shown. The matter will be the better understood by reference to the working of an incubator, the regulator of which is set, say, for 102 1-2°. After the first chill consequent on putting in the eggs has been overcome, the tempera- ture runs passably even till the day when it begins to rise and finally gets too high, though the regulator has slowed the flame down to the minimum. Why? Because the incipient chicks are giving off animal heat. What does the operator do? He turns down the flame still more. Now supposing he has a good hatch, and when the chicks get dry, and old enough, he removes three-fourths of the number without changing the lamp at all, what will happen ? The heat will go down rap- idly, and the remaining chicks will be chilled half to 20 306 AN EGG FARM. death. Now suppose, instead of one or. two of this sort of fluctuations in ten days there were half a dozen of them or so in twenty-four hours. Suppose twenty or thirty chicks are suddenly put into the egg chamber and after awhile as suddenly withdrawn, and this process should be repeated over and over again. What can your regulator do now ? It certainly cannot prevent extremes of heat and cold from being reached. The operator would have to attend to turning the wick up or down, over and over again. Now apply this reasoning to the brooder. The regu- lator is set, we will say, for 98° and reaches and holds that temperature all right while the hover is empty, waiting for chicks. It is at dusk, and a half dozen come in. As soon as they settle down without exercise, their blood of course slackens in its speed and 98° does not feel warm enough, nature haying regulated the hen’s nest at 103°. Therefore, they huddle together if there is top and bottom heat, or stretch upward to try to reach the source of warmth if there is top heat only ; and a current of cool air coming in near the floor under the curtain, they strive to get up in the world by trampling on their fellows, as people do, while if there is side heat they crowd toward the hot water tank or hot air drum. They are not very cold, but are just cool enough to be uncomfortable and they will keep in continual motion, scolding meanwhile, saying: ‘‘ Keep still, won’t you, and let a fellow go to sleep.” As outsiders come in, one after another, lifting the curtain and letting in gusts of cold air, the temperature falls, we will say, to 95°, caus- ing the regulator to turn on the heat full blast, and by the time the whole brood gets massed together, squeezing weak chicks in the center to death, 98° is again reached at the point where the thermostat is, for the curtain has ceased to admit cold air. Now the regulator shuts off a part cf the heat, yet the chicks are still too cool and BROODERS. 307 therefore they keep in motion when they should have all been buried in slumber an hour ago. In a little while the animal heat raises the tempera- ture to 103° at the center and the chicks there drop off to sleep, crooning a contented lullaby in spite of some crowding going on by their fellows at the outside of the group, where it is 99° or so. The heat still rises because there are twenty-five, perhaps seventy-five, little fur- naces under the hover, each 108° inside. By the time the air at the outer row of birds reaches 103°, and they squat down with the contented exclamation before referred to, it is probably 106° at the center, and rising, and the chicks there are soon awakened from their too short nap by close, hot, foul air, reeking with dampness from the dead bodies of a couple of their mates lying as flat as if an elephant had trod on them. These two were crushed in the preliminary struggle. Then begins the strife of those in the center to get out. The outer row grumble: ‘‘ Keep still, won’t. you, and let a fellow sleep,” and then they begin to crowd with all their might against those in the center. Now follows a battle by all hands, during which some of the combatants open the curtain flaps, either by running against them in the fight or by running out for a breath of fresh air, and so the center of the room is partially ventilated, as the air has been stirred up by the rumpus and cooled somewhat, and the sleepy inmates, having added one or two more to the list of dead, settle down again, the temperature having been by this time lowered sufficiently to be endurable, no thanks to the regulator, however. But, alas, there is no rest for the weary. The same thing goes on over and over all night, the period between the maximum and minimum heat being perhaps of an hour’s duration. The birds become exhausted for lack of sleep. The strongest do not get into the list of killed or wounded, but all, whether at the head or the foot as 2 308 AN EGG FARM. regards comparative strength, will look as if they had been drawn through a woodpile backwards, after a few nights of such dissipation, and they will be very sleepy in the daytime. Their keeper, if a novice, will begin now to change their feed, but if somebody punched him with a sharp stick or dragged him out of bed by his heels every time he got fairly to sleep every night last week, his constitution would demand something besides a change from beef and potatoes to mutton and parsnips. But somebody may advise to set the brooder regulator not at 98°, but enough lower than that to make allow- ance for the rise after the chicks are in. If the animal heat raises the temperature 12°, set your regulator at 90° and after awhile it will rise to 102°, the chicks will be comfortable then and sleep till morning, he says. ‘This adjustment. avoids some of the dangers inseparable from the 98° plan, but involves new ones. The chicks have a longer period of undisturbed rest after they once get to sleep under the 90° plan, but have to undergo a longer contest with the cold at the start. To fight for warmth while the heat is slowly rising 12° results in more severe and protracted chilling than when it is rising only four degrees. Also, there is another trouble. The animal heat is sufficient to run the hover up to 102° at a little after sundown when the evening is comparatively warm, but as morning approaches, the air outdoors lowers 30° and that inside the brooder house 15°, or if the early evening was still and the wind rises toward morning, _the heat inside may fall 20°. Now the struggles at the start for the warmest place resulted in a sort of sifting process,—the weaklings got pushed to the outside,—and as morning approaches, those least fitted to withstand cold are exposed to it the most. As a mass, they are too cold now, if they were just right at the early part of the night, and if just right now, they were over- heated then. BROODERS. 309 We have never succeeded as well at an adjustment at either 98° or 90°, as at 94°, a mean between the two, which mitigates some of the disadvantages of each, . though all troubles cannot be escaped, no matter how you set your regulator. The nearest approach to perfec- tion in automatic regulation of a brooder consists in having the air of the brooder house itself heated artifi- cially and its temperature governed automatically to euard against the effect of fluctuations of the outside temperature during the night, and have a regulator attached to each brooder also, put at 98° as in the first instance, or 99° or 100° even, thus escaping the chill- ing when the birds go to bed. Also have another regu- lator attached to every brooder set at 104°, this one not being connected with the lamp at all, but with athin, light lid over a circular opening one and one-half or two inches iu diameter in the top of the brooder. Have numerous small holes in the curtain. Then, with a not too numerous brood there will be very little crowding, and as the temperature can never get below the notch of the lamp regulator, and never very much above the notch of the other regulator, there will be no disastrous chilling, at any rate. The ill effects of a too cool hover when chicks are in the down are much greater, be it remembered, than of an overheated hover. For when the brood consists of a safe number of birds, the chicks can spread out to cool themselves, nature having taught them to do this, as may be ascertained by their avoiding close contact with the hen’s body of a sultry summer night, and squatting close to the outer rim of her feathers, with their heads entirely outside. This three-regulator plan, two for each brooder and one for the brooder house, approaches the perfection of natural brooding, but does not reach it, as will be shown further on in the description of the Brooder of the 310 AN EGG FARM. Future. Objections on the score of expense are, of course, very apparent. ‘There must be a furnace, a boiler and pipe system for the brooder house itself, either steam pipes or hot-water pipes, in’ addition to lamps for the brooders, and the house must be quite well built and reasonably free from crevices around the doors and windows, tc meet the case of unusual cold, and winds especially, and the furnace fire carefully tended so that the regulator can change the furnace dampers to good effect. If the season of the year and the latitude permit the use of an equivalent number of brooding hens, the management of which, with their broods, is properly provided for, mind, their employment will be vastly less expensive than such a good, complete brooder system as 1s above described, with triple regu- lators. In place of this plan of thorough automatic brooder regulation, personal supervision may be employed, but this must be done by a relay of help and kept up day and night in order to come in competition with the nat- ural process of brooding. This would be so expensive, with a plant ef small brooders and small broods, as to be afforded only when pursued on a large scale and helped out by very high prices for the product. The operator must pass up and down the lines of brooders, and,—euided by thermometers, or, better, by the sense of feeling which, after a little practice, becomes maryel- ously accurate in determining temperatures in many cases, and by the behavior of the chicks, for they will tell him unmistakably whether they are too hot or too cold or just right,—turn down a flame here and raise one there, eternal vigilance being the price of chickens. Expense again—less mechanism than in the triple reg- ulator system, but more labor in attendance. Worst of all, while securing the right degree of heat, the ventila- tion of the hovers is bound to be lacking whenever the BROODERS. Silat heat is insufficient. One important thing must not be. neglected,—the flame of the lamp must be fed by air conducted through a cold-air box communicating with outdoors, and the smoke and waste air from the lamp must be allowed to escape through a flue leading through the roof. CHAPTER XXXII. METHODS OF HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS, When the rage for brooders began in the United States, brooders were all built to have heat distributed over the backs of the chicks, in alleged imitation of the hen. They are said to be ‘‘under” the hen at night. Now it is natural for chickens to feel the feathers of their mother upon their back, and when the ground is cool and damp, for instance after cold rains, and they feel chilly before becoming thoroughly warmed after going to bed, they will be found standing up at full height to get all the heat they can upon their backs, and will also crowd closely together and towards their mother to get warm. The empty artificial brooder, as com- monly used, without even one regulator, to say nothing of two, the operator cannot venture to heat to 103°, the temperature at the outside of the hen’s body; for the vital heat of the brood would sooa make it so hot that they could not stay in it at all. He therefore aims gener- ally at about 90° or 92° for quite young chicks. On first entering the hover, they elevate their backs as much as possible and stretch their legs to full length, even stand- ing on tiptoe some of the time, especially if there are loose folds of soft cloth overhead to imitate the hen’s feathers, or a tank or pipes of hot water, the radiant heat from which they plainly perceive is above them. Not content with stretching to the utmost towards the grateful warmth, the biggest, strongest fellows try to climb upon the backs of their companions to reach the heat, and some of the weaker ones are trampled to death, as described in previous pages, and their bodies form 312 HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. a3 platforms to stand on, the possession of which is fought for; fratricides fighting for the dead bodies of their brethren. At this stage in the progress of brooder building the idea appeared of locating the source of heat supply some- where else. The writer remembers being invited many years ago to the country seat of the then president of the New York State Poultry association, which was at the time holding an annual exhibition. On arriving at his place, after seeing his extensive poultry plant, the ruins of his brooder house, once the largest in America, destroyed by fire but a few weeks previously, were shown us and the proprietor said, pointing to a spot in the ashes : “* There stood the first bottom-heat brooder ever built in America.” Very soon after that, bottom heat was all the rage, and the parties adopting it said they found decidedly fewer chicks trampled to death and pressed as flat as a flounder, and also stealthy visits made by the owner in the silent watches of the night demon- strated that the former struggle, “‘upwards, upwards, still upwards,” was not going on. But the path was not yet strewn with roses. No reg- ulator was attached to a brooder in those days, that we ever heard of, and if the bottom-heat brooder were too cool, the chicks would crowd, even if they did not tram- ple, and if it were too warm, their legs and the under parts of their bodies were the first to become overheated. It is evident that in the natural order of things, the ground on which the chicks rest never is and never can be more than moderately warm, even when the hen has hovered over it all night, and is frequently decidedly cold, and sometimes frozen as solid as a rock, when she begins to brood. Weakness of the legs, general debility, : a tendency to go to sieep in the daytime because resting so poorly at night, and various other symptoms gave warning that something was wrong. B14 AN EGG FARM. Next followed the invention of side heat, one of the ablest advocates of which is the eminent expert, Mr. C. Von Culin, whose argument we will let him state in his own words : ‘‘A brooder is supposed to take the place of a good hen. To do this successfully it must be made as nearly like a hen as possible. Now bow isa hen built? Where does the heat come from? Where do the chicks hover? How do they get to and from the heat, and receive fresh air? Look at the illustration of a brooding hen, and see for yourself. Is not the heat which tne chicks get from her princi- pally side heat? By chance a chick may get caught under the breast- bone or under the foot of a hen, but not often. The wings, feathers and down of the hen retain the greater part of the heat from the body. The brooding chicks can put their heads out for fresh air, instead of being crammed into a bunch and surrounded by from fifty to a hundred other chicks. If they are too warm they can get out, if not pinned down under the breastbone or foot of the hen. The heat from the hen certainly cannot be termed ‘bottom heat,’ nor yet ‘top heat.’ It is—ae she squats down and her body is surrounded by the chicks—principally ‘side heat,’ with some top heat retained by her feathers.” At about the same time that side heat was thought of, a combination of top and bottom heat was tried and its advocates became extremely numerous, its superiority to either top or bottom heat alone being very evident. In the combination plan a small part of the heat is dis- tributed under the brooder floor to check the reaching upward, which, as we have seen, is so disastrous, but the most of the heat enters near the top of the hover and radiating downwards meets the heat which rises from the moderately warm floor, so that the brood cham- ber is warmed throughout. The choice hes between the combination and the side heat plans. One great advan- tage of the latter is that the chicks are in a thin line instead of in a bunch, preventing crowding, and they can always withdraw from the drum or tank by taking a couple of steps, nature having taught them to do this, just as they hug the body of their mother closely or withdraw from her, as regard for their comfort dictates under the varying conditions of wind and weather.. HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. “815. Tt is worth noticing that, owing to the fact that heat rises to the top of the hover, the side heat plan is really -a combination plan as well as the other. One is a com- bination of top and bottom heat and the other is a com- bination of top and side heat. The writer unhesitatingly prefers the Von Culin pian to all others, provided that the broods are small, never exceeding thirty chicks, and twenty or less is better. This matter of size of the brood is very important ; for when the source of comfort is at the side, the chicks will, if lacking in warmth even slightly, crowd towards it, and if numerous enough to form ranks three or four deep, crush the inner rank against the heat drum or tank and make it difficult for them to get out into the fresh air. There is a similar crowding closely to the body of the brooding hen, but her brood of the normal number of twelve to fifteen can all find room around her without a turbulent outer rank of malcontents to make misery. The drum of the Von Culin brooder has an external surface considerably greater than that of a hen, and a proportionate number of birds can gather around it comfortably. We have tried still larger drums to warm forty, fifty and sixty chicks respectively, and they would all work ag well as the twenty-chick size if the chicks could be depended upon to always range themselves evenly around it. In fact, the drum might be as big as the Ferris wheel and serve to warm an almost innumerable number if they would all go to bed in single file with no crowding. With only a score or so of birds and a drum of a size to correspond, no large crowd in a riot is possible, while, of course, the greater the whole number the greater the throng that is liable to gather in one spot. A merit of the side heat, hot-air drum is that, as the chicks increase in size, bigger drums and covers can be substituted without changing the lamp or dividing the broods. A demerit is that since there is a difficulty in always gaug- 316 AN EGG FARM. ing the heat of the drum to a nicety, it will overheat one side of a chick sometimes, after it has fallen asleep pressed snugly against it and the heat afterwards increases. Here the superiority of nature appears, as it does again and again, for the heat of the hen’s body can never rise unduly. The side heat combined with the three-reculator plan will accomplish all that can be accomplished with a covered hover without constant supervision. The two principal methods of warming hovers are— by hot water, either in pipes or tanks, and by hot air. The tank and hot-air styles are adapted to single brood- ers, each with its lamp or its gas jet. The pipe method is designed for long rows of brooders placed side by side, the hot water circulating through pipes placed over the birds (Fig. 136), or under them beneath the floor, or both, as may be preferred, the water being heated, of course, by means of a boiler over a furnace for coal or wood located at one end, or the center, of the brooder house, as convenient. This obviates the necessity of filling and trimming numerous lamps when there are many brood- ers, but there is the disadvantage of having to fire up just the same when there are but few chicks on hand as if the brooder house were being run to its full capacity. There is a further feature, which is, that the same heat is applied to all the broods. This may be an advantage under some circumstances and a disadvantage in others. Single brooders are subdivided into the outdoor and indoor classes, the latter, of course, having no roof, as the roof of the brooder house in which they stand, answers. The outdoor brooders have a roof of their own, impervious to rain, and sides that may be closed in whole ov in part, in case of strong winds or driving rain, or snow. The advantages of the outdoor brooder are that the chicks can, at the age of only a few days, have outdoor exercise, the weather admitting, without the HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. old necessity for outside yards or roofed runways, of liberal area, or the exercising apparatus described in this book. The disadyantages, as compared with the indoor brood- ers are, that the attendant has to chase all over creation to do his work when brooders are scattered far enough from each other to keep the broods from mixing, and, worse than all the rest, the birds have to be confined in stormy weather to the narrow quarters of the brooder, a serious matter in parts of the country where rains are frequent. VENTILATING THE BROODER. If fresh air is necessary for the chick in the egg, still more is it absolutely necessary for the chick under the hover. How to get rid of poison exhaled by the lungs and still not subject the young birds to injurious drafts, is the problem, and it is not an easy one to solve either, without elaborate regulating apparatus or else constant supervision, both of which entail much expense. You can cheapen your arrangements and pitch in a lot of birds, expecting to have fifteen to twenty-five per cent die, and sell the rest. But the writer wants nothing whatever to do with any such barbarous practices. No attendant, who has the suitable make-up for a good attendant, can ever maintain zeal and enthusiasm when he has to officiate every day as undertaker and medical director. It would be amusing, were it not sad, to see how sedulously the owners of many brooder plants con- ceal their death rate statistics. When the chicks receiye their first warm coat of feath- ers, they are approximately like adult birds, which are capable of enduring changes of 40° in twenty-four hours without much harm, if they have plenty of exercise and are sound and vigorous in every respect ; but the downy chick, especially at night, cannot withstand such vicis- situdes. Yet the tender youngling needs pure air to 318 AN EGG FARM. breathe as much or even more than the adult bird, and always the introduction of fresh, cool air interferes with the maintenance of steady heat. Of the two things, warmth and pure air, one is as important as the other. The earlier brooders all had covers or tops, two, two and a half, or three inches for the youngest birds, according to the breed, from the floor, and made adjustable so that they could be raised half an inch at a notch as the birds grew older. This cover was preferably removable for convenience in cleaning the floor of the hover and was made of boards with six or eight holes of one-half inch or three-fourths inch diameter bored through it for _ ventilation, some of which could be stopped with corks in cold weather if desired. But the use of this cover is always more or less antagonistic to a proper supply of both pure air and. warmth, if the temperature of the brooder house is decidedly cooler than that of the hover. For if you close too many holes the air will be impure under the cover, shut in as it 1s by the curtain or fringe surrounding it, while if you open too many holes it will be too cool. It is so natural to conclude from the example of the mother hen that young chicks must have something to touch their backs, that operators unanimously adopted tops to their brooders lined with sheepskin, with the wool on, or soft cloth depending in numerous folds. Says Von Culin: “The flannnel or woolen drapery which hangs down from the hover and helps retain the heat and gives a feeling of cosy comfort to the chicks is essential. Nature gives them side heat from the hen and soft covering, the feathers of the hen, and so must we if we want them to be comfortable and thrifty. Heated floor or ceiling is not enough. Would you like to heat a bedroom up to 70° or 80° and lie on the bed or floor with no covering ? We think you would prefer to have the room at 30° or 40° and put on a few blankets.” The above would at first seem to be conclusive, but after all, the brooder top is but a sorry imitation of the HEATING AND VENTILATING BROQDERS. o19 cover which nature gives. Unlike the feathers, it is not furnished with millions of interstices for the air to strain through, nor will it permit the escape of the poisonous elements derived from the lungs of the birds. Mr. John Loughlin, proprietor of the largest broiler plant in the ‘United States, conceived the idea of omitting the brood- ers, and put it in execution with great success, as suc- cess goes in artificial rearing. His hot-water pipes have nothing whatever over them, and the chicks congregate at night between these pipes and the floor, several hundred in a brood. By having the whole of the brooder room well warmed, the crowd- ing is reduced to a minimum. ‘The absence of a top over the pipes does not make the chicks too cold, because the heat in the room, which contains thirty broods, is reg- ulated with great care, and the room well ventilated. The thirty broods are of thirty different ages, ranging from one day to thirty days respectively. When past the latter age they are removed to another room, heated to a lower degree, and, like the first, without tops over the hovers. This first-mentioned large room, with many -chicks, resembles, as regards heat, the Brooder of the Future which will be described later. Mr. Loughlin has shown how a thing may be done well, as such things go, by doing enough of it so that it will pay to hire hands to doit. Yet, at best, the death rate at his establishment is too great. Take all the brooder houses in the coun- try, little and big, one-horse gig or six-horse coach, the trail of the serpent is over them all, so long as they fail to keep alive no more than seventy-five to eighty-five per cent of the innocents committed to them. Unless the usual mortality of brooder chicks can be reduced, the artificial method of rearing is of questiona- ble morality and a fit subject of investigation by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A friend of ours in South Dakota says in a letter: “‘ Out 320 AN EGG FARM. on the wild cattle ranges to the northwest of here, ranchmen with hearts of flint breed cattle, to have them run all winter without hay or shelter, subsisting on the dried grass and running the risks of unusually severe weather. Every three or four years a blizzard or an ice storm that covers the grass, followed by zero weather. kills by cold, combined with hunger, one-tenth, or one- fifth, perhaps, of the whole. And once in five or six years, sometimes three-fourths or five-sixths. But tak- ing the average of a series of years the business 1s profit- able. Now for every steer that dies a lingering death, a score or more have their ears and tail frozen off and one or more of their feet horribly mutilated, but they live through it. Fancy the owner turning in his warm bed at midnight and listening to the storm! For my part I envy not the make-up of a man who is willing to get money that way. I would rather work by the day dig- ging ditches. And on the same line concerning poul- try, if the mortality of broiler chicks runs from fifteen or twenty to forty or fifty per cent in brooders, then, I say, to sheol with the brooders. Artificial rearing of chicks becomes, in such a case, an Inquisition of torture to poor dumb brutes.” The coming generations will commiserate their prede- cessors for being so barbarous, when the time arrives that, except through accident, as, for example, the inroads of a weasel or predatory cat, the poultry keeper who makes poultry raising a business will no. more expect to have young chicks die than nowadays the farmer expects to have his young calves or colts die. In our newer states there are no members of the society with the long name:and everybody acts as he pleases towards dumb brutes and often pleases to act contempti- bly, but in the older states the society flourishes, and the miscreant who abuses a horse, or maltreats a cat or dog even, unnecessarily, is sure to hear from it. This HEATING AND VENTILATING BROODERS. a21 shows that the growth of civilization is sure, even if slow, and justifies the prediction that when the world finds, as it will, that progress has rendered the avoid- ance of a big death rate in chicken raising comparatively easy, such an old-time massacre of the innocents will be frowned upon and considered disreputable in the high- est degree, if not punished by fine and imprisonment. 21 CHAPTER XXXIII. THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. As the cheapest thing for extensive artificial hatching will prove to be the large apartment, so the cheapest. brooder the writer has already found to be a big room. ‘Hire a hall,” was once a popular phrase, and it applies here. To have 1000 chicks in a brooder house, twenty- five in a brooder, will take forty of these, to hold which the house will have to be large anyway. As commonly constructed, the pens attached to the brooders would have to be quite small, necessitating restricting locomo- tion of the inmates. There might be forty outside yards, using up a great lot of building material (cost! cost !) but the chicks would have to be stived up closely in bad weather. The indoor exercisers might be provided, but there is ‘‘cost, cost,” again. Now suppose the entire floor of a good sized room, built with high walls to enclose plenty of air, is accessible to each and every chick of the 1000 in all weathers. The first published account of an arrangement of this kind was given years ago by that veteran poultry raiser and author, and noble- hearted man, Mr. P. H. Jacobs, who reared some six hundred chickens in a not large room upstairs in Chi- cago, to the age of six weeks, with substantially no death rate. They were then removed to the country. There was a stove in the center of the room, where fire was burning constantly, and the birds ran in one flock all over the room by day, being separated at night into squads and lodged under hovers ranged at the walls. They had rus, literally, as the whole floor space of the 322 THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 823 room was available for each, but when a brood is confined in a pen 3 or 4 ft.x6 ft., as is unhappily often the case, there is no opportunity for the prisoners to get up full speed. Now for a little improvement of the heating appa- ratus. Instead of the stove, use the combined hot-water and hot-air system, a method a better than which has never yet been found for warming dwellings, the same apparatus to answer for ten or more rooms, each of 1000-chick capacity. Have attendants on duty day and night, of course, to govern the temperature of the rooms absolutely and keep up a constant circulation of fresh air. The chickens im one of these big rooms must all run together in the daytime, and must be all of the same age and breed, so as to be of the same size and strength as far as possible. Any markedly inferior or superior birds to be culled out from time to time. The whole floor to be littered, and screened cracked corn or other fine feed stirred in. The whole space not occupied by the sleeping rooms to form one continuous exerciser. How to mix the ingredients? Perfectly simple. It may not be advisable to introduce a donkey or goat to the floor to draw a specially constructed diminutive hay tedder, with many tines set close together, to throw the chaff, excelsior, or short cut straw, for the operator can draw it himself. The chickens get in his way and are immediately annihilated ? Not at all. The machine, together with the operator, must be enclosed, front, rear and on all sides, by a light movable frame attached to the tedder and covered with muslin, with a fringe of leather thongs, or tape, or narrow strips of heavy canvas, depending at the bottom in a way to always graze the ground. The writer operates such a screen and fringe out of doors, to keep chicks away while stirrmg straw to cover grain on the scratching grounds of half-grown chickens, by means of two wooden 324 AN EGG FARM. handles, like wheelbarrow handles, only lighter, attached to a wide girded waist belt, leaving both hands free to distribute grain. In using the large hay tedder pro- pelled by a team, for stirring straw on the scratching grounds of grown fowls, the driver uses one hand for the reins and scatters grain with the other, so much for each colonized flock, by measure, the entire outfit, horse, machine and all being enclosed with a muslin and fringe screen, the frame of which is attached to the machine and to the tips of specially built, extra long shafts in front of the horse. We are planning an attachment for both the large and small machines, the same for each— except they are of different sizes—comprising some of the features of a farmer’s field seed drill, so that eventually we will not have to scatter grain by hand. Millet and Kaffir corn, to the raising of both of which so large a portion of our country is admirably adapted, work well in the large-room plan, and are good grains for chicks and fowls of all ages. Never allow the litter to become entirely destitute of feed, for in a good tight room, such as has been described, no rats or mice can ever be baited nights, and something to eat should always be ready for the chicks whenever they are willing to work for it. «But the putting to bed of so many active, impetuous youngsters; there’s the rub,” we fancy the reader exclaims. There is some work at this point surely, but no system whatever is entirely devoid of work. It will be noticed that feeding, watering, heating, ventilating, cleaning and providing exercise, as well as protecting against all manner of vicissitudes, are all accomplished at the very smallest amount of labor conceivable, there being so many in aroom and so little space or distance to be traversed by the attendant; therefore considerable time can be afforded in putting the birds to bed. Not so very much time will be needed, either. On occasion, the 1000 birds can be penned with a reasonably even THE BROODER OF THE FUTURE. 325. division into ten flocks of about 100 each, in five min- utes, if the pens are made right and the doors are of the right size and shape and move at a touch, or eight minutes and no hurry. Afterwards, in a little longer time each flock can be subdivided, by using another set of pens, into smaller flocks of any desired size to prevent crowding. The whole operation can be managed by any person with enough ingenuity to be fit to attend to chickens, without scaring them in the least or hardly letting them know that anything has been done to them. Of course he will shuffle slowly through the crowd of very tame birds, with short steps, and will be provided with a specially coveted dainty, that all will be greedy for, though well fed already, and 100 chicks will get into a pen quicker than one would think possible. There are no bad effects in having young birds sleep with strange bedfellows every night. It would upset the domestic feeling and check the yield of laying hens to consort with a changing crowd, but it makes little dif- ference to chicks. As regards the temperature of the sleeping places, it must be 103° first, last and all the time, in the air around the birds when they are very young. The oper- ator’s business is to hold the heat right. That is what he is for, and he is supposed to have every facility for doing it, being supplied with as perfect an apparatus as that which was explained in the description of the Incu- bator of the Future. He can start currents of air at will, coming from outdoors and warmed before admis- sion. We said ‘sleeping places,” not hovers, because we would, as practiced at the plant of Mr. Loughlin, have no covers over the hot-water pipes the chicks stay under o’ nights. The floor they sleep on should be a little higher than the floor of the main room and made of wire cloth to let filth through and admit air from below for breathing. ‘Thus, close air, exhausted of oxy- 326 AN EGG FARM. gen and loaded with carbonic acid gas, will never be inhaled. ‘The best brooder top in the world, no matter how well it is furnished with ventilating valves or shut- ters, and no matter whether these are operated by auto- matic regulators, or by personal supervision day and night, can never admit of such a constant supply of pure air as no top at all. When it is too warm and the valves are opened, there will be relief from the impure air of course. But suppose it is too cool. Why, the chicks will be in the same fix as a person is, who, on going to bed of a-cold winter night in an unwarmed apartment, puts his head under the bedclothes to get warm, in which case carbonic acid gas accumulates rapidly. Or suppose it is neither too cold nor too warm under the hover but just at the correct notch. Why, the tem- perature is all right and the ventilation all wrong. The fact is, no matter how much of a stickler one is for imitat- ing nature, he cannot imitate the hen’s style of a hover top closely enough to make the imitating business work in this instance; and the best imitation of the hen’s hover-top conditions is produced by no brooder top at all. It being very desirable to have chickens run and flap their wings as well as scratch, the size of the room per- mits this, and a feed shelf or other form of feed dropper, as described in another part of this book, can be very easily fitted up at each of the opposite sides or ends of the main littered area. The trouble with the ordinary little indoor pens attached to single brooders is, that they are only 6 ft.x8 ft., or 10 ft.x12 ft., or such a matter, and a bird cannot get under full headway in such space, any more than a locomotive can run a mile a minute in a switchyard. ten to manage 231 moving the 99 top and bottom heat 314 small, ‘for chickens 98 twenty to manage 232 A-shaped 135 uncovered 319 temporary 213 ventilating the 317 Colony plan t¢y Brooding, theories on 269 Corn, value of 116 Buildings, protected, sum- Cover for feed shelf 203 mer 50 Covers for brooders - 318 special 139 Crops for colony plan | 23 Business poultry keeping 5 Cyphers, on incubators 274 Car for, transportation 76 on moisture 293 Cellar for incubators 83 Cylinders, duck, filling 189 Chaff for tilt boxes 234 feed 155 Chickens, by colony plan 19 for brooder house 220 on a small seale 229 homemade 193 coops for 97 operation of 156, 183 Chicks, at hatching time 279 spool 179 cause of dead 305 Disease, treatment of 144 early food for 132 Drag, homemade 20 critical time for 132 Dressing fowls, place for 141 INDEX. 329 PAGE Dropper, feed 152 Drum, hot air 315 Ducks, feed cylinder for 187 laying 186 Pekin 186 success with 186. Earth, preparing dry 29 storing dry 32 supply of 16 Egg, composition of 287 route, an 8 Eggs, carrier for 28 cooling 281 fertile 121 fertile, to secure 55, 259 glazed by hen | 288 overheated 292 setting the 121 turning 268, 284, 286 Exercise, arrangement for 44 for breeders 53 for breeders, need of 149 for chicks, need of 255 importance of 46 in runways 177 testing value of 255 to cure bowel disease Wil Exerciser, by alternate system 212 details of 152 for ducks 187 indoor, parallel 217 outdoor 172 simple 149 Failure, cause of 246 Feed box 43 tor chickens 99 Feeding by colony plan 20,21 high pressure, mode of 109 room 435 soft food 206 Feed, shelf and gate 86 cover for 203 pouch 196 shelf, indoor 203 shelf, operating - 201 sieve 195 Fences, movable 51 Fence, wire netting 53 Fertility, to secure 55 Floor, a dry 49 construction of 297 spare, for chicken coop 137 Food, kinds of 112 soft, place ot 114 Fowls, for breeding, sale of 250 for sitters. 110 to an acre 111 PAGE Gates for sitters 85 Grain, broadcasting the 90 food, variety of 113 for cylinder 155 seattering for chicks 133 Granary and cook house 139 Hammer, construction of 197 homemade 205 moving the 204 operated indoors 199 Hammonton,experience at 257 Hand tilt boxes 230 Harrow, homemade 20 Hatching, by wholesale 66 house described 83 management of 123 poor, causes of 148 Hatches, large secret of 273 Heating, methods of 142 -two modes of 271 Hens, when to kill 108 Hospital, chicken 141 House, arranged for sum- mer 40, 47 Houses for breeders 51 House, for brooders 213 for early pullets 47 tor feeding in winter 44 for layers 35 for runways 25 for sitters 62 for sitters, location 128 interior devices for 39 movable 22 protected 48 winter 3 winter care of 40 Hover, a cool * 309 Inbreeding, effect of 119 Incubation, and moisture 287 difficulties of 289 natural process of 275 opinions on 269 Incubators, cheap 270 cellar for 83 Incubator, cellar, the ideal 298 idea overworked 69 lamp style of 274 methods, various 268 of the future 299 regulation of 290 regulators 274 requisites of 256 room 298 temperature of 217 ventilation of 294 antiquity of 261 compared 271 330 Incubator—Continued in Egypt inferior to hens not economical old types of public tests of studying under ground Insects, to prevent trap for Tnvensive plan Jacobs, P. H., experience f (0) Labor, cost of hired Lamp, care of styles of Layers, and sitters breeds for condiments for feeding the producing selecting for separating from sitters Leghorns, large combs of Lice, killers, patent on young chicks Location, an ideal a northern a southern Locations compared Machine for turning eggs Machinery, for mixing importance of regulating labor time saved by Mats, use of Meat, need of scraps, use of Millet for chicks Mixing food and straw Moisture, during incuba- ° tion Von Culin on Moyable houses Nests, for sitters for sitters to make marking the Nursery apartment Pens and runways Pen, for moving fowls temporary for chicks Perch Pit for tilt box Platform for drying earth Pouch, wire, for feeding Poultry, business, compe- tition in INDEX. Poultry—Continued industry, divisions of in small flocks in the south central states 2 plant of the future plants expensive Pullets preferred Pure bred stock, sale of Railroad for poultry house Range needed Ration, balancing the Regulation, double Regulators, for incubators plan of three Roads for poultry farm Room, large for incubators Roost for hatching house Root bin Runs, long, advantages of Runways, for breeder S for chickens for outdoor exercise movable, for sitters series of Seraper, earth Selection, for laying of layers 246 103 Shades for fowlsand chicks ie Shade, temporary Shaft, homemade wooden Shelf, feed feed, operating Shelter, winter Shelves, changing the Shovel for dry earth Sieve, for feeding for indoor use operating the Sitters, activity of apparatus for best fowl for eare of in detail cost of fowls for habits of handling the houses for in mild climates in small pens large flocks of nest for program for to remove versus incubators Sitting, to encourage Sled for poultry farm Soft feed, giving INDEX. 301 PAGE PAGE Soil, kind of 14 Turning eggs, 284 Southern poultry raising 2 Underground fowl house 49 Spool for cylinder axle 179 Vegetable food, 45 Straw, stirring the 60 Ventilation 47 System for ten brooders 231 during incubation 294 Tank, for dueks 188 for chicken house 97 Tedder, use of 20 of chicken coops 134 Temperature, at hatching of incubator cellar 299 time 280 of main building 143 for chicks, limits of 308 igor, sources of 121 governed automatically 309 to secure 54 in incubation 277 Vitality, need of LY¢ Testing eggs, room for 299 Von Culin on moisture 289 Thermostat 274 Wagon, for carrying earth 32 Tilt box 158 for poultry farm 27 axle for 190, 224 Watering fowls, wagon for 28 compound 222 Water supply 26 flap for 164 Weather strips 46 for brooder house 217, 220 Weight for teeding appa- for small yards 258 ratus 211 layer, to manage 234 Western poultry farms 9 material for 234 Wild fowls, nature of 3 operating 159, 165 Windbreaks 45 to turn 170 Windows, apparatus for 217 wooden axle for 160 to open and close 19 Transportation facilities 14 Winter, house for 36 Trap, for sitters 76 quarters 45 Trap setter 96 Wooden feeding apparatus 194 Trays, changing the 287 Work bench 141 Trough for soft feed pASEEESEEEESESESS SSS ESE SSSSSSSSSESEESE ES My SENT FREE ON APPLICATION = ES i ieee Sees ch ¥ DNs ares To ee es m ry eee A Ww e @ m : escriptive : W mn W m W Mm H Catalog «- : os m WwW | ne w Containing 100 Svo. pages, RU RA mM ay profusely illustrated, and ne Mm Ww giving full descriptions of WwW the best works on the fol- a W lowing subjects: At w AM wi ik Mi iwinIUEO Ww iq w a Farm and Garden x Wi Wy: Fruits, Flowers, Etc. m w wi. 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Price, postpaid E ; z - : $1.50 The Hoosier Schoolmaster. By Edward Egglestcen.