s 5Jem fork g'tatg OfoUcge of J^gricultutc At GforncU Itntueraity 3tl)ata. N. 5. Htbrary "Wroc^'tJ'CCTaAt TL4 - "o. **, '^ I in ■CO crotyi/f Or the management of poultry on a large scale for commercial purposes A practical nianiial and reliable handbook upon producing- eg-g"S and P'-iuItry for market as a profitable business enterprise, either by itself or connected with other branches of agriculture. By H. H. STODDARD For iiiaay yt^'ira eiUlor I'oullry World and American Poidlry Yard, Author of An Eyy Farm, etc.^ etc. .\n entirely new work, cinbodyinsr 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 irro-\ving"conniiercial poultry industry in all sections of the countrw NEARL V ISO ILL US TRA TIONS New York ORANGIi JUDD COMPANY 1907 (3- V' 0^4 ic'^'il Copyright 1809 BY ORANGE JUDD COMPANY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FICJ PAGK Pnrtrait of Author—Frontispiece 1 Diagram for ess farm --..-.- jg 2 Coop of growiiis chicks ....... 24 :! Stone cutter's dray ........ 27 ■i Scraper for dry earth ....... 29 5 Shovel for dry earth -..--... go 6 Phatform for drying earth ...... 31 7 Loading dry earth 32 •s Bottom of dray 33 9 House for layers — winter arrangement ... 36 10 House for layers — summer arrangement ... 40 11 Winter cjuarters for laying stock ..... 41 12 Pen for moving fowls ....... 42 13 House for early hatched pullpts - - - . . 48 14 House for breeders ....-._. 52 15 Yard and houses for breeders --.._. 53 11; Movable fence -..----.. 54 17 Feed shelf .-.-.,-... 55 18 Hammer for feed shelf ....... gg 19 Sash pulley --^ 58 20 OtBce and vs'atcli house ....... 59 21 House for sitters .-.-....- 63 22 House for sitters—interior ...... 64 23 Plan of yards for sitters ....... 66 2-1 Coop for sitters --...--.. 76 25 Apparatus for sitters .-.-.... 77 2t) Apparatus for sitters .-.-.... 78 27 Ground plan of hatching house ..... 82 28 Section of covered yard ....... 83 29 Interior of hatching house ...... 84 30 Eeed shelf and gate ..... ..86 31 Inside of house for sitters ...... 94 32 Details of apparatus for sitters ..... 97 33 Coop for hen and chicks --..... 98 34 Boards and cleats ........ 99 35 Diagram of cCTop .--.-.-.. 100 36 Feed box for chicks .- . - - . . . 100 37 Feed box with grating ....... io3 .'18 Arrangement for opening feed boxes .... 105 39 Dubbed White Leghorns ....... 107 40 Manner of numbering nests ...... 126 41 Eggs laid by old hens --...-.134 42 Kggs laid by pullets ........135 43 Shelter for chickens ----.-..136 44 Shelter of rails and straw --..... 137 45 Granary and cookhouse ---.... 139 46 East side view of granary showins driveway - - 140 47 Ground plan of granary and cookhouse ... 142 48 House for early chickens ---.... 143 V VI tIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 49 Hospital for egg farm .......144 51 Tedder for stirrinf; litter ....... 147 52 Tlie harvest 148 63 Weeder and soil stirring implement .... 150 68 Netting for feed dropper ...--.. iss 69 Strips soldered together ---.-.. 354 60 Feed cylinder - - 155 61 End piece of feed cylinder iu position - • - - lOli 62 Crank for wooden shaft ....--- 157 63 End of row of feed cylinders - .... ]5!i 64 Fence ratchet ......... iiio 65 Row of feed cylinders ....... IGl 66 Chicks responding to food signal . - . - . Ui2 67 "Wrought iron crank -..-.... ](;3 68 Crank ys'heel . . . . . . - - - :()4 69 Crank Ifii 70 End of shaft 1(J5 71 Uetailsof tilt box and cyHnder ..... IGO 72 Tilt box— reverse of Fig'. 76 - 367 73 Using the tilt box IfiS 74 Tilt box on pole 1«9 75 Device for jarring feed apyjaratiis .... - 170 76 Transverse section of tilt box .---.- 173 77 Interior with tilt boxes -..-...]74 78 Row of tilt boxes from end -..-.- n5 79 Tilt boxes partly turned ..-..-. 176 80 Tilt boxes turned 178 81 Fowls at exercise -.--.. ..18O 82 Series of run way s - - - - . . . - 1 81 83 Ground plan of runways ....... 182 84 Apparatus seen from the end -....- 184 85 Crank with set screw -...-.. .187 86 Exerciser for water fowl .--..-. 18S 87 Shaft and collar -....-...191 88 Wooden lever for axle of tilt box ----- 192 89 Feed pouch .-----..-. -x93 90 Rounded bearing for square shaft - ... - 194 91 Transverse section of axle shaft ... - - 195 92 Shaft for outdoor feed boxes --.-.. 196 93 Shaft partly revolved --..... 198 94 Shaft, pouch and cylinder ..-.--- ]98 95 Shaft, pouch and cylinder -..--. 200 96 Pen and yards with row of feed cylinders - - - 202 97 Homemade shaft and cylinder ...... 204 98 Block and bolts to fasten tilt box to axle - - - 205 99 Wooden spool frame, etc. --.-_-. 207 100 Transverse section of Fig. 99 - . - - - - ais 101 A feeding sieve ----....- 2(19 102 Brooder house, lani]) system ----.. yio 103 Alternate system for brooder liciuse . . - _ 213 104 Lid of feed sieve ----...._ 214 105 End view of feed sieve ....... 215 106 Pen with feed sieves --...._. 211; 107 Spiral spring ......_' . 217 108 Top view of sieve ....... .217 109 Protected feed shelf ........ 2I8 110 Feed box on wooden shaft ...... 220 111 Shelf with concussion bar ...... 221 113 Caster wheel under shelf ------- 222 MST OF ILIAfSTItATIOKS. VU li:-. T,cvor for food shelf 223 114 Asubstituto for tiU, 1)ox ...---- 224 115 Slielves Willi clciits and bur 22B IKi Apviaratus for moving shelf ...... 226 117 Traiisvorso sod ion of house for layers - - - 227 lis Loiis;itii(liiial section of house for layers - - 228 110 Apparatus for moving shelf ...... a2!» 120 Crank made of pipins ....... 2.30 121 Piece for attaching shaft to spool .... 'SM 122 Homemade apparatus for moving shelf ... y;B VJ:! Feed trough — side view ....... 2:i:i 124 Feed trough closed, side view -•..-. 2315 12.') Feed trough apparatus ....... 236 126 Trip gong bell 237 127 Wire for gong ......... 237 128 Interior alternate system ....-- 238 129 Transverse section of house, alternate system . - 23S l"iO Ground plan of house, alternate system ... 240 131 Tilt box for brooder chicks ...... 241 132 House for layers .---.-..- 242 133 Large hand wheel .-.---.. 243 134 Screw pulley ....-.-... 243 135 Ground plan of house for ]a,\'ers . . - . . 246 136 Hot water heating system ....... 247 137 Brooder house ..-.-..-. 249 i:38 Shaft with winch 2.50 1.39 Plan of brooder house ....... 251 140 Ground plan of brooder liouse ...... 253 141 Tilt box with flap 254 142 Tilt box, parallel system --..--- 256 143 Light tilt box 258 144 Tilt box, parallel system .....-- 262 14.5 Watching chicks at exercise ...... 264 CONTENTS Chaptbb pack I Introductory ..-.-•• 1 n Location ...-.-•- 8 III The Colony System 17 IV Supplyinf; Their Needs . . . - . 26 V HouHen lor Layers .--•-- 85 VI HouHcs for Breeders - . - - . 61 VII lIouHCH for KitterH '!^ VIII HouHOM for Sitters in Mild Climate . . 74 IX Managi-rncnt in Mild Climate ... 92 X Coops for Chickens 97 XI Fowls for Layers and Bitters - - - 103 XII The Kinds of Food 113 XIII BreedinK and Incuhation - - - - 118 XIV Management of Sitters 125 XV ManaRcment of Younji Chickens . - - 130 XVI Additional Buildings 189 XVII The Intensive System 148 XVIII The Exerciser 102 XIX The Tilt Box 158 XX Outdoor Exerciser 178 XXI Success with Ducks 186 XXII Perfecting the Details 190 XXIII For Soft Feed 206 XXIV Alternate and Parallel Systems - - - 213 XXV Healthy, Vigorous Birds .... 2ri5 XXVI Business Poultry Farming .... 245 XXVII Artificial Incuhation 261 XXVIII Requisities of a Good Incubator ... 266 XXIX Care of the Eggs 381 XXX The Incubator Room 298 XXXI Brooders 804 XXXII Method of Heating and Ventilating Brooders 312 XXXIII The Brooder of the I'uture - - - - 822 AN EGG FARM. CHAPTER I. INTEODVCTOKT. During tlie last tliirty years, farming has been divided iiito specialties. Tlie liistory of modern industry sliows tluit it is only througli division of labor tbat tlie 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 a specialty. Sheep farms, farms for milk, others for but- ter or cheese, small fruits, vegctalile truck, etc., are uot only common, but there is a further divisiouT— 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 supplied than the egg department, and therefore special estab- lishments for raising table poultry, winter chickens and ducks in the northern states excepted, will uot, in the long run, be demanded. 1 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 tliat the principal 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 liave been sj)lit 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 transjwrta- 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 Ijest localit_y, as regards soil and climate, for carrying on any particular branch of food prodnction. 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 jirodnction 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 soutliwcst of Kansas City, and enhance the importance of the extensive or colony plan of management best adapted to a mild cli- mate, and which will be described m the following pages, and the intensive plan, pursued on a compara- tively small plat of ground, will also receive due atten- INTRODLJOTORY. 3 tion, since it has, by the late iiivoiition of labor-saving machinery, been made more feasible tlian previously, while the art of artificial incubation has also been per- fected. Modifications of botli the intensive and exten- sive systems will be fully described to suit the varying needs of localities as diverse as tliose in our country of magnificent distances, while the false and unnatural plans wliicli have ended in ruin during the twenty years that have seen the principal jtrogress 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 wc investigate the condition and liabits of the wild parent stock in India, for tlie nature of all animals remains essentially the same for long l^eriods. The transfer of our domesticated birds from forest to farm has affected their life and most im2Dortant habits surprisingly little. The tame fowls Lave the same cries of warning to each other, and other language, that observers liave 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 tlie same species secures privacy and tranquillity. They have tlicir freedom, and in tliat word are comjirehended the needful exercise, sun, pure air, shade, and varied diet. Some plans npon a large scale have comprised small separate flocks without freedom, and otliors have embraced large flocks in freedom without separation ; a tliird plan, and better than eitlier of the foregoing, being to Keep small flocks separately, yet in full freedom. Small flocks at liberty on distinct farms have 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, in free range on the farm, gave a liandsome profit, and the number has been increased to hundreds, all in one flock, with the idea of correspondingly multi- plying the gains, an unnatural mob has been formed, the hercditai'y instincts violated, and laying checked. The confusion has not, however, lessened the amount of feed consumed, and pecuniary results liave been the wrong way. When it is attempted to divide the num- ber, and place tliem 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 tlie following pages is used, the invention of wliich was tlie most important step ever taken in poultry culture since fowls were first domesticated. In this land of high Avages, the expense of attendance determines, to a great extent. INTRODUCTOKT. 5 the success (if tlie whole project; lieiice llic iiiijiorlaiice of the new system of poulti-y keeping by nuichinery. Keeping fowls as a business sJiould be regarded as a species of manufacturing, grain being the principal i-aw 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 dilference. The menace ■\vhicli will always hang over the keeper of jioul- try on a large scale, is the competition of the ordinary farmers, villagers and suburban residents, who enter the nuirket incidentally merely to dispose of surplus, Every owner of a small flock of fowls ^lours his little rill of poultry products into the great market stream any- how, irresiiective of profit, and this makes it hard for the big establishment. It is, iu this respect, like farm- ing, in which so many are working for a livnig 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 with their parents. The increase of the number of small flocks of fowls, consec|uent itjion the diifusion 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 comi)letc. 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 breadstulfs ; but the mission of inven- tion, as concerns feeding maid^ind, is far from perfect b AN EGG FARM. fulfillment. The 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 is a 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 appliances have already been employed by the writer to su^jply them with water, hay and grain, lessening the labor very materially, and a way has been found to clean horse stables by machiner)'. 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 avus 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. INTKODUCTOUr. t and unother file to rako and bind. The price of the ponderous thing is greater tlian wliat cradles and rakes wouhl cost. 'I'he farmer pays liis harvesting bills for eight or ten years in advance when lie bnys a reaping machine that will hist that length of time; that is, he hires fewer harvest hands for eight or ten years. His grain is cut, virtually, before it is sown. It is cut in a machine shop one thousand miles away ; the reapers wear aprons and pajDcr cajos, 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 hist during the poultry man's lifetime. If the wages of the mechanics who construct them, including interest, amount to less than the wages of emj^loyes saved or sujjerseded during the twenty or fifty years the ajjparatus lasts, interest on the w^ages 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. CHAPTER IL LOCATIOK. A location near a city secures certain important advan- tages. An article produced daily the year through, and which is prized for being fresh, should be raised as close to a market as iwssible. Thus the highest prices may be obtained, the s^Decial aim being to supply the demand for better eggs than any can bo 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 miist be added the time for transportation, and the time tliey 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, eggs are delivered directly to consumers, families being visited regularly once a week. The egg route has this advantage over a milk route, that it need not be traversed so often, cnly 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., eo-o-s 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 H LOCATION-. 9 Ariicn a lot IS mixed with lots from otliur farms, its individuality is lost ; if good, it may only be helping to sell the poor article of somebody else, and the producer docs not reap the" benefits of his pains in increased cns- tom. Xo produce can be supplied to city dwellers to better mutual advantage to seller and buyer, than new laid eggs delivered direct, the dubious ones in the mar- ket causing mudi loss and vexation. Poultry farms, at the west, liave the benefits of cheap land and cheap grain; and at the south the season is earlier, and on the Atlantic coast, especially, cheaj) transportation by water is available. But the value of manure in some jjlaces at the north is so great, that it is more economical to bring grain here from the west than eggs, the latter being so troublesome to send by rail. Butchers' waste, jH'ocured fresh, being almost absolutely necessary, is an important consideration in favor of proximity to a 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 hj 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 PARII. tlie great expense of a fowl-i^roof 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 heavy rains; but the pitch should not be so steep as to prevent easy wagoning. A southern or southeastern inclination gives a proper sunny exj)osure; 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 damj) 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 appily 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. !Maiiy more important points are to be attended to than in choosing a place for ordinary farming or gardening. A SOUTHEEX LOCATIOX. While ju'oximity to a northern city has become more important year by year, in one sense, because a greater proportion of the whole jjopulatiou 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, poidtry plants may be established under more favorable auspices, in many resjiects, for supplying the large northern cities. tOOATION. 11 than can Lc afforded hy sites near at liand. Just as early fruits and vegetables have, within a few years, comparatively, been raised in prodigious quantities at tiie 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 bo as favorable for poultry as the region of the latitude of North Carolina or southern Kansas. The high trans-Missouri jilains, owing to the l^revailing dryness and great piirity of the air, afford the best sites for j^oultry 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 jiound 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, wliere the climate is iinfavorable for poultry, and as railroad lines are multiplied, rirnning 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 should be mate- rially altered, which is unlikely, it will continue to cost IS 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. Sev- enty years ago nearly every j^ound of provisions in the whole land was consumed within twenty miles of where it was raised ; hut 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 supplies, the principal articles of which are from various localities a thousand or two thousand miles ajjart, while some are from even the most distant parts of the globe. A natural law of comjietition, as persistent as the attraction of gravitation, compels the production of commodities where the facili- ties are the best, unless the freight to the point of con- sumption is great enough to offset these facilities. But freight rates grow less and less as the machinery of transportation, like all other machinery, is constantly improved. In treating of a location near a northern city, the advantages of delivering fresh eggs at an extra price direct to the consumers, without the intervention of a middleman, were set forth. A portion of the whole number of large scale poultry men will continue to avail themselves of these advantages, yet the tendency will he, in the future, for the production of a great and increasing proportion of eggs and poultry meat at points hundreds of miles distant from the consumers. The science of distribution — if it may be so called — has been constantly improving, the machinery of the produce commission business having been brought to a great pitch of perfection. Even the multiplication of depart- ment stores, which marks an important era in the dis- tribution of commodities, has a bearing on our subject. As the retail food market division of one of these groat LOCATION. 13 establisliments is bandy, the housewife can personally inspect her purchases, which she would probaLly not do if it was not made so very convenient for her in connec- tion with her shopping in other lines, while facilities of electric cars and horseless omnibuses are constantly improving, so that commnnication is easy and quick between the department store and the home of the cus- tomer. The tendency of all inventions is to mass pro- duction at a few points remote from consumption, hence numy poultry operators will, in the futiire, be diverted from a suburban region of high priced lands to a locality of cheaper acres and a more favorable climate. Transportation is king and governs every department of industry. In the case we are considering, not only has imjiroved transportation rendered distant sites feasi- ble, but it has, through the means of trolley lines, checked, to some extent, the great increase of city homes, and by stimulating out-of-town residence, has added to the numbers of suburban people who raise eggs for their own families, with a surplus to take to the city. In other words, they leave the ranks of buyers of poultry products and become producers themselves, thus adding to the supply of near by raised strictly fresh eggs. The production of eggs at a point remote from the large city market has also been made more feasible than formerly by the recent improvements in cold storage. It is true that nothing will ever quite equal a newly laid egg, but eggs absolutely newly laid when put into cold storage, will, the following winter, turn out to be very good indeed, even if not "fresh laid," and will meet a great demand at high prices. Eggs collected from ordi- nary farms by itinerant hucksters, or accumulated indis- criminately at grocery stores and then taken to cold storage, will always be more or less in bad repute. Hence the advantage possessed by the proprietor of a poultry farm on a large scale, where every nest is visited e> 14 AN EGG FARM. daily, on system, and freshness of product guaranteed absolutely before put in cold storage. The cold storage feature will, iu the future, dominate in fixing the areas for the production of a large and increasing proportion of tlie enormous quantities of poultry products which our hundreds of millions of peo- ple yet to be will consume. Tlie great packing houses for beef and pork at the principal cities of the middle west have grown with wonderful rapidity to a colossal size, pointing out the belt o£ country where an-'mal food can be produced at tlie greatest advantage. Dressed poultry is already kept and transported from the trans- Mississippi region on an immense scale, by the same means as beef and piork, in the carcass, besides being canned, the principal operators being at Kansas City ; but all that has been done, thus far, in this line is but as a drop in the bucket. The big eastern and northern cities will be supplied more and more in the future witli poultry products from the southwest; particularly from southern Kansas, northern Texas, southern Missouri, Oklahoma, Indian Territory and Arkansas, although southeastern Nebraska, southwestern Iowa, and all of the area tributary to Kansas City will contribute to the immense volume of eggs and pjoultry which that great southwestern paradise of fowls will produce. THE KIXI) OF SOIL. The soil should be adapted to cultivation. Those who advocate a waste or sterile tract make a great mis- take. Every rood should be capable of cultivation, and rocky or bushy land avoided. Shade may be artificially provided at a small cost in a manner to be hereafter described. It is necessary to raise crops, in order to get the full advantage of the manure. It exceeds in ^alue that made by any other domestic animal, because it is from rich food more thorouglily digested than is the lOCATION. If) case with quadrupeds. The scrapings from the roosls might be carried to auotlior farm, it is true, but the nearer they are applied, the less labor; and the drop- pings where the fowls range, and at every coop of small chickens, etc., are too valuable to be lost, and cannot be gathered up save by the roots of plants on the spot. In order to distract attention from the main lousiness as little as possible, crops of the simplest management should be mostly grown, and only those that can be con- sumed by the establishment — grass, clover, alfalfa, cab- bages, lettuce, onions, potatoes, beets and other roots, large Cjuantities of oat or rye straw, and the balance, grains of various sorts, corn especially being always in order. The principle of division of labor, carried out to full extent, would forbid our raising crops at all, were we able to gather all the manure and sell it for what it is really worth. But, as we have seen, much will be wasted unless there is tillage, and there is no price estab- lished for such manure ; and if there were it is, under our system, all immediately mixed with earth, making it unfit for sale. The quality of the soil may be poor, or worn-out at the start, thus securing cheapness ; but it should be of a sort to which it would pay to apply valuable manure. For the sake of the health of the birds, choose a warm, dry soil. Land which dries quickly after rains is the kind ; and another test is, whether it is ready for the plow early in spring. If it will produce peas or water- melons earlier than common, we are not far wrong. It should not be clayey or gravelly, but a sandy loam. Gravel for a subsoil, low enough down never to be reached by the plow, would be excellent, making a nat- ural underdrainage ; but gravel at the surface troubles the fowls in their rolling and dusting. A supply of hard gravel for the use of the birds should be screened to a proper size at some other place, and hauled to the 16 AN- EGG FARM. spot, and put in boxes for the use of the birds. The soil should answer for dry earth for the roosts and for dust baths, the loam being of a sort easily reduced to an impalpable powder. This is important, because we depend upon pulverized dry earth all through the busi- ness, to secure the cleanliness and health of the birds with the least possible labor. A great deal is said in poultry boots and papers about the importance of clean- ing the roosts frequently. We do not clean ours oftener than once in three or four months. The labor of going the rounds daily in a large establishment, thoroughly s;craping floors, and removing manure, would be enor- mous. We set all our fowl houses on a ridge of earth, thrown wp by plowing several times toward the center, and surround with a shallow ditch for surface drainage after heavy rains. Thus we secure dryness, wet being the foe that must be kept from the fowls at every stage. Then in winter a bed of dry earth, six inches deep, is put inside the houses instead of a floor, and a couple of inches added monthly if needed. The birds may be depended upon to cover their own droppings, not only daily, but hourly, when not at roost, a thick cloud of dust being raised every little while. The houses will always be freer from taint than if floors were used with- out dry earth, and scrubbed with soap and sand three times a day. CHAPTER III. THE COLONY PLAN. A system of detached, widely separated poultry houses, movable or immoyable, called the colony plan, is suc- cessful, because it secures natural conditions, especially exercise, cleanliness and pure air. Needing a large area of gi'ound and making the attendant travel long dis- tances, it is appropriately designated the extensive sys- tem, as contrasted with the intensive system, which concentrates the birds and buildings and employs the labor on a small space. One of the best methods on the extensive principle and with movable houses, we will first describe, as it has been carried out during the last twenty years in nearly or quite every state in the Union, with various modifications to suit individual requirements or notions. The intensiva plan has its own merits, which will be considered in the proper place. Upon the colony poultry farm there are no yards, excepting for some special purposes, but we imitate a country town, where is stationed at every farmyard a flock at free range. This method we know has suc- ceeded for hundreds of years, since men became partly civilized ; so it is no new experiment, and it is based on a state of things still older, extending beyond the period of domestication. Across a tract of 62^ acres, 100 rods square, run parallel wagon roads, 10 rods apart, with fowl houses located quincunx style every 10 rods. In this way each house is surrounded by six others, and is 10 rods to 11 and a fraction, from each. Now, when « 17 18 AK EGG FAU.M. ft flock is attached to each farmyard in a vilhige, and runs at liberty, the premises may be as near each other as 8 or 6 rods even, without danger of the birds straying, ordinarily, when once fairly domiciled. This is because the neighbors' premises have a different look, and the buildings, garden, orchard, shrubbery, and fences serve as landmarks to enable them to find their way back. To make each flock upon our tract know its home, we have three styles of buildings, so unlike in color and other respects as to be distinguished by their occupants, and these alternate in such a way as to pre- l» o © o O # '• '.• FIG. 1. DIAGRAM OF EGG FARM. vent mistakes. Here the ancient instincts of the birds are our reliance, their powers of discrimination in regard to locality being very strong. It must be kept in mind that any faculty which was of use when the race was wild, may be definitely counted on, unless it has since been persistently bred out. The buildings are white, black, and tincolored, in succession, so that the six immediately adjoining any one are none of them like itself. The white and black coloring are of the cheapest sort — lime wash and coal tar. THE COLONY I'J.AN. 19 In the diagram, Fig. 1, (lie quiuciiiix order is shown, and the position of the wagon patli is indicated by the dotted lines. The alternation of the colors of buildings will be understood from the white, black, and shaded dots, but the diagram represents only a small portion, a corner merely, of the main area of the farm occupied by the colony buildings, and the reader should imagine the roads extended a great distance at the right in the cut. While pursuing the exi^eriments which led to this sys- tem, we early perceived that while a flock thus situated would stay near home so long as no person approached, when feeding them we were followed by birds from neighboring flocks and there was confusion. Besides, so accustomed do fowls become to associating the sight of their keeper with a boon, that they will follow him from one station to another, when ou his rounds col- lecting eggs, or attending to other matters. True, their ability to find their way back is wonderful, but fighting- follows the meeting of birds that are strangers, and thus the quiet and order so essential to laying are impaired, and also frequent association of this kind will, after a while, break down all distinction between neighboring- flocks. Such a trouble would be fatal to the whole plan. The solution of this diiiieulty is original with our sys- tem, and the key to its success. The feeding- business is the cause of the trouble, and the only reason why fowls follow their keeper. The remedy is to bring about the feeding indirectly. From earliest chickenhood the birds, or the greater part of them, are brought up so as to never perceive that the keeper has anything to do with their feed. The small coops for young chickens, on a separate part of the farm, have boxes -where the feed is placed, and a simple contrivance attached, that does not admit the chickens until some time afterward. This device will be explained when describing coops and other fixings for young birds. Adult fowls are given 20 AN EGO FAKM. soft feed early in the morning in a feed box in their house, so constructed that the keeper is not seen by them at all. All the hard grain for the day's allowance is deposited in or under a pile of straw outside, before they are let out of the building, and they scratch for it at intervals tlirough the day. This employment is very salutary to their health and spirits, and assists in keep- ing the flock together. The bright eye and keen faculty for prying and searching are employed, instead of the birds moping or standing listless. They feel as if every- thing was right and natural, and their contentment influences laying to a surprising degree. If straw is plenty and cheap, as it is in some parts of the country, scatter it liberally and sow grain upon it by any good broadcast seeding machine worked by a team, and follow with a hay tedder, alternating with a side delivery horserako whenever the straw becomes scattered too mucl). Or tlie driver of the hay tedder can dro]) a slender rill of grain with one hand, while managing his team with the other. If straw is too expensive, as it is apt to be if within fair shipping distance of a city, a plow can be used, every month or so, to loosen the soil, pjreferably, as we have seen, a loose, sandy loam, and a harrow employed to cover the grain. This harrow should have very short and slender teeth, a homemade affair constructed of one-inch or half-inch boards or two-inch planks, through which round nails or spikes are driven, answering better than the harrows in the market, as it will not do to cover the grain too deeply. The best thing of all is a wire drag, made by fastening numerous barbed wires to round poles of tlie size of a man's arm, or to scantling, or waste strips of board of various dimensions, if more convenient, by means of ordinary fence staples. This drag is cheap, simple, and effective; it will accommodate itself to uneven ground, and as it is of light draft, you can make it very broad THE COLONY PLAN. 21 and take a wide sweep. Lay tlie poles or scantling on tlie groiind about two feet apart and parallel. Staple the "wires on, three inches apart, at right angles with the poles. If the ground to be harrowed is uneven, you should saw about two poles out of three into three-foot pieces, so that in operation it will undulate to fit the swells and hollows. Of course, there must be a sizable, long stick at front to which the team may be attached. Get plenty of help to turn the ugly thing over work- wise, without tangling, when it is done, so that the poles will be on top and the wires on the ground. This wire harrow is also an excellent thing for every farmer who sows broadcast turnips, millet, clover, alfalfa, tim- othy, or any very small seed, and preparatory to nice gardening, it will make the soil fine as snuff, saving labor with the hand rake. By broadcasting the seed before the fowls are let out in the morning, the sight of the keeper is associated with no gift or boon, whatever, and scrupulous care is taken during the fifteen or eighteen months that limit the lives of most of the main laying stock, never to throw them, directly, a morsel of food. This precau- tion of indirect feeding is not, however, carried out with the small classes of sitters and fowls with pedigree records, as will be explained hereafter. All motions near the indirectly fed fowls should be slow and gentle; they should never be frightened, and should regard their keeper with neither fear nor aversion, but with total indifference. The two j)oints, of ditlerently appearing premises at different stations, and indirect feeding, both being attended to, we are enabled to keep separate flocks in freedom upon one farm without yards. The method of overcoming, by use of a team, the loss of time in attendance caused by the scattering of the buildings, will be described in its proper ^ilace, as well as the ways of securing throughout the greatest economy in labor and lumber. 23 AK EGG FARM. As it is impossible to raise any crop on vines^ stallvs, or trees above ground or below it, that hens will not damage, crops are put on one-half of the ground each year, and the fowls on the other half. Movable fowl houses are used to great advantage. By building small, light, and low, with strong sills made on purpose for runners, the houses may be moved every spring by an ordinary team, to the section tilled the jirevious sum- mer. The distance traveled in transferring one hun- dred fowl houses, from one sixty-acre lot to another, is one-third of a mile for each building, and back with no load. The amount of labor is much less than would be involved in hauling the manure, mixed with dry earth, from the buildings. The moving is accomplished sys- tematically ; the fowls belonging to a building being all moved in one flock in a large box made on purpose. Fig. 12, in which they are quietly entrapped when attempting to leave their house in the morning, by plac- ing it adjoining, after which the box is darkened and drawn upon runners, on which it stands, to the new station. On arriving, they are immediately allowed to escape into a spare house, shaped and colored like the one they left, placed beforehand, when they are ready to commence their day as usual, the whole operation of removal occupying only a few minutes. Besides this yearly moving, each building is moved every few days during spring, summer, and fall, its length only. Thus a fresh s])ot is secured, and to prevent all taint and uncleanliness, as well as to keep the manure safe for next year's crops, an implement like a harrow, with teeth like those of a horse hoe or a cultivator, is drawn over the spot where it stood. The buildings are all moved in regular order, in the same direction, so as to keep the same distances apart ; then back again over another strip of ground, so as to fertilize the whole lot in the course of the season. Tbo frequent turning of THE COLONY PLAN. 23 the soil not only koc])S it swrct, Itut jirovidos wliat fowls are so fond of — a place to soratcli for iuscuiB, and roll and dnst tliemsclves in dry weather. The crop of weeds that will constantly appear in summer must bo as con- stantly turned under ; and whatever advantage there may be in green crops for manure will be secured ; thus the enriching and pulverizing of the ground will fit it for large crops. It need not lie altogether fallow, either, for a few small spots may be sown thickly with lettuce, cabbages, or other plants tiuit fowls will cat, pro- tected until partly grown by movable fences or hurdles of wire netting, after which they may be allowed to help themselves. Oats may be sown in strips also ; and ■whether the fowls scratch up and eat the seed, or forage upon the tender sprouts or the rij^ened grain, no mat- ter. It is only necessary to compare the amount of labor spent in sj^ading the gronnd in yards, to keep it fresh, ■with this way of using team and plow, to see the supe- riority of the latter method. In poultry raising on a large scale, it is, ordinarily, next to impossible for the fowls to procure insect sup- plies to any important amount, in proportion to the numbers of the birds. Yet while in the colonization and no-fence plan, with the houses 10 to 11 rods apart and no crops, the insects procurable are so few as to be ■Qnimportant, the following modification of this method, where grasshoppers are very plenty, as they are in July and August in some parts of the United States, has been found to work well, to wit : Locate the buildings for laying stock 20 rods apart, instead of 10 rods, and in place of unlimited range, give each flock a long, low, covered run, the sides and top of which consist of wire netting, stretched over frames. This yard, or long run- way, may be 2 or 3 ft. wide, 3 ft. high, and 6 or 8 rods long. It is important that it be built in movable sections, set end to end, each section being about 10 or 24 A2T EGG FAllM. 12 ft. long, and covered at top and sides, Ijiit ojieii, of course, at the ends. Tlie liouscs and runways heiiiy located on a fertile hayfield, an abundance of insccis will breed in the tall grass or clover or alfalfa, and will be captured in the runway. When the fowls have access to all ])arts of a hayfield or i^asture, they devour the larvaj of the insects, or the young when so small that they do not amount to much as food. But under the runway plan, largo numbers remain undisturbed till, full grown and fattened, they enter the trap. In some cases, tons of grassho])pors appear in hayfields where fowls cannot be allowed to run, because, in addition to other objections, the grass ml' KUU GildWINC CHICKS. would be badly trampled by them and nests would be hidden. An occasional runway, as above described, penetrating the ranks of the grass like a tunnel, will receive, from time to time, traveling hoppers and jump- ers in sufficient numbers to keep tlie birds on the alert, thus affording them exercise and lessening the feed bills very materially. The birds can pick what grc food they need through the meshes. As remarked, the har- vest of insects is specially valuable for only about two months iu the year, and, as the houses arc on runners, and the runways are constructed in sections, the whole outfit may be moved to any location desired, to stand dur- THE COLONY PLAN. 35 iiig Hic roinixining ton niotitlis. The operation of the mower ;uid other liaying machinery will not bo seriously interfered with in this plan, whieli is peculiarly adapted to the extensive alfalfa fields of the Great Plains region. If a location is preferred in a field of wheat, rye, barley, oats or millet, tlie birds nuiy be turned loose after har- vest and before the weeds have grown tall enough to encourage the fowls to steal their nests, while the scat- tered kernels gleaned in the stubble will be quite an item. Alfalfa, however, is destined to become one of the most important crops, which will occupy millions of acres of the great trans-Missouri region and feed count- less uumbors of horses, cattle, sheep and swine, and as grasshoppers breed in this crop in myriads, the tunnel plan is particularly suited to the alfalfa belt. The sixty acres of grain, which, as previously stated, are raised every year on our colony poultry farm, may have some of these poultry-runway movable-grasshopper traps located thereon. If partly groM-n fowls, not yet of a laying age, or chicks just separated from their mother, are placed in such rujiways, among growing crops, a very good house to be attached to the rnnways is shown in Fig. 2. It uuiy be built four feet high from floor to peak of roof and four by twelve feet on the floor. Mov- able perches rest in slots cut in the tops of blocks eight inches high. The ends of the building and the two doors are alike, the latter being fastened down nights by a padlock. Several barbed fence wires are stretched on both sides of the building, to admit air and keep out thieves. Moving is done by attaching a team to a chain fastened to one of the end crosspieces on which the floor rests. CHAPTER IV. SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. The distance once around to each station amounts to several miles, and the rounds must be made a number of times every day. The distance would be too great for the attendant to walk over, even if emjjty handed, and transporting grain and water without a team would be out of the question. A supply of water through pipes, connecting with each station, would be too costly, espe- cially as they would be idle when the land was culti- vated. A running stream conducted in an open ditch to each building would freeze in winter, make the ground near its banks too damp, and be in the way of plowing, moving buildings, and other operations ; besides, few lots suitable in other respects can be found where the slope of ground, with water supply at top, admits of the construction of such ditches. Each flock of fowls needs a pailful of water daily, taking account of the evaj)ora- tion in hot weather, and the necessity of emptying the drinking vessels at night in winter, to prevent freezing. Such an amount of water could not well be carried by hand. By means of a cask blocked up in a compara- tively high position on a wagon, a strong head is obtained, and when going the rounds, watering, the operator, by the ase of hose and nozzle, and a cut-off to slacken or increase the flow at will, and by having the drinking vessels stand at a convenient place, can, with- out leaving his scat in tlie wagon, not only fill the recep- tacles, but clean and rinse tliem first, 26 SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 37 The most convenient wagon for our use is that some- times kept for moving stone at quarries, and called a stone cutter's dray, shown in Fig. 3. In Maine, such are used very commonly to carry timber about sawmills, and on short routes, where no stumps or stones are to be passed over, thus saving much lifting. It is desirable that the driver should ride the 10-rod stages between the fowl houses to lighten his labor, and that the team sliould trot to save time. But to climb in and out of an ordinary wagon to ride 10 rods, would involve more exertion than walking. Besides, the labor of lifting grain in and out will be much less in a low FIG. 3. STONE CUTTER'S DRAT. wagon ; the water cask may be filled and drawn from readily, and it is especially convenient in gathering dry earth. The vehicle should be built just heavy enough to support a barrel of water, five or six bushels of grain, and the driver; or, when rigged for earth, the amount desired to be carried is about equal to an ordi- nary horse cart load. It is not intended to be used off the premises at all, and as there are no stones, hum- mocks, or the like, and no deep ruts, the body is set so as to clear the ground by only 8 in. (10 in. are allowed in the Maine wagons). The body is 12 ft. long, and 4 ft. 3 in. wide behind, and 3 ft. wide in front, the taper- ■mg shape being necessary to give a chance to turn the 28 AN EGG FARM. w^gou without cramping; and tlio turning is also facili- tated hy making the axletrfcs so long that the wheels track 5 ft. 7 in., or ahout 4 in. wider tiian a common horse cart. The side hoards ai-e hut s in. wide — the aim being to keep as near the ground as ptossible — and of 2-in. plank, serving as part of the body frame. Four crosspieces, underneath, fastened to the side boards by stout clamp holts, comi^lete the frame; and tlie whole is so constructed that no part of the body yn-ojects from under the side boards, the compactness of shai)e serving a useful jourpose when we come to load dry earth. The rear axletree is made in one piieco of wrought iron 2 in. square. Tbe kingbolt should be made stout, and allowed to turn freely in the forward axletree. 'J'o carry eggs without breakage, a movable stand for the egg basket, furnished with springs, can be set on the wagon. A low sled may take the place of the wagon when the sea- son requires it. The road may be constructed quite narrow, as there will be no occasion to pass other teams ; and aji easy way to raise a patJi sufficiently to avoid wet, is to plow a strip of ground a number of times over, always throwing the furrow toward the center, or, better yet, use a road grader, and the rounded ridges thus made with ditches on each side are to remain in the field permanently, and may be cropjped with the rest of the land, if desired. The wheels of the wagon are made with very wide tires, as shown in the cut, and these must not be di-iven in the same track twice in succession, hut used as rollers to smooth down the whole ridge, for there mnst be no deep ruts to cause tbe wagon body to graze the ground, or to interfere with the use of the bicycle, which will be found very convenient for some purposes. COLLECTING AND STORING DRY EAIiTH. To gather and store dry earth, the following plan is submitted as available, not only for the poultry business^ SUPPLYING THEIU NEEDS. 29 and tluit iuvaliiablo invention, tlic earth closet, but for preparing absorbents and litter for stables and pigpens. The best farmers nse dry cartli for all tlieir animals, not only for the cleanliness and health of the stock, but to lighten the labor of attendance, substitute a cheap litter for straw, and save every particle of manure. The sjjot of ground set apart for the dry earth harvest should be kept free from weeds and turf, and harrowed as shallow as possible, using a harrow with numerous very short teeth, or, what is the very best for the pur- pose, the barbed wire drag, previously described. The ground should not have been plowed for a year, the object being to pulverize it only at the surface, for in FIG. 4. SCRAPER FOR DRY EARTH. this way the top soil can be better kept from absorb- ing moisture from below. There is seldom a summer without a spell of several weeks when the soil for a couple of inches at the top is almost dry. Select such a dry spell for the work. The implements used are a light scraper, Kg. 4, 5 ft. long and 10 in. wide, and a shovel. Fig. 5, 2 ft. 3 in. long and 2 ft. wide. They are made lighter than simi- lar ones designed to work among stones and gravel, and both are intended to be always used in a nearly perpen- dicular position, and, therefore, the backs need not be shod for wear, as is usual with team shovels and scrapers. 80 AN EGG FAEM. They are both built of •wood, edged and bound with iron. The shovel is made somewhab concave, being designed to move a pretty full load for a short distance ; the scraper, which only skims the surface, is made straight. A rope is used instead of an iron bail for draft attachment in the shovel to make it lighter, and for the same reason the iron edge and bands are thin. The mass moved being very dry, light, and mellow, admits of a rather slight construction of the implement; and, as this is to be used by backing the team at every shov- elful, and pulling the shovel back by hand, as little weight as possible is desirable. The wooden rod con- FI(5. 5. SHOVf-:!/ FOR DRY EARTH. necting the two crooked handles of the shovel is essen- tial, serving as a convenient handle in backing. Now, during a time of dry weather, by harrowing your ground with the short-toothed harrow or the barbed wire drag, half a dozen times on a hot day, the soil will become sufficiently pulvei'izcd, anrl also advanced one stage in dry- ness. The next day— watching the weather as closely as a haymaker— liitch your horse to the scraper, and try to scrape 1 in. deep, no more, and gather the earth into small windrows, extending regularly across the field, the operation being like raking hay. Next, make the team follow the windrows, and cock the dirt into heaps of a SUPPLYING THEIR NEEDS. 31 cart load each. Now, yon have piles of earth nearly dry, but they will not grow any drier until placed so tluxt moisture cannot be absorbed from below. To complete the drying, platforms of boards. Fig. G, mu^., be pro- vided ; these are 8 ft. square and built wedge-shaped, and 14 in. higji at the highest part. These are now drawn thick end first by the team upon the planks which form the sides and serve as runners, and located one by each heap with the thin edge toward it. Attach the team to the shovel by a rope about 12 ft. long, and transfer the earth to the platforms, heaping the first shovelful upon the edge next the pile to cover it, so that it may not obstruct the shovel. The plat- forms should be on the north side of the heaps at the commencement, so as to slope toward the south, and FIG. 6. PLATFOEM FOR DRYING EARTH. afford direct exposure to the sun. In two or three days of fine weather the piles will be nearly as free from moisture as if kiln-dried, if the earth has been well pulverized, for it is so loose and porous that the moisture from the bot- tom finds its way to the surface as fast as the latter dries. If the weather becomes threatening, house the earth without waiting for further drying, or cover with hay caps, according to circumstances. When ready for housing, draw the wagon close to the north side of the platform, and connect the two with a skid, 5 ft. by 14 in., with teeth projecting over the body to hold up the shovel, and let the earth drop through. TJie same length of rope between the horse and shovel will be 82 AN EGG FARM. needed as when piling eiirth upon the platforms. Fig. 7 shows the manner of loading. Of course, the pile in the wagon must be leveled off occasionally, hut this is easily and quickly done by using a big hoo, such as is sold for mixing mortar. The flooring of the wagon, when used for carrying feed and water, consists of movable boards, which arc taken ont with the hind hoard when preparing to haul earth, and 1 1-2-inch planks, 5 in. wide, with planed edges, fitting accurately, are substituted. One end of eacli plank projects a few inches behind the body, and is so FIG. 7. LOADING DRY EARTH. narrowed. Fig. 8, that a stout stick, 2 or 3 ft. long, may be inserted between the ydanks. By ])rying them up, one at a time, the wagon is readily unloaded. There will not be any appreciable leakage between the planks in hauling 20 or 30 rods, and, to save travel, the earth plat should not be more than that distance from the storeroom at farthest. An under-ground basement in the granary of the establishment is the proper stor(t- room, and, by driving in above, the load may he dis- charged through a trap door in the floor into a capacious, hopper-shaped bin. See Figs. 45 and 46. Underneath SUPPLYINa THEIR NEEDS. 33 the bill should be :i space to drive in wilder the wagon or sled, and, by pulling a slide, let the earth fall until a load is obtained to be carried to the stations. In this way, the earth is pulverized, heaped upon the drying platforms, loaded n)ioii the wagon, transferred to the biu, and reloaded, without touching a hand shovel to it at all. The wagon may be loaded with the aid of the team shovel in less than three minutes. The farmer may make an earth JDin, of the kind described, in his barn cellar under a trap in the barn tioor. The earth, upon a tract of such mellow loam as is suitable for poultry, will become, by pulverizing and drying, reduced completely to dust. The loading and unloading by team power not only saves labor, but over- comes the difficulties inseparable from shoveling such a light powder, that flies in the least wind. If the weather is such that the earth gets dry enough without the necessity of placing it on platforms, like that shown in Fig. 6, then the dry earth may be taken from the piles to the storeroom by using a wheel scraper instead of the dray. In the fall, when dry weather gives oj^por- tunity, labor may be still further saved by scraping heaps of dry earth directly upon the winter sites of the fowl houses, and drawing as many of the latter as are rendered tenantless by the sale of the old stock upon the heaps, where the earth can remain sheltered awaiting the new flock of pullets, and no Avagon is needed at all for the earth in that case. After the dry earth has been used in the houses through the winter, the final disposition of it must be made in the spring, as much with an eye to labor-saving as in collecting it. The fowl houses are to be pried up, to loosen their sills from the dust heap in which thej FIG. 8. BOTTOM OP DRAY. 34 AN EGG FA EM. are embedded, and drawn off to summer quarters. Then the eartli, mixed with the manure is to be first moved with the shovel, and scattered about the immediate vicinity, one shovelful in a place. The scraper is next used to spread the heaps, and the harrow comes last, reversing the order of gathering. CHAPTER V. HOUSES FOR LAYERS. Tlic form, proportions and fixtures of the fowl house, to secure a few eggs and chickens for home use, are of small consequence, so long as the proprietor has invented sometliing a little different from what has ever been made before, and is satisfied. But business upon a large scale demands buildings that shall conduce in the high- est degree to the thrift of their inmates, and to the con- venience of the attendant, while the outlay, in both material and construction, should be the lowest possible. The buildings generally put up cost two or three dollars for each fowl provided for, while fanciers sometimes expend five dollars or more per head for the housing of their poultry. There are three classes of adult fowls nec- essary under our plan, which we designate as breeders, sitters and layers ; and the latter, which are most numer- ous, are housed at a cost of materials not exceeding forty cents for each bird, estimates being based on hemlock lumber at twenty-three dollars per thousand. The accommodations for the breeding and sitting stock are necessarily more expensive, and there is, in addition, the cost of coops and ai)pliances for raising chickens enough to replace two-thirds of the adults yearly. The house used at the stations, for the layers, is rep- resented by the larger of the two buildings shown in Fig. 9. It is not too large to be moved with conven- ience, and nothing smaller would accommodate a flock of fifty, the number to be kept at each station, with perches, nests, and sufficient ground room in stormy •65 36 AN EGO PAliir. weather, and at the same time afford hight enough to give a circulation of air ovei- the perclies, and a proper pitch of roof. It is fif- teen feet long, eight and one-half feet wide, and four and one-half feet high at the peak. Let it be noted that any at- tempt to build so that ^ the attendant may enter, s either makes a stooping, g slow job of every opera- a tion, from year's end to '• year's end, or if the house S is carried high enough to 2 allow standing upright, T the weight interferes with a moving, and tlie lumber < costs too much. It is as 'A easy to reach into a build- '" ing designed for the £ keeper to stand outside, a as to reach into a handy -; cupboard. To give suf- 'i. ficient air, the room is as lofty in proportion to the size of the birds or their breathing capacity, as a stable twenty feet high would be for cattle. It is just about as neces- sary for the poulterer to have a roof over his head for protection in all weathers while at work, as it is for a farmer to make a shed over his land to defend his complexion from the sun while baying, or from the ruin while traasplanting cabbages. HOUSES YOU LAYERS. 37 The part of the roof ou the south side sit A, A, A, and nearly all ou the north, consists of hinged doors opening to the right or left, and overlapping when closed, to shed rain. When it is desired to whitewash, throw open all the doors, thus turning the house inside out, take out the perches and nests, all built movable, and there will be no nook or cranny of the woodwork that the brush cannot be made to reach with ease, and no lack of elbow room. This arrangement of doors makes it convenient also to catch fowls upon the perches by night. The doors should shut as snugly as may be in coarse work, and the cracks unavoidably left around them will afford all the ventilation needed in winter, while in summer they may be opened more or less widely, according to the weather. When it is warm, yet wet, they may be partly opened and propped up, and boards put across their edges to shed rain. It is very desirable, under any plan for henneries, to build so that while moderately tight in winter, they may be thrown open on every side in hot weather ; for fowls are warmly clad, and suffer much from the heat when in buildings made, as is too frequently the case, only with reference to the cold. The doors which form the north roof project six inches at the ridge, to keep out rain, as there is no ridge cap. The two windows in the south roof are glazed, greenhouse fashion ; that is, with overlapping panes, that snow may slide from them readily as soon as loos- ened by the warmth inside. They are two feet high and three feet wide, and set eighteen inches from the peak of the roof. A strip of tin is fastened over the upper part of the sash, and the sides and bottom of the sash overlap the roof, to be rain-proof. The shutters, B, B, used to darken the building on certain necessary occasions, elsewhere referred to, are hinged to the lower part of the sash, and when opened, as in the illixstration. 38 AN EGa FARM. rest upon the roof below the windows. The side sills project at both ends of the building ; they are beveled, runner-fashion, and strengthened with iron, where holes are bored to attaeli chains ; thus the house may be drawn by either end, for the jjurposes before described. The sills, which receive tlie principal strain during moving, should be so well braced as to keep the whole building in shape. The end sills, of two-inch plank, should be spiked upon tlie top of the others, flatwise, so as not to touch the ground while moving, and the side sills, four inches sf|uare, should be of chestnut or oak, to be as durable as possible, for they rest on the ground during a good part of the year. The spruce rafters, two by three inches, which answer for studs and rafters both, should be set at such distances apart as will correspond with the width of the doors and windows which are fastened to them. A stout lidgepole, sawn of a triangular shape, runs tlie length of the building underneath the rafters, and two sticks are fastened to this ridgejiole, one five feet from each end, and braced upon the center of the end sills to give firmness ; for tlie covering, consisting chiefly of doors, does not strengtlien the building, as in ordinary cases, where the covering is nailed to the frame. C, C, arc doors, eacli three by one foot, opening outwards and downwards, to give the keeper access to the nests, which are one foot square, and the same in deptli, and so con- trived that the hens enter them at one side from a pas- sage six inches wide and one foot high, boarded at side and top, running the length of the row of nests, and are tlius indulged in their liking for privacy while laying. Tlie nests are tight upon the top; tlio outside door should fit closely, and the opening admitting tlie fowls to the passage be made so small that the nests will bo rather dark. It is found that when nests are ojien to view from the main apartment, hens will, in stormy HOUSES POR LAYERS. 39 weather, for lack of other employment, sometimes entei them to scratch for food, and thus by chance break eggs and learn to cat them, and acquire the habit of pecking at aud devouring eggs as fast as laid. But a darkened nest will deter them from entering, except to lay, for which purpose they prefer a diirk, low corner. There is a row of six nests running across the building at each end, making twelve, which will be sufficient, as it will not happen tliat more than that number out of a flock will need them at once. The passages are made so that they may be taken out with the nests for whitewashing. The end sills, of plank 18 in. wide, serve as a tight floor for the nests and passage. The perches, two in number, are 18 in. apart, and each is 18 in. from tlie roof, and 2 ft. higher than the sills. Perches should be of 2 l-3x L 1-2 in. sawed stuff, the widest part up, with the upper corners rounded off a very little. From four to five aver- age-sized fowls will occupy 2 ft. of perch. The perches, being each 12 ft. long, will accommodate a flock of fifty, and are to be placed so as not to extend over the part occupied by the nests. The drinking vessel stands upon one of the platforms formed by the nests, and upon these platforms are also shallow boxes containing gravel, pounded charcoal, and a mixture of loam, sand and oyster-shell lime, made into an easily crumbled mortar. The boxes are ten inches wide, and being placed next the end wall, leave a space eight inches wide upon the platform, for the fowls to stand upon. The drinking pail and gravel boxes are protected, by their elevation, from the dirt that would otherwise be thrown into them by the fowls when scratching and dusting, and are fronted by slats with openings six by two and three-quarter inches between them. An open- ing is made in the end wall over the pail that is just large enough to admit the spout of a large watering pot, or the nozzle of a line of hose attached to the water cask 40 AN EGG FA Km. on tlie dray. The door, D, one foot wide, opeuing downwards, is for removing tlie pail and gravel boxoM when desired, and when fastened ajar will Ije found more convenient for ventilation than the rnof doors, when the weather is only moderately warm. Jjoth ends of the building alike are furnished with doors. In the summer this building may have its roof doors partly ojieued by day, as in Fig. 10, and its sills rest on the ground, ready for moving ; but during the severest weatlier, generally aljout three or three and a iialf months of the year, this building does not stand witli sills upon tlie ground, but it i-ests, as in Fig. 11, ujion FIG. 10. HOtTSF. FOR LAYF.KS— SI/irM Kl; AKKAN CJK.MKNT. the edges of a box or bin, B, of dimensions correspond- ing with the center of the sills of the building, made of planks nine inches wide and two inches thick, like a mortar bed with no bottom, filled with dry earth. This should be set upon ridges thrown up by tlie jilow or road grader, as previously described, and it will be found that, by starting with the earth dry in the fall, it will not absorb moisture from the ground beneath dur- ing winter any faster than it dries away from the sur- face, where the fowls keep it stirred. There need be no cleaning of the. house while thiis arranged for winter, HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 41 but about once a month an incli or two of dry eartb may be added. There will be no accumulations under the perches if the birds are not kept too profusely sup- plied with gravel at that season, as they should be to induce them to pulverize every portion of the manure and mix it with tlie dry earth, iu search of the gravel 43 XS 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 tliey 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 wp until the earth drops through it, having no bottom, and when empty it may be readily FIG. 12. PEN FOK 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 wodge-sbaiied platform for drying earth, previously figured, for a skid, and attaching the team to a rope twenty feet or more long, and using small rollers. It is a quick and not over troublesome operation, for it must be recollected that the house is not largo or heavy. Figure 12 represents a pen to move fowls in when theii houses ire to be moved a considerable distance, to sum- HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 43 mer quarters ai:d to winter qnarters. When this pen it put in the plixee occupied by the feed room at tlie end of the passage. Figs. !) and 11, the fowls are baited into it, the door. A, corres])onding to an opening in tlie side of the end of the passage, C. Tlie 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, C ft. wide, 12 ft. long, and 1 1-2 ft. high on one side and 3 1-2 ft. on the otlier, 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. E, E, E, E, represent doors, which overlap each other to shed rain, and whea closed rest upon tlie 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, F, 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 WiO FARM. ft. high, and 1 ft. wide, it heing like a l)o\- wiHi n lid, and but one end, and witli an opening on one tside. This passage is not shown in the cut, but appears at C, 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 gi-ound of the feeding apartment to the depth of eight or ten inches. The fowls are prevented, hy the shutters, from looking on. Kext 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 nigJit. Placing grain for scratching indoors is only for inclement weather, however. During a few of the coldest spells, — sucli as usually occur three or four times in the wintei', and last three to seven days, — and during stonns, 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 cleai'ed from a plat of ground at each station, with the aid of the team, and the scraper and shovel jireviously descrilied, or a road grader. If tlie winter is open and njild, have a pile of straw out of doors with grain buried under it, iising 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 HOUSKS FOR LAYERS. 4o meal sifteil onl, or iiiillol- seed, far imd wide on portions of the range not jirovided with straw, to oneourago the hahit of running around and seareliing. Keep your fowls always on the move. As soon as the buildings arc moved to the new stations in spring, and tlio feeding rooms are also drawn oif to bo used in lionsing young ehickcns, the feed boxes are taken out, tlicy 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 vegeta- bles, meat or other soft feed being placed in them, out of sight of the birds, as before. Tlie winter cptarters for the laying stock arc further represented in Fig. 11. In this cut the same building is shown as in Fig. 0. The passage leading to the feed room is shown in one of tliese 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 btiilding f)aper in overlapping sheets, tacked on slightly so that it may be removed in sj^ring. Straw is laid over the jiaper to the dei^th of a foot. A temporary shed is made for a rod east, and the same dis- tance west, of the building, connecting with the roof of the latter, the platforms for drying earth, Fig. 6, being used for this purpose and supported by stout rails. B}' turning a corner, as at the post, A. east, and also west of the building, tliis shed is made to inclose three sides of a court which is open to tlie south. The gaps in the roof of the shed at the corners, and the cracks between the platforms, are covered with straw and boards. There is nothing that fowls love better than convenient nooks wliere they can retreat from the crowd of their fellows, and select their own company. Confinement brings not only loss of health, but the vices of feather- 46 AN EGG FARM. eating and egg-eating. No system of diet will remove the liability of fowls that are habitually kept indoors to learn to pluck each other. If the room is large and the flock small, there may be no risk of this, but the expense of such quarters would be fatal to success. When fowls are allowed freedom they never learn to eat feathers. If anybody wants to keep poultry in narrow quarters under some highly artificial plan, with no provisions made for securing exercise, and prevent outdoor range in winter in order to promote laying, he is welcome to do so. But nature, if thwarted, is sure to have her revenge, if not in one way, then in another. Whether indoors or out, the birds must be busily employed every day, and then they will be happy and contented, and / not learn egg-eating, feather-jjlucking, or other abnor- mal pjractices. Without a chance to scratch in earth or straw, they will be as badly off as a rich man with noth- ing to do. Straw is scattered under the sheds, and on jileasant days a few handfuls of feed are buried under it, using a fork ; but covering grain by hand in this waj takes time and should be resorted to only in case of very bad weather. When the weather admits, a large piile is used for a scratching place, situated south of the feed room, where it can be moved by the aid of a team, as stated on a previous page. The arrangements for bury- ing grain indoors have also been already described. The ground is raised a few inches by p)lowing in the fall, where the sheds are to be placed. When the house is placed upon the dust bin, B, waste strips of cloth, called "headings," obtained at the woolen factories, are used to make the joints air-tight between the two. The passage leading to the feed room is represented at C, the feed room itself not being shown in the illustration, but given m Fig. 11, as was stated. A small opening, D, at each end of the house is for ven- tilation, and must never be closed. A project' .ig cap HOUSES FOR LAYERS. 47 Dvcr it keeps out rain, ami wire cloth of one-ciglith-inch mesh breaks the force of entering air in case of liigh winds, though ordinarily the current will be outward. Fresh air is admitted through the passage, C, and as it must enter the feed room through an outside door in the latter, and pass several angles before gaining admis- sion to the roosting room, strong drafts are avoided. Care must be taken, during cold spells, to partially close this door at night, so as to raise the temjierature at the roost about twenty degrees higher than it is outside, but further than this no effort should be made to retain heat at the risk of imi^ure air. Fowls that have free range in the daytime the year round, and roost in build- ings open on all sides in summer, and partially oi^en in spring and fall, will not be injured by an attempt to strike a balance between warmth and ventilation during a few brief periods of extreme cold. An artificial sum- mer in winter, obtained by means of a furnace and hot water pipes, for laying stock and for chicks artificially reared, has its uses in the intensive system, to be described further on, but is dispensed with in the exten- sive or colonization plan. The house for layers, summer arrangement, is illus- trated in Fig. 10. In this the feed bos is seen in the foreground, and the doors in both roofs of the house are propped up a little, as in cases of extremely hot weather. It will be found that the birds will seek the protection of a building thus arranged, for shade, when the heat is severe, in preference to any other place. In summer the grain is buried under a jDrofuse allowance of straw, by the use of a horserake and hay tedder, or under the soil, by means of the tine and short-toothed harrow or the barbed wire drag used in pulverizing earth for gath- ering, as before mentioned. Figure 13 represents a house for the earliest hatched pullets that are expected to lay more in winter than the 48 AN" KGG FARM. Others, and arc, therefore, sheltered at greater cxreiisc. Winter laying depends more on In-ecd, age, i'eeding and health, than upon warm rooms. Heat is necessary to productiveness, but a fowl kept in full yigor^ and good appetite by exercise will be warm, where a dull, mopish one would shiver. It will not pay to build expensive fowl houses when cheap ones can be used, and the arrangement we are about to describe involves as much outlay as is advisable, in order to secure warmth, except- ing for some special purposes. A mound of earth, FIG. 13. HOUSE FOR EAELY HATCHED PULLETS. nearly circular, and 25 ft. broad at the narrowest jaoint, 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 3 ft. deep, the bottom being G 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, n tile drain is pnt nnrlcr Hie fonnda- lion of the walls. The floor of an uiulerground fowl house must always he a little liigher than the adjoining field, not on aeeount 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, whicli is covered with dry earth to tliat de]ith. The walls are topped with jjlank 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 vi^inter the admission of air must 4 50 AN EGG FARM. be gauged by every cliiiiigo of wind and weather. It is one of tlio advantages of business ujion a largo 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 tlie windows at noon, so much glass will prove injurious because the lluctua- 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 tlie iionsos are moved, but be roofed with the platforms for drying earth, and a few movable greenhouBe sashes, and nsed as a shelter for chickens. CHAPTER VI. HOUSES FOR BREEDEBS. The qnai'cers for the breeding stock combine houses jery much like those for layers, only smaller, and yards made of movable fences. The 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 ft. wide, 4 ft. long, and 3 1-3 ft. high ; and the other of the same width and hight, and 7 1-3 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, 3 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, 7 1-3 ft. long and 2 1-2 in. in diameter, 51 5a 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 Ijracc is made by sawing a rail stick in two, and furnishing each end with a sta- l)le 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 tlie post between the two staples of the upper rails, and through the lower one, Fio. 14. iiousK FIJI; j;i:kf,iikks. which reaches to the ground, a short stake is driven into the earth, with its to]) inclining away from the fence. Fig. lO. The spaces between the pickets are 2 1-2 in. wide for Ijreeders ; 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 bo described latei-, 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 FOE BREEDBBS. 53 of pickets, if desired, in which case the U-shaped pieces of stent hoop iron should be attached to the portions of the fnunes correspoiidino- to the top and bottom rails of the picket renee. The wire netting fence stands better than tlie [iicket fence, because it does not take so much wind as the latter. Before describing the runways fur tlie 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 bom." All breeding animals must have exercise. Better breed strong stock VAKDS AM) HOUSES FOE EREEDEKS. m the first place than putter at doctoring sick fowls afterwards. "When breeding ewes are confined in close cpiarters all win-ter, 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 theii' grain make a jonrney 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, wliich stand close confine- ment better than any other animal, give much stronger jirogeny 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 hreeds well for any considerable length of time," and adds: "In visiting lofts where the pigeons have flying privileges, we may ex2)ect 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 ijoultry in confinement, even in a very small house and a very small yard, Ijy 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 tlie best range in the world, and tl.ey are exceedingly ; contented and happy. Their feeding time is all tiie time. It is prolonged through the whole day. Take two breeding flocks that are exactly alike as regards breed, age, size, thrift, vigor, and everything else. Give both flocks the same shelter, and food of tlie 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- 16. MOVAllLE I'ENCE. HOUSES FOR BKEEDEES. 55 '\ cnmst-anoes should be ^Yell uuderstood by all tiIio rear poultrj'. The matter is well illustrated b)' phmt life. In the vegetable kingdom, there are all degrees of fertility. By this, \vc 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 shriTcled 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 Testige 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 exjieriment 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 ^ '.\. FIG. 17. 56 AxN EGG FA KM. grade. Very often poultry men fuid chickens dead in the shell. Some die ufter the egg has been sat upon eighteen, nineteen, or twenty days, tlie chicks appearing full size and ready to burst the shell ; some, however, die on the twelfth or fifteenth day, and otliers on tlie fifth or sixt.. 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 m^}^ .jAAYn' KIG. IS. STKIKKK FOK KKKD SHELF. do was to break the shell and be warmed and dried, in order to run around and pick up its own living. There are very many cases of arrested development and death in the shell at different stages that cannot be attributed to any treatment the eggs 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 laid it or tlie sire that fertilized it, or both ? There is such a thing as inherited weakness, which may characterize an egg HOUSES I'OR BREEDERS. 57 before it is laid iiiul give a tendency to the germ to die sooner or later, before it lias bccoino fully developed. The necessity for securing a higli degree of vitality in the eggs intended for hatching is tlie more imperative on account of the abnormal condition of our domestic fowls as regards the great numbers of eggs they lay. If ths 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 eggs. 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 mov- 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, instead of ijassing through the shelf, as in tiie 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 siijiplied with grain. To obviate the necessity of the attendant going the length of the runways to operate this distant shelf, a ham- o.S AN EGCi I'AKJI. 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 jiractice, a blow can be given each time with just sufficient force to jar off a little grain. If predatory pigeons or sfiarrows 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 rang 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 best. Fowls quickly learn the FIG. 19. 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- lutely necessary, for the birds hear the hammer stroke and soon learn its meaning. The breeding fovvls and breeding yards are few m 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 jiut after gathering, or at whatever point the attendiint 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 FOn BREEUEItS. 59 the watelniinn's lionso, Fig. 20, or storeroom, or oihvv jierniuiR'iil hnililiiig, and ojx'nil.pfl liy cliii'kwiirk t;vory twenty minute?. Of eour.se, bell wires mii}' also be jiulled by tlic clockwork, but this will nut be found wortli while ; for, as has been said, tlie sound of the hammer stroke will answer quite well as a call, althougii when a clock is not employed, calls are a pretty good thing, since they can be so readily put up and operated. Under 3ach 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 Fig. 211. OFFICE Axn tvatch 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 seiies of feasts being alwaj's 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- GO AN EGG FARM. tively, is simply enormous. In a scinare 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 hecome discouraged and mope in complete listlessness. If it were not for the great expense of building material and the difficulty of moTing 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 percep)tible 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 droji 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 \he houses and yards for the breeding birds movable, for HOUSES FOK HREKDERS. (11 imtting the land in crop every other year, tlie slielves and hammers, whleli are easily set np with or witliont bells, are all the apparatus with which wo 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 h.nrdles to a distant spot annually is very apparent CHAPTER VII. HOUSES FOK SITTEllS. The stock used for hatching purposes is managed dif- ferently from the hiyers, and needs diifcrent accommo- dations. Tlie 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 nnderpiinning, 10 in. high. They are 10 ft. 4 in. fi'om the ground to the iieak, and 20 ft. long by way of the ridge, and IG ft. wide. The roofs are shingled, and the ends of the buildings covered with boards nailed upright and bat- tened. About one-third of the roof towards tlie 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 ground, 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 building, into a yard which is located at either end on alternate years. Tlie two ends of tlio house, one fronting east and the other west, are both provided exactly alike witli doors and windows. The large doors are G 1-2x3 ft., opening outwards, and the smaller ones 62 HOUSKrt rtiK SITTERS. (13 attaeluHl to them arc 7x9 in. The winilows are -^x.S U.. luul are liiii.tioil, openin.;;- npwavds for veiitihitioii. In hot weatluT tlio windows ami door., in liotli ends of the ImiUling are opened wide, and to prevent tlie fowls eseapiiig at the end wliere there is no yard, wire netting is fastened across the window casings inside, and there is an inside door of tlie same material Imng to the stnd, to which the ontside door is hinged. Fiffui-e :2-3 2,ives an interior view of the house. There are four perches, each 15 ft. long, and of the width and FIG. 21. HOVSE FOK SITTEKS. thickness of those for layers. They are placed IS in. higher than the top of the underpinning, those nearest the nests being 3 1-2 ft., and those nearest the eaves 5 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 tlie perches. Three tiers of nests occupy the center of the room, each tier consisting of two rows placed back to back, and runnin;: in the same direction as the 64 AN EGG FAEJI. purches. There are 12 nests in each row, or 72 in all, and as each nest is 1 ft. square and 1 ft. liigli, they occuioy 12 ft. in length. This allows a space of i ft. at each end of the building between the nests and the doors, and as the latter are jDlanned of a sufficient width to admit a wheelbarrow, and the perches arc 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. Tliere are nests enough so that eighteea hens may be set at once, and leave room for fowls that are laying. The uests are HOUSE FOR SITTERS— TXTERIOK. ]ilaced 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 tlie nests of sitting hens; while they are not so higli as to prevent the fowls reaching them by flying upon the nearest perch, or as to render a ladder neces- sary. Tlie 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 3 1-2 in. in front of each row of nests. H0l'SE8 FOR SITTEUS. 05 The partitioiis at tlio backs oi tlio lu'sts are mailc of wire netting, one-inch niesli, to keep out rats, tliosc at the sides of the same and of a two-ineli wire netting, alternately, for purposes described in anotlier place. In this way a circulation of air is allowed for the health of the sitters. Sutficient attention is not gener- ally given to this point. Fowls in a state of nature being accustomed to scratch holes in the gronnd under bushes, to form their nests and incubate where there is plenty of air, pant and show distress in liot weather when forced to occupy close boxes. Large doors of wire netting, two-inch mesh, not shown in the illustra- tion, prcA'ent 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 jjarts, 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. Tire 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 E ; then this year they are at D, and H is 5 66 AN EGG FAEM. clevntcfl to crojis. A strip of groniifl is left un tilled near tlio doors of tliG liuildin.as foi' ,i Wiigoii p;i,th. To keeji the yards free from taint and afford scratching ground, a part of eacli is plowed oecasioiudly during the season wlien they are occupied Ijy tlie fowls. All the fences running east and west, as F B, are composed of gates, so that h}' opening, for instance, at F G, througli the "whole range of j^ards, a strip of each may be jilowed, and in a few days the operation may Ije repeated at another jiart of the yards. To these yards, movable runways, made in sections, are annexed, not shown in the ground plan, Fig. 23, FIG. 23. PLAN OF YAKDS YOU SITTKKS. 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 jiaramonnt consideration is the welfare of the sitters wlien engaged in incubation. For the management of sitters in tlie buildings just descriljed, see Chapter XIV. HATCHING BY "WHOLESALE. There is a better plan tlian the one just described for liouses and nests for sitting hens in the southwest, ■nd"iere the poultry business is destined, for reasons briefly stated HOUSES FOU SITTEU9. 67 in tue introduction, autl wliioli will bo more fully given further on, to reach a greater development tluiu in any- other part of the United States or of tlie world. Xumerons unsatisfactory methods of managing sitters on a large scale have been tried. The plan of confining each in a small, separate pien, like that shown in Ji'ig. 24, or some modification thereof, has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. It may be occasioiialiy 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 sutti- 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 hajjpen in a sufficiently large proportion of cases to be very objec- tionable indeed. Xo 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. "^"e 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 an}diow. Xature has provided that the sitter shall bustle around at a great rate, and race np 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 afllicted with constipation, alternating with the other extreme, resulting in nests of nusiDeakable filthiness. Study nature, and you will find that a sitter allowed a free range never fouls her nest, and nobody has 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 eggs and renovating filthy nests, cannot com- 68 AN EfjG FA KM. pete witli incubators. There is another thing about, tlic sitting hen and her stolen nest. The delights of liberty keep her from, returning to her nest jirematurely. The eggs, and the nest itself, a)-e tiioroughly aired and puri- fied from exhalations, a]id as tlie sitter keeps her feath- ers bristled nearly all tlie time, her plumage likewise undergoes as thorough a treatment as did your mother's feather bed when slie used to give it a good sunning. The nest and the feathers upon the eggs are sweet in tlie case we have suptposed, but they never are perfectly sweet and fresh when sitters are individually confined in small, separate pens in rows or tiei's, an abomination in the siglit of men and angels. Kunning and flying, ratlier tlian 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 ben can leave her nest to eat at pleas- iire, 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 in 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 SITTEKS. (i!) years liad been spent on contriving good metliods of managing sitting liens, in place of the sejKirate uoiiline- ment plan, there are thousands of jjersons all over the United States, who have failed in attempts at artificial incubation, who might have followed nature's method with success. Incubators liave their uses, but they are only tor the winter or to suiiplouient sitters. A given number of eggs can be attended to under Plyraoutli Eock sitting heus, 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 persevering 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 i^uts 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. A feather is one of the masterpieces of nature. Combining strength, elasticity and lightness, it is at the same time a good non-conductor of heat, it affords the most perfect ventilation, and, like the fur of animals, it both sheds rain and repels dirt. A mole burrows in the dirt and remains as clean as a coin fresh from the mint. It is hard to tell which is the most marvelous production of nature, an egg or a feather. 711 AX EUG I'AKM. In undertaking to compete with artificial incubation and rearing and to distance tlie artificial methods, any and every kind of sitters must not be employed. Tlie Asiatic breeds give a gentle disposition and unrivalled persistence, but the feathers on their legs are in tlie wa}\ The most gentle and Brahma-like Plymouth Eocks of large size, selected for motherliness and for freedom from the neiTous activity and liability to scare and fret that some of the smaller Jn-eeds possess, are just the thing. To all intents and purposes, they are Light Bralimas, witli their excessive size and tlie black of the plumage and the leg and toe feathering bred out, and length of wing and a certain liglitness of movement, the reverse of the Brahma clumsiness and awkwardness, bred in. A hen of tlie improved breed of sitters can cover from sixteen to twenty eggs, according to the season. Some persons have objected to the cost of the feed for sitting hens while they are incubating. It is not lost. They need a rest from laying, anyhow, and lay the bet- ter for it. If they do not lay at one time of the year, they will make up for it at another. While at a I'csting spell they would have to be fed, whether sitting or not, but the exjiense of heating incubators is a dead weight. Among other advantages of the natural system, an important one is that it does not demand so high priced a man as the artificial system does. The first is easy, the last is comparatively difficult and keeps the attend- ant on a rack and strain more or less, that must be paid for; or if he is a master of the art and so lias little anxiety, then the time he spent in becoming a master of the art must be paid for. But, if you have the proper conveniences, calm as a May morning you can attend sitters, not by the hundreds, but by the thousands, with not a care in the world. Their temperature will always bo correct. HOUSES FOR SITTEES. 71 It is essential to liavo coniplelo control of the sitters and of their nosts, iinil tlie atleiulaneo at every stage must he 2>crl'oriiie(l well, ([iiickly ami witli ease. No oj.eratiou must be awl^wanl or at a disadvantage, if nat- nral hateh.iiig on a ]ai'i;e scale is to 1)0 nuulo to beat hatching' hy maehiue. Tlie ma\im lunst be kejit in miml, tliat Avlu'ne\er ;i tliiug is to lie rejieated hundreds of times and often, a saving of a. second, and also avoid- ing a cramped or ]al)orious position of the worlxer, is of the iitmost importance in lessening expense. Inconvenience costs mone}' ; not only is wear of mus- cles to be saved, but wear and tear of brain and patience. It takes too mncli mental steam to run incubators and brooders, as compared with sitters and brooding hens. ISTature has, as we have said, regulated the heat of the latter j^erfectly, and made most exquisite provisions for ventilation and moisture — natural provisions not prop- erly appreciated by poulti-y men during the incubator craze. Incubators are at their best in the winter broiler business, and as adjuncts to early spring hatching under hens in sections of country wdiere winter is prone to lin- ger in the lap of spring. But the millions of tons of poultry to be needed in the great future will be raised, dressed and shipped, botli with and withoiTt cold stor- age, w here the winters are so short and mild as to be reckoned with but slightly, — raised just a little to the south of v\diere the bulk of tlje cattle, sheep and swine are now fattened. Just where the great district of the cheapest grain in the world touches another district where mild winters prevail, wdiieh are of mucli greater importance for poultry than for beef, fiork and mutton production, and where natural incubation is at its best. A man can work more hours each day, and have greater peace of mind and live longer on earth, if he attends to natural incubation and rearing when he has the very best conveniences for it, as compared with the 72 AN EGG FARM. person running the Tery best incubators and brooders in the world under the mental tension and watchfulness their successful use implies. Tending sitters in great numbers, unless with conveniences, is, however, an abomination. Any plan of managing them that places the operator at the mercy of their whims and cranks, and the liability of their lice and uncleanliness, makes his task irksome in the extreme, and costs in dollars and cents. They have certain traits and habits, however, which we can rely uj>on and turn to our advantage. Nature has placed within our reach vital machinery of such wonderful precision that nothing man can make will ever rival it. Hatch chicks artificially and rear them in brooders, where location demands, and market them in ninety days from the shell, and besides, use the incubators, if you choose, to supplement sitters, but never rear a bird to keep to adult age for a sitter, or to exhibit, or for a breeder, except under a good, motherly hen. The egg must, in the first place, be laid by a fovvd kept under sanitary conditions that were perfect, and during incu- bation be surrounded by air much better and purer than that in incubators averages; and then, while tlie chicks are getting their growth, they should never see a fence, but have the use of as much of the United States as they choose to travel over. Pullets thus hatched and reared, and from an ancestry thus hatched and reared for several generations, will have constitutions that will stand forcing (to get eggs for food purposes only), and can be put through the severest ordeal of rich and stim- ulating diet for a year after completing their growth, when they should "be killed and their places given to new recruits. The colt reared in the green pastures and beside the still waters, and from a country-bred sire and dam, you can take at its maturity to toil in the city streets. You are trading on the vitality stored up by HOUSES FOR SITTERS. 73 the iinimal iu its youth, and on that which was accumu- lated by dam and siro and great-great-grandsirc. But, on the other haiul, the city would be a poor place iu whicii to raise colts. The successful business nuui of our large towns were nearly all country reared and descended from country bred ancestry. They go to the city with a full head of vitality it has taken generations to accumulate. The artiticial life dissipates vitality, it does not accumulate it, although it may sometimes accumulate money. No large city perpetuates its own number of inhabitants. It would become depopulated were it not for recruits from the country. The blooded fowls, or their eggs for hatching, bought and sold and disseminated by millions all over the world, would leave descendants more plenty than blackberries, were it not for the fact that not only are incubators and brooders used considerably, but both sellers and buyers are prone to stive the highly prized birds up in such close quarters, and subject them to so many other unnatural conditions, that they peter out after awhile. Trace the history of dozens of importa- tions of choice poultry broitght into your neighborhood, good reader, within your remembrance. Ask what has become of them. The answer will be, in a large propor- tion of cases, "they all ran out." CHAPTER Vlll. FOR KITTICKS JX JIILD CL7A[ATT:g. According to the Lest metliod of managing sitters in tlie region of mild winter.-, from wliich the bulk of poi;l- try products is to come eventually, the house for sitters needs no glazing and no siding, or very little siding, but should liave a good, tight, shingled roof to keep off rain. In the belt of country where the trainloads and shiploads of poultry, necessary to supply in the future not a hundred millions, but hundreds of millions, of our own people, aud fo)-eigii lands as well, can be raised most profitaljly, the climate permits poultry to I'ootjt iu trees the year round and do quite well, as has been demonstrated for a century. In such a climate, with an enormous tract of prairie joining it on the north, affording a supply incalculable in quantity of the elieapest grain on earth, the cost of producing poultry products is at the very rninirnum, and even with cost of trans]jortation added, it is still at the minimum. In the redistribution of industries, com- pelled by the laws of business competition — laws as irre- sistible as the attraction of gravitation — a commoditv will always be produced, in tlie long run, at exactly the most advantageous point. Tlierefore, at Kansas City, or not more than a hundred or a few hundred miles away, will be sliipped yearly tliousands of tons of poul- try, alive or dressed, i-efrigerated, frozen, or canned. The buildings in Arkansas and Oklahoma will need next to no siding at all, but in southern Kansas there should be hinged or folding sides to be let down in win- r4: FOR SITTERU IN JIILD CLIMATES. "'■> ter. To protect iigiiinsfc liciit in our model liouso for sitters at the soutlnvest, a tiglit, level floor slionld extend from plate to plate, making an air chamber of all tlie sjiaco in the building above the posts. This floor may consist of matched stutf or of straight edged boards, reinforced bj* building paper. The roof gets liot and this air chamber protects the fowls, and their attendant also. A shutter of liberal dimensions, in each gable near the peak, governed by cords, must be kept open in summer, to jiermit the heated air to escajie, but it must not be allowed to escape in winter, as it serves a useful purpose during the cool nights. The length of the building is 155 ft., 144 ft. of which are in the hatching room. The width is 11 1-2 ft., width of central alley-, 2 1-2 ft. Measurements in the direction across the alley are as follows : Nest, 1 1-3 ft. ; treadle, 1 2-3 ft. ; feeding space, 1 1-2 ft. The roof is double, that is, it slants down from the ridge in two directions. An alley for the attendant is dug in the ground, lengthwise of the building, in the center, 2 1-2 ft. deep and stoned or bricked at the sides. The build- ing is double, there being nests, treadles, and a feed space each side of the alley. Immediately adjoining the alley on each side is a row of nests at the bottom of the fowl house jiroper, thus they will be 2 1-2 ft. above where the attendant stands. The place where work is to be done should be of this convenient hight, for the same reason that a store counter or a work bench stands above the floor. It was a big mistake to locate nests, brooders, etc., on a level with the poultry keeper's feet, as has been done all ov-er the United States. A car runs the whole length of the building on a rail- road in the alley, twenty inches above the bottom of the alley, the rails being held by supports fixed in the walls. As ease and dispatch in certain portions of the work depend on this transportation feature, the rails and the 76 AS EGG FAEM. car must be of the best, so that the latter may be moved at a touch. A wheelbarrow is sometimes used in a ponl- trj 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 tliat 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 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 lapng 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 is a 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 FOK SITTERS IST JllLU CLIMATES. 77 operations about the iiosts, from either end of a btiilding one hundred and fifty feet long, without going down the alley. Figure 25 shows the operation of a treadle, T, at tlie 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 fignre 4 catch and closes the pas- sage door, thus confining her and shutting laying fowls In this cut, the sides and top of the uest and of out. no. 26. nr APPARATUS FOK 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 si)ace, 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, h. In this cut, an edge view is given of the door, /(', pivoted at n, and raised by the cord, «^ which passes over the pulley, p. 78 AN EGG EAE3I. Attached to tlio door is the door leTcr, h, tliis lover being held down by a figure 4 catch. Tliis we cull the first position of the door. Tlie lien enters on the treadle at T and walks toward the nest at Tj. The treadle, being raoyed downward by her weight, turns on the pivot, v v, which has bearings on the side of tlie passage not sliown in tliis cut. To the treadle is attached a rod, jointed at t and pivoted at e and at x. "When x moves downward, as indicated by tlie arrow, the motions of the other parts -r FIG. 26. APPARATUS FOE SITTERS. are also in tlie directions of the arrows, t going down- ward and toward the right and the figure 4 toward the left, releasing tlie door lever, and causing the door, li}, 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 W, Fig. 26. In this cut, the top and one side of the passage and nest are shown, which, of course, hide the FOB SITTERS IN JMILD CLIMATES. "I 9 treadle rod, bnt Fig. 30, licing designed only lo bIiow llie working, is not an exact representation of tin; nest and the passage to the nest, there being in reality a lilieral employment of wirework in top and sides of tlieso for the sake of air. Now, as there are lH nests in a horizontal row or tier, eaeh with its passage, door, treadle, and other parts'; to set all these traps by hand, in other words, to go tlirongh the alley and depress each door-bar singly to make each engage with its catch, would take too mtich time. A trap-setter must be employed to set them all at once, or as many as are in use for hatching jjurposes. An iron shaft, I, in Fig. 25, and also I in Fig. 2G, con- sisting of a common 3-4 in. water pipe, extends the whole length of the row of nests, a transverse section of this shaft being shown also at I, Fig. 20. The shaft has bearings made by driving staples into a 2x0 stick, attached immovably to the building. To the shaft, at intervals of 1 ft., corresponding to the widtli of the nests, are attached arms of large wire, each 11 in. long, with a loop or an eye in the end farthest from the shaft, as at 1 in Fig. 25, to which the cord, «', is fastened, a small snap Look being tied permanently to the cord and snapped into the eye. This cord passes over the pulley, p, and is fastened to the door, h. It will be readily seen that when the shaft, /, has been turned, by means of a lever at either end of the building, operated by the atten- dant, so as to throw the arm to the point 1, as shown in Fig. 25, the door is raised to the first position (and, of course, all the doors in the tier, attached by cords in the same way, are brought to the first jiosition) and all the sitters are able to enter the nests, their dail}' run out of doors being finished. Having set all the traps, the shaft is turned to bring the arm to the point 2, so that the cords may be slack, permitting each hen to drop her own door. 80 AN EGG FAEJI. The doorway to the door is narrowed by tacking on strips of wood, according to the average size of the birds, so that two hens cannot enter abreast. One or two split shot, such as are sold to anglers for sinkers, are attached to the cord near the center, so as to take up the slack and keep the cord slightly taut over the pulley, p, while waiting for the hen to drop her door. Treadles should be made of tbree-eighths or one-half inch boards, so as to be fjuite light, and hung so that the end nearest the door will "ct; sierely heavy enongli to overcome the fric- tion of its pivots and of the joint and pivot of the rod, 80 as to keep tlie door end of the treadle down at all times, excepting when the trap is being either set or sprang. When, the next day toward night, it is desired to open all the doors to liberate the sitters, the shaft, I, is turned so as to move tlie arms to tlie point .3 and the doors to the puint /;'', culleo the third position; they being lifted not quite as high as the first position, but high enough to let the birds pass out. When the sitters are all out, turn the shaft hack to 2, to put the doors in the second position, — that is, they will be closed so tliat none of the birds can return to their nests prematurely ; for over- zealous sitters are prone to air the eggs too little, and to not spend sufficient time in dusting themselves, exer- cising, eating and drinking. After an interval of five or ten minutes or an hour or more, according to the weather, the trap-setter, ?, is again employed as ]ire- viously described, to bring the door bars into the keep- ing of the figure 4's, so that the doors will be in the first position. Xow tliere are one hundred and forty-four nests in one row and only one hundred or less of these are to be used at one time by sitters, leaving forty-four or more to be used by the laying fowls, which occupy tlie same build- ing. When a nest is no longer needed for a sitter, ana FOK SITTEUS I^f MILD CLIMATES. 81 IS renovated ami preiiared for the Ti.se of tlic layers, tlio snap hook is detached from the eye and attaelied to a similar eye at the end of an arm belonging to a shaft, m, which is the dujdicato of tlie sliaft I, and which operates as the latter does, only it is never used to bring doors to the first position. The shaft, m, is to put the doors leading to layer;' nests into the second position (closed) before liberating the sitters, this precaution being necessary to prevent sitters from blundering into the nests of layers. As before remarked, the sitters are let out toward night, the layers having finished business for the day. The distances the shafts m and I are, rcsjiectively, from tlie point where the cord is attached to tlie door, Ti, must have careful attention ; m can be the nearest to the alley and I the highest, and both must be so placed that the cord will exactly reach from arm 2, on both shafts, to the door, wlien these arms are at tlie second position. Then the first and third positions will take care of themselves, and the length of cord having been once fixed upon need never be changed. The cords are small and may be the best quality cotton shoe string, or other stout, non-stretcliable material. Bore a three- sixteenth inch hole, slantingwise, through h, in which insert a homemade affair like a violin peg to attach the cord to, so that by turning the peg you can wind or unwind the cord and it may be readily brought to the exact length necessary to completely close the doors and also operate the figure 4's with precision. When you arrive on the scene, the sitters' doors are supposed to be at the second position (closed) and the layers' doors at third position (nearly full open). The order then proceeds as follows : Layers' doors, you throw to second position (closed) ; sitters' doors, immediately to third position (nearly full open) ; after a short inter- val, sitters' second position (closed) • after a longer 6 AX T.C.O, FAILM. it«HKK(^>*#««>»^«*«.K *«*.t--.-'*,<^ ^\ h :^ / f; i^^ < ■CJ A: mmz >- 3 1-E ^1 air separate from all others. At the age of tive or six months, cull out the most prom- ising pullets and cockerels, and pair them for testing and recording pedigree and 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 liecome blended in one. Proceed in this manner a number of years, and when in the course of time a very extra prolitic 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 proliticness 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 he made from fanciers who, to iix the conventional points, have most likely bred close and impaired strength, cross- in£- will immediately give a decided increase of vio'or. 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 prnned will give a profuse yield and then die, and as various domestic animals will for a short 120 AS EGG I'AKM. time be ]nure prolific after removal to niiaccuritonieil climates, so the violent attack on vitality which occurs wlien 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 wliile scientific naturalists liave insisted that no animal can thrive under continued close breeding, practical jjoultry keepers have jwinted to the prolificness of in-and-in bred fowls as a proof that there was no deterioration. The fact is, individual per- fection and rapid increase arc, to a certain degree, incompatible. Under our pjlan 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 Plymoutlr Eocks 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 idumage 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 supjily 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 furnisli artificially natural conditions. Though the birds of the BKEEDISU AXU INCUBATIOX. 131 laying class in tlie expcriiiiciital yards arc rated accord- ing to their proliticness, yet tlio test is merely a relative one, for they are not forced to profuse laying by stim- ulating feed. SETTIXG 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, -n-ill hatch strong and healthy chickens, observ- ing one precaution. Care should be taken never to set eggs laid near the close of the season, wlien the hens hare 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 proliticness. 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 sev- 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-imp)regnated eggs as possible. Over ninety iper cent will be impregnated if the breeding cocks are strong and sprightly, and no more than ten hens are allowed in a 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 FAllM. 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 tliat 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 hatcli as great a proportion of eggs as hens, there is no way of rearing the chickens artifi- cially, and seciiring ventilation, warmth, cleanliness and room for exercise, without greater outlay in labor and building materials than is necessary when hens are employed, jirovided the rigors of winter are over. The cost of fixtures for heating, and of fuel, and of suitable contrivances for jjroviding exercise for the young broods, maks the jilan entirely ini]iracticable, except m case of 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 lie close together and po that the hen can roll the outside ones towards the center easily, but do not pack the earth so dishing that eggs will lie 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 EKEKDING AND IXCUBATION. 123 skill of the lieu, or tliali nl: ilie dcliualo cliickuiis. In Very cold weather line the nest with feathers. "\Vc have successfully hatched eggs by jireparing a nest thus, in a room where during jiart 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 in a book of the family or strain, and other piarticulars 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 attem2:iting to look throngh 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. Eetnrn 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 perp)etuate a tough membraned breed. When dealing with the j^edigreed chickens and selecting the choicest sjiecimens to p)ut 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. 19A AX EGG FARM. allowing the hon, moanwliilc, water, niid 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 largo 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 jirevented. 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 cheaj) enough, and is not dangerous to the sitters. Xo cover- ing of the nests is necessary when this is used, and it can be applied during the third week if desired, or at any other time. Two thoi'ough applications will utterly destroy the enemy, an interval of four days being allowed between. Use two full handfuls each time. Xo 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 jiart 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 will 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. CHAPTER XIV. MAXAGEirEXT OF SITTERS. A special management of sitters in a mild climate, with mechanical contrivancca for minimizing labor, has already been given, and we will now describe the management of the incubating hens kejit in the buildings represented in Figs. '21 and 22, and adapted to cooler la'dtudes. This building, like the one for the southwest, secures plenty of room for the sitters to moTO 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 yon 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 125 136 AN EGG FAEM. by the fine wire netting, as described. Tiie 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, adjoining hens form a particular acquaintance FIG. 40. IirANXEK OF >^UMBF.RIXG XESTS 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 i^lan 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, arc induced to choose nests scattered evenly through the whole building, by properly distributing nest eggs and keejoing 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 jianaokmujNT of sriTJiKS. ^27 4iid ono at tlie center, liy i);iinl.iiig oiicli division ii special color — tlie C'cnter black, and the ends respectively red and blue. The contrast assists the fowls very mnch in determining tlieir ])lace.s. No more tlum three pairs of sitters should be allowed to each division, or eighteen clutches on each side of the building. The bIx birds belonging in the middle divi- sion remember their places very readily, because they arc so far from either end. To jn-event 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 otlior left bare. A few 3'ards of cheap cotton cloth or some old newspapers will do to mark a distinction. All birds, wild or domesti- cated, possess a keen sense of locality, and a few neigh- boring objects enable them to recognize their nests. The nests that are used for hatching are numbered by affix- ing movable labels, and every sitter is distinguished by having a feather or two painted, the color sliowing her division, and the position of the mark, upon her head, body, or tail, signifying a nnmljer corresponding to that of her nest. This enables the attendant to correct mis- takes of the birds (which will, how^ever, be rare) before fastening them in daily. The colors show distinctly upon the white ground of the feathers. This plan appears somewhat whimsical, but it is simple and con- venient. Figure 40 shows the numbers on the side of a room, arranged as if for eighteen clutches, the nests not numbered being for the use of laying fowls in the mean- time. The shading represents the three different colors of the divisions. The sitters are assigned places two by two as above stated, and each of a pair of nests and each of the occupants receives the same number. Only three numerals are necessary to designate three dozen nests in all, in one house. The incubating hens should be fed early in the morn- 128 AN EGG FAEM. ins', before any of the others are ready to lay. Those not sitting are sluit into the yard ; the large doors of coarse vireivork, tliat jirevent hens from roosting on the aligliting hoards at night, are raised at one side of tlie room only, and the jiieces of wire cloth before the separate entrances to the nests of the sitting hens are removed and placed in front of the nests frequented by the layers. Next, grain is thrown upon the ground in view of all the sitters on that side of the room, when a call to whicli they are accustomed will caiTse nearly all to leave their nests. The laggards that refuse to leave are lifted from the nests and placed on the ground. The attendant must not take hold of the fowl. Push tlie hand gently under her and then spread out the fin- gers and lift her slowly off the eggs. There is a knack about it wliich is quickly learned, and, to beat artificial incubation all hollow, it must not be forgotten that our sitters are of a selected strain and very quiet. When tliey are off, the large doors are lowered and the hens are left from one-quarter to tliree-qnarters of an hour, according to the weather, while the poulterer is repeat- ing the ojieration at the other buildings. When the liens are off, inspect every nest to detect broken eggs, or anything else amiss. The sitters upon one side are all admitted to their nests at once, by raising the large wire doors, and tlien shut in safe from rats or tlie intrusions of laying hens, by the separate pieces of wire cloth. Repeat the operation at the nests on the opposite side of the house. The houses for sitters should be located near the begin- ning and the finisli of the route tlie wagon takes in attending to the main laying stock, thirs making it con- venient to work in the sitting department at intervals through the day and give the sitters a long spell off in warm weather. On yery warm days, they should be off the nests from one to three hours on a stretch. In very MAXAOEilENT OF SITTEES. 121) ciild woatlicr, from tlirco to fivo niiinitcs will do, and in medium weather, anywhere from ten minutes to thirty, forty-five or sixty minutes. Whenever the attendant is examining nests, or doing other work in the houses for sitters, lie sliould operate tlie hammers and feed shelves as directed under the head of Houses for Sitters, Chap- ter YIII. The sitters will do much running besides, on their own account. The layers, which are in the same runways and buildings occupied by the sitters, feed at the same time as the latter, and the layers have numer- ous opportunities to feed, while each batch of sitters has one opportunity only. This is all right, for the sitters sliould be rather sparingly fed, in order to keep them keen and eager, so that they may leave their nests promptly at feeding time and not have to be removed by hand. "Whenever the feed shelves are operated, there should be only the very smallest possible quantity of grain jarred down, consisting of millet or very fine cracked corn. The object is to coniirm the habit, which all the birds will have, of running back and forth to see what is good at the other terminus of the yards between whiles, when the attendant is not present. 9 CHAPTER XV. MANAGEMEKT OF TOUi^'G CHICKENS. In keeping poultry on a large scale, there is no one thing more imjjortant, or more difficult to manage, than the chicken department. A failure in the yearly supply of pullets, with which to recruit the stock of layers, would be fatal to the whole plan. It is quite an easy matter to raise nearly every chick of a hardy breed, when there are but a few upon an extensive range, but it is the reverse when we are desirous of rearing several hun- dreds upon an acre, and there is, practically, no insect forage at all. If there are persons who consider the occupation of a jDoulterer as "small potatoes," believing that it needs less thought and skill than to manage a cotton mill or a mercantile establishment, or horses and cattle, let them try once to raise chickens by the thou- sand, without losing money, and find the need of keep- ing their wits as sharp as in more pretentious kinds of business. Yet, all difficulties may be surmounted by thorough management. To have strong chickens, it is necessary, while devel- oping the desired strain, to avoid breeding akin, and to keep the breeding stock in a condition as near to normal as possible, securing for them sun, air and exercise, and avoiding a pampering diet. The greater the number of eggs produced by a fowl, the less vitality there will be in each, therefore the first only of a laying should be set. Early chickens are the most certain to live, and this is liecause force is stored up in the parent before laying commences, sufficient to endow the first eggs or chickens 130 MANAGEMENT OF YOL'N(J (JlUUXvENS. J 31 witli plenty of vigor, while luter, (lie abnorniiil or ai'iifi- cial prolificnoss iiti]>iiirs the eggs. In spite of the nncoii- genial weather, Miii'ch-liatchcd chickens arc stronger than tliosc produced in April, and the latter, in turn, are reared with greater ease than those hatched in May. But, after attending to the above considerations, the chickens being hatched and assigned quarters, their thrift then depends chiefly on their diet. Of course, they ninst be kejit clean, dry, free from vermin, and protected from other enemies, quadruped and biped, and be allowed space for exercise in the sun and ojien air ; but all these things will not suffice, unless animal food is artificially provided as a substitute for the insects they would obtain if there were but few chickens on the premises. True enough, chickens can be reared on grain and vegetables alone, because they are like man, omnivorous. Children can be reared without eating any meat at all, but both men and fowls will do better with animal food than without it. Butchers' meat, such as calves' and sheep's jnlucks, are even better than insects for young chicks, provided they are fed j)lentifnlly, yet only a very little at a time, and care is taken to alter- nate with grain and green vegetable food. Chandlers' greaves may be used for chickens, if very nice and sweet — the article varies much in quality. They are very cheap feed, cheaijer than the fresh bits from the butcher, but not as good for chickens as the latter. There must be constant vigilance in supplying animal food regularly and systematically. The young of birds in a wild state are given an animal diet, even in cases when, as they reach maturity, they live uj^on seeds. The young of our domestic birds cannot do their very best upon grain and vegetables alone, because such things cannot be digested and assimilated fast enough by them to meet the great demands for nourishment caused by their rapid growth. Nature has provided 133 AN EGG FARM. that tlie jouug of all birds shall mature and become fledged with wonderful rapidity, in order tliat the period of their heli:)lessness, wlien they are likely to be joreyed np)on by their numerous enemies, shall be short. The formation of the coat of feathers, which succeeds the downy covering with which they emerge from the shell, demands a quick and certain supply of nutritive mate- rials, and, in the case of domesticated species, the young are obliged at the same time to nourish the growth of bodies which, owing to the artificial treatment man has subjected their parents to for many generations, tend to an abnormal size. The fledging jjeriod is a critical one, and the feeding, from the time of incubation until the wing and tail feathers are fairly developed, should all be contrived with a view to assist the digestive organs in changing just as much easily assimilated material as jios- sible into an abundance of good, rich blood. It will not do to wait until the time of the most rapid feather- ing, and then begin to allow a generous diet, but the systems of the young chicks must be prcj^ared in advance, by being stored with nutriment in every cell and tissue. For the first few days after incubation, feed the yolks of eggs slightly cooked by being dropped in hot water, not spoiled by being hard*boilcd. 3Iix these with an equal quantity of the cruinbs of corn cake, made by bak- ing a dough of Indianjfcieal and milk. The clear eggs, that were put under srttors and tested out, will give you a sujiply of yolks for this jiiirpose. As soon as the chicks are five or six days old, begin gradually to substitttte boiled plucks and livers, run through a meat cutter, in place of the egg yolks, and the Indian meal may be cooked as a thick mush, and to stimulate apjaetite by variety, add Is wheat bran and ground oats. Also, cracked wheat screenings, raw, may be introduced. All eat of tender grass, chopped fine, and boiled nicely mashed, should be given. The grass may, of course, bo discuuLinuod whuii tlic Ijii'ds iiiv :, and allowing them to slide down an inclined plane. Tlie cook room, "with which the window, H, communicates, occupies the north part of the lower stor}', of which Fig. 47, Page 143, gives a ground plan. /, cook room, with its ou.tside (north) door, J. K, gi'ain bin, entered at the door, L. The root bin is at M, and entered at the door, N. The cook room is used in winter as a place in which to dress fowls, and contains also a work bench with tools. The cooking ajjparatus is at 0. There is no chimney proper, but only a chim- ney toj) su^jported by strong timbers near the peak. A brick flue rises from perjiendicularly as far as the eaves, terminated by an ordinary stovepipe, which con- ducts the smoke to a large drum in the upper room, and from thence to the chimney top. In this way the garret is warmed for drying feathers, or for rearing a few win- ter chicks if desired. As shown in Fig. 45, the south wall of this nursery apartment is well glazed. The dimensions of the building are 36x30 ft., with 18 ft. posts. Two buildings remain to be described. Figure 49 rep- resents a hosjn'tal ; that is, a building that can be used as sucli in an emergency. It is 14 ft. wide, GO ft. long, and 8 ft. high at the peak. There is a passage 3 1-3 ft. wide, running its whole length the north side, which communicates with the twelve rooms into which the 143 AN EGG FARM. building is divided by wire partitions. The glazed roof is upon the south side. There is an outside door (not shown in tlie figure) in the mirth wall, opposite the ^ - 'm M V K N ' J J ol O FIG. 47. GROUND I'LAN. chimney, for conTenience in attending the fire. The building is warmed by coal, a fire-chamber of brick and a boiler and hot-water pipes being used. It is injurious to animals to breathe the fumes that will escape when it is attempted to warm a room by passing a smoke-jiipe through it, leading from a coal fire, unless the chimney is quite high, causing a strong draft, which is one reason for preferring hot water, and anotlier is that the risk of overheating is not so great (for water cannot be heated above a certain temperature without turning to vapor or steam), and a third reason IS that less fuel is needed with hot water tlian without. The original cost of hot-water fixtures is double, it is true, but they are kept in repair with hardly the expense of a cent, and cause a saving of fully half the fuel. The ventilator at the top of the building has immovable blinds at its sides, and horizontal doors at its bottom, opening upwards, and closing by their own weight, ADDITIONAL BUILDINGS. 143 moved by means of cords and puller's, regulate tlio egress of air. At the north side of tlie bnikliiig are a niimber of small uiiidows, covered witli ordinary adjustable blinds, for the admission of frcsli air, and in summer tlie doors at l)otli ends of tlie structure may be opened, as iu the illustration, and the windows in the roof should be partly curtained. This building is used for early chick- ens, and numerous other purposes, it not being expected to have much occasion to take care of sick fowls, for the true plan is to prevent disease by inducing constant exercise by scratching, by allowing sun, air, good food, and breeding from vigorous stock. Never have any hospital at all on your premises for birds affected with roup, cholera or other serious epi- FIG. 48.— QTTABTEKS FOB BABLT CHICKENS. demio or infectious disease. In time, it is confidently believed, some preventive, by inoculation or otherwise, will be proYided by science to ward off the two dire 144 AN KOG FARM. pliigucs, chicken choloni iuul roup; but tHl that luippy era arrives tlie inflexible rule for treatment of di,seas(;rices for the lucky owners." The non-hatching has been hastily attributed to the weather, but the weather never hinders the hen which runs at large and steals her nest and is actively engaged the greater part of the day in foraging for a living, from hatching twelve or thirteen chicks out of a nestful of thirteen eggs. The feed has been another scapegoat. Every combination of animal food, green stuS and cereals has THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 14!* been tried, but no ration has been found tliat will neiv tralize the bad effects whicli the lack of exercise of tlie laying birds produces on their eggs. In the first edition of "An Egg Farm," tlie impor- tance of inducing exercise by scratcliiiig was inculcated for tlie fii-st time in print. The reader is reminded that poultry literature is mostly of a very modern date. There have been, down to the present time, about two hundred books and pamjihlets printed on poultry, in the English language, but when An Egg Farm was first published, a small but excellent poultry book by "Wright, another by Geyelin, and a few other books, very meager ones, comprised all the works on fowl keeping which had then attained any considerable circulation, and nowhere had the importance of scratching, for the sake of exercise, been mentioned — though the experience of people with flower beds had, for long centuries previous, shown that the hen is, by nature, a scratching animal, as inveterate in parting the soil as is a duck in parting the water, and more so, in some cases, since the fond- ness for swimming has been bred out of some strains of Pekin ducks, by withholding bathing privileges from them for many consecutive generations. Since our first recommendation, in the original edition of An Egg Farm, as above stated, to furnish a scratching pile or scratch- ing bin, the modern voluminous fowl literature of the country, including the poultry columns in the numerous agricultural jieriodicals, has reiterated the advice until fowl keepers have become well indoctrinated on this jDoint. But, while the use of horserake and hay tedder, for the free range colony system, was pointed out in the first edition, no better way was shown for mixing the grain and straw, in yards or buildings, than to do it by hand. We described the best way we then knew. The advent since, of simple mechanical apparatus, contrived by the author, to accomplish the mixing, constitutes a 150 AN EGG FAEir. revolution in intensive poultry keeijing. By the use of this invention, the greatest objections to keeping poul- try in confinement disapjjear, and by means of the new system yarded birds produce strongly vitalized eggs, tliat hatch well and make healthy, vigorous clucks. Now, even in quite narrow quarters, both the parent stock and tlie young chicks can be made to take as much exercise as they naturally do when running at large, and more, in fact. The apparatus is to birds in confinement what the wheel is to a squirrel in a cage. As we have pointed out, it is utterly impracticable to mix straw and feed together by hand often enough to FIG. 53.— WKKDER AXD SOIL STIKIiING IMPLEMENT. keep the flock of fowls well emxjloyed. It must be done often or it will not amount to much, and it must also be done right; that is, tliere must be a correct proportion between the quantity of grain and the quantity of straw. If too much straw is used, the fowls become discouraged THE INTENSIVE PLAN. 151 and will not work at all, and if too much grain is used, tlieir appetite is soon satiated and they become listless and inactive thereafter for the remainder of the day. When a judicious scratching pile has been made, for young chicks or old birds, no matter which, it will be found that they will work it over in good thorough style in just about twenty minutes. A device for mixing the grain and straw automatically is evidently needed^ so that it can be done often and labor saved. CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXERGiaEK. We have already shown some simple contrivances for inducing fowls to run, in the few cases under the exten- sive system where it was necessary or convenient to employ yards or runways, but to induce them to scratcli is another matter, which becomes very imj^ortant under the intensive system, where j'arding is the rule and open range the exception. While formerly one attendant could projjerly manage hundreds of yarded fowls, he can now tend thousands by means of the new machine, which is called the Exerciser. In its invention, the problem was to devise a recepta- cle, suspended over the straw, to hold grain enough for a day, or for several days, if desired, inaccessible to rats and mice, and to discharge a little and often upon the straw beneath ; for, as stated, if too much is distributed at a time, the birds will become cloyed and cease work- ing, and if too little is dropped they will also cease, because they become discouraged. The dropper or distributer, which is more accurate and precise than the feed shelf already described, and is, therefore, particularly adapted to feeding chicks in brooders, is constructed as follows : Let e, Fig. 58, rep- resent a strip of tin, 3 ft.x8 in. ; « is a strip of wire cloth, 3 ft. x3 5-8 in., with mesh 8 to the inch; h, c, and d are strips of wire cloth of the same length and width as e, and h has mesh 10 to the inch, c has 12 and d 14 to the inch. All these may be ordered at any luird- ware store. Figure 59 shows these strips, a, h, c, d, 153 THE EXEUCISEK. ir,3 and e, all soldered togctlier in a regular gradation, according to sizes, the finest mesh being soldered to the tin. Let e lap over d, and d lap over c, and so on ; no need of soldering continuously — a drop of solder every G in. will do. There is a 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 AK 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 FIG. 59. STKIPS SOLDERED TOGETHER. circular, and if of the latter shaj^e, should be five and three-quarters inches in diameter, being cut from a seven- eighths inch board. It has a hole, /, 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 THE EXERCISER. 155 the end piece. Fig. CI. In Fig. 60, a represents the tin whieh is tacked closely at the bottom of the cylinder, hut flares out into a flange at a. Above a, there is an open space, through which the cylindei- 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 cjdinder 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 AX EGG FARM. FIG. 61. END PIECE OF FEED f'YLINDER IN POSITION. mesh and afterward will] a. coanso and .slill coarser meslj successively, all the time losing grain of a coarser size, the coarsest particles of the whole falling through the open space ne.xt to the flange, a, Ijy the time the cylinder has made a comiDletc revolu- tion. The operation of I'evolving a cylin- der and its succes- sive positions are plainly shown in Figs.02,03,94and95. The sticks, I, b. Fig. GO, are to keep the cylinder in shape, while it is being slip- ped onto the shaft. This shaft of half-inch iron pipe must have 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. Eight or ten hours or so must elapse before you make the axle accomplish a comiilete revolution. In a frac- tion of a second yon 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. Tim KXERCISER. 157 lu a large ostalilislniR'uh, wlioro an attemlaufc must bo on hand pretty much all the time, anyhow, this opcr- ation hy a. crank will he chosen, l)ut the fancier or amateur, or ordinary keeper of one or a few flocks, will ilo well to attach clockwork to the dropper, and to the chaflf hox described further on, so that the feeding may l)e carried on regularly, while he is at his office or store en- even out of town. The easiest way to make a crank and attach it to the axle of the drojDiier, 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 he screwed to one end of the axle, see Figs. 120 and 63. Or, if a black- smith can he 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. Pig. 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. CRAXK roil WOODEN" SHAFT. CHAPTER XIX. • THE TILT BOX. A pile of straV, leaves, chaff, excelsior, hay, or almost any sort of litter must be located under the cylinder. If 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 to short bits, and their trampling will 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 simjDlest 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, tlie litter being represented by the dots being level. TIio first step is to tilt to tlie position, B, and then stop a second and drop feed from the cj'linder, 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, D, when END OF KOW OF FEftD CYLINDERS. the windrow will be found intact at i/, with grain mixed through it ready for tlie fowls to enter and go to work. The shape of the windrow is not destroyed by the ipotion 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 FAEil. or nearly level, position, as shown at A, fig. 73. There is wire netting from x 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, lu, X and y are boarded, and to put litter 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, lo. The tilt box is sujDjjorted npon and rota- ted by an axle, 4, of iron pipe, which rests on joists, these being about two feet MO. W. FENCE KATCHET. "'^O™ '^'^^ ^OOl" O^ t^^^ buiM- 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 coiTespond. If, for the sake of economy or convenience, a wooden axle is j)referred, 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, 5,5, passing through pieces of hard wood, a 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 gi-ain and litter together have been tested, but none has been found as satisfactory as the tilt box. A THE TILT liOX. ir,i box is shown in Fig. 114, with ii portion ul its floor, 21', cnryed. There are revolving arms, 33, and S2)okes, 33, attached to tlie axle, 34. The box docs not tilt or revolve, tlie motion of the arms and spokes sufficing to ^tir the litter. This apparatus works fairly well, and FIG. 65. now OF FEED CYLINDEES. better than several other mixing machines tried at our establishment, but the tilt box excels all of them. The method of calling out the occupants of the tilt box into an adjoining ajiartment remains to be described. The reader is referred to Figs. 71 and 76, which, how- ever, are not literal representations, but are intended merely to show the principle. Figure 71 is in perspective, 11 1C2 AX EGG FAEil. and Fig. 7G is a transverse section of the same. Com- pare Fig. 73 with Fig. 76. Both cuts represent a tilt box turning on the axle 4, although the position is reversed in one cut, and both show the location of the octagonal feed cylinder overhead. Figures 71 and 76 show the essential features of the method of calling tlie nC 66, CHICKS EESPO>T)IN-G TO FOOD SIGNAI,. birds out of the way and keeping them away until the tilting operation is finished. The size and preparation of the various parts will be modified according to the dimensions of your fowl house, in case of laying stock, or the size and shape of your brooders, in case of winter chicks. In Fig. 71 are given a tilting box and a stationarj THE Tii/r BOX. KiS box, both being set on lej^s and being a jjurt of a scries ranged along a passageway where the attendant goes. AVe will suppose we are describing apparatus of chick size. The tilt box. 1, underneatli the cylinder, 10, is 2 or 2 1-2 ft. wide, 3 1-2 or 4 ft. long, according to the number of birds you prefer in a brood, and 1 ft. high. For the sake of light and air the lop is made mostly of wire netting, one inch mesh. Bottom and ends are of boards, sides partly boards, partly wire. Each box should have three to five pecks of fine litter, the quan- riG. 67. WROUGHT IRON CEANK. tiiy depending on the age of the chicks, number in a brood, and size of the box. The tilt boxes alternate with stationary boxes down the whole length of the pas- sage, although but one tilt box, 1, and one stationary box, 7, are shown in Fig. 71. You call the chicks out of the tilt box into the sta- tionary box by means of a bell, 22, pulled by the handle at 24, and by setting in motion a small extra cylinder, 20, represented here as of a square form, which contains grain and is supported and moved by axle, 19, and crank, 21. The small cylinder is set directly over the lU AN" EGG FAKJI. stationary box, 7, which adjoins the tilt box. Tliese two boxes communicate by small exit apertures, 8 and 9, cut in the ends of each box. These apertures recipro- cate when the tilt box is horizontal, but ingress and egress is cut off when the tilt box has tilted half its journey. In both Figs. 71 and 70, a board flap may be seen (the artist omit- ted giving it a num- eral), with its lower edge curved, the flaj) being attached to the tilt box under the aperture, 9. It fol- lows that when the tilt is partly accom- plished, as shown by the dotted lines, com- munication between the tilt box and the stationary box is cut off, so that the birds cannot return to the tilt box until the tilt is comj^leted and the box is on its homeward passage and almost arrived at its original level position. A flap attached to a tilt box is shown more plainly in Fig. 141, which also reiDresents the best shaped box that we have tried. The opening in the box through which the chicks pass in and out is made high enough above the floor to allow for a layer of litter. It will be noticed that the wirework at the top is in the form of a door, as previously explained, to facilitate and putting in fresh occasionally. KefeiTing to Figs. 71 and 76, the order of movements FIO. 08. CRAXK WHEEL. FIG. CO. CRANK. removini: littei THE TILT BOX. IG.-) is as follows : You ring the bell at 22, at the same time causing the flag, 25, to flutter, although tlie flag is not absolutely necessary, and then you jar tlie crank, 21, slightly, causing a few particles to fall, and the chicks rush pell-mell through the exit apertures, 8 and 9, into the stationary box, 7. You then immediately begin to rotate the tilt box, pausing when the tilt is half accom- plished, at which time the floor of the box stands at a slope of -15° and the litter has not begun to slump or slide at all. During this pause you taji the crank, 10, of the main cylinder, 10, causing a sprinkle of feed to END OF SHAFT. drop upon the litter. Then you complete the tilt, and the feed will be found mixed all through the ridge or windrow of litter. Next bring the tilt box to a level position, which affords ingress to the birds, and, no bell call being now necessary, in they will rush in two seconds, and proceed to tackle the windrow and level it, to a surprising degree uniformly, all over the bottom of the box, if the litter is not too coarse, and they will be just about twenty minutes doing it every time, if the quantities of both litter and grain are right. Three times an hour, or tliirty or more times a day, you can repeat the operation as you choose. The bell call, or a flag call, or some sort of a signal, is a necessity, at first, when the chicks are to be enticed 166 AS EGG FARM. into the stationary box, preparatory to tilting. Later, no bell is needed, for the very slightest movement of the feed dropping appliances, unless absolutely noiseless, will serve the purpose of tlie bell. Referring to the hand bell shown in Figs, 71 and 76, a trip gong bell, FIG. 71. DETAILS OF TILT BOX. Fig. 126, is preferable, and you may use one for every fifty or seventy-five feet of your brooder house. Or sus- pend an ordinary sleigh bell by a cord over every brooder box. People ask how long it takes to teach chicks to understand the Ijcll, and are sur])rised that only a few days are needed for this. Fowls, old and young, rely THE TILT BOX. 167 much on their ears, and as nature lias taught them, during thousands, or pcrhai^s millions, of generations, to give heed to a language among themselves, they have a natural aptitude for learning the meaning of sound signals. After they have been taught, they will heed a bell hung at a great distance from their ajjartment, or. D .■■K-V.'i.'Mf. /w .MM ^ FIG. 72. TILT BOX— REVERSE OF FIG. 76. as we have said, the slightest noise made by the friction or jarring of the feed-dropping apparatus, or its connect- ing parts, will render a bell unnecessary. In Fig. 71, the axJe, 14, is represented as fitted with a ratchet, 17, and pawl, 18 ; but these are unnecessary, the friction of 14 against its wooden supports being suf- ficient to hold it in the position it is left by the operator, unless the axle supports quite a long row of cylinders. 168 AN EGG FAEM. Or one or more bi-akes made of a stick of wood pivoted to an immovable stick at one end and having a weight attached to the other end, may be located so as to ride crosswise of the axle and impart the desired amount of friction. It is our aim to show homemade styles of Jo -^- _/,' "fec^ >/^ /;,\-:_^ //:''\-: r' \ a. ^ '(^ riG. 73. USI.VG THE TILT BOX. construction for everything, as well as more elaborate patterns. Axles 4, 14 and 19 are represented in the cut as passing through a wall or j)artition in the foreground. Figure 76 represents the same as Pig. 71, it being a verti- cal section substantially through 3, 2. The numerals are the same in both cuts. The dotted lines in Fig. 76 THK TILT BOX. 1G9 represent the half tilt, which is the position at the time the dropping cylinder is moved to discharge feed upon the litter. The operation of tilting is further illustrated in Figs. 73 and 77. Having shown the mode of operation, by means of Figs. 71 and 76, we beg to again remind the reader that ^ W FIG. 74. TILT BOX ON POLE. these two cuts are not literal representations of the exerciser, for in order to make plain "how the thing works," we have employed these in a general way to exhibit the principle merely. The shape and proportion of the two boxes or apartments, and of the other parts, must be modified to fit various cases. The essential 170 AN EGG FAEM. ideas are the dropping of grain and ringing a bell to caR the birds out of the tilt box, a flap or revolving^door to shut them out, the dropping of grain onto litter, the stirring or mixing of the litter and grain together, and, finally, allowing the birds admission to the tilt box ; all these stages being accomplished by an operator at one extreme end of the building. To turn the shaft which supports the tilt boxes, a winch. Fig. 138, may i be employed, such as is used for hoisting, provided the line of tilt boxes is a long one. Or, a long iron crank may be employed, as in Figs. 78, 79 and 80. It may be two and a half to three feet long, and one or one and a quarter inches in diameter. It will suffice for twenty or thirty chick tilt boxes, or five or sis layer tilt boxes, and may be made by any blacksmith and attached by set screws. The figures last named show ^ tilt boxes of the shape of Fig. 143, A^ which is a very good style, these being built of wire wherever possible, for the sake of light and air, and the box being deepest at the rear to re- ceive the "windrow. The axle is not at the center, but nearest the rear, so as to allow revolving more easily on the return trip. In Figs. 78, 79 and 80, the call -cylinder &xle and the axle of the regular feed dropping cylinders have the sort of handwheel attached that is shown in Fig. 68, a brake wheel procurable at car shops. f ^1 THE TILT BOX. 171 The levers or cranks attached to the tilt box axles arc long, and the handwhcels attached to the cyhndor axles are of considerable size, becanso the axles represented in the cuts are each 145 ft. long. If the tilt box axle is of wood, a wooden lever. Fig. 88, strengthened by iron plates, may be fitted to one end of the axle, which is sqnared. Fig. 70, h, and after the lever is put on, a collar, a, keeps it in place. CHAPTER XX. OUTDOOR EXERCISER. As exercise out of doors is very desirable during the whole year, except when the weather forbids, and as the tilt box is not very well adapted to out of doors, a style of apparatus different from that we have described is of great value for use in yards. While the form of exercise for indoors consists in scratching, the outdoor exercise is by running, jumping and flying. To begin with, two small yards of oO to 100 square ft. of ground are con- structed for each flock, 100, 150 or 200 ft. apart, accord- ing to the space at command, these being connected by low, narrow runways of wire netting stretched over frames of wood or iron, exactly as described for breeders and sitters on the extensive jDlan. These runways are only 2 1-2 or 3 ft. high and the same in width and are jireferably built in separate mov- able sections, say 12 ft. long. They are the same as those used for fowls kept yarded in connection with the extensive or itinerant plan. These sections or hurdles can be readily moved and the ground plowed to keep it sweet and clean, and being closed at top and sides by the wirework and open at both ends, they make a continuous passage or runway when placed in a line end to end. We have said that eacli runway terminates at either end in a small yard. Now, there is also an additional yard attached to each runway, midway between the two end yards. This center yard should be covered, 4 or 5 ft. wide, and considerably higher than the runways, say i ft. for Asiatics, 5 or 6 ft. for medium breeds and 7 or 172 OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 173 8 ft., lit least, for high llicrs like the Loghariis. Tlic length should be in 2n'oportiou to the hight, say 8 to 16 ft. FIG. 76. TEANSVEBSE SECTION OF TILT BOX. These little yards with runway attached will afFord fifty times the exercise in proportion to the building material employed and the space occupied, that the ordi- 174 AN EGG FAEM. nary yard will. The birds will take more exercise even than the farmer's flock, which runs at large. For the flock in a yard or on a free range will walk, while those in the runway will run, that's the difference. The surface of no. 77. INTEKIOK AI/rKHNATE SVSTKM. SF.K FlliS. 128 AND 130. an ordinary yard becomes, in a short time, as bare as the desert of Sahara. It affords not the slightest incen- tive to exertion. There is no more vegetation growing on it than on the lid of a copper teakettle, and it is OUTDOOR EXERCISEE. 175 seldom, indeed, that a stray grasshopper invades its sterile precincts. The nature of tlic fowls is to run, search, spy and hunt, yet they become discouraged and finally relapse into idleness and mope in a corner. But FIG. 78. KOW OF TILT BOXES, FROM END. the runways we are describing cure all that, as the reader will see further on. Figure 82 gives a partial view of a series of low, narrow runways, connecting with a row of end pens or small 176 AX EGG FAKII. yards. Figure 83 is a grouml plan that will further assist the reader to understand tlie arrangement of the runways and pens. Let 1, 1, 1, 1 represent one row of TILT BOXES PARTLY TLK>KD. end pens, which we will call the "nearby" pens, mean- ing those which are at the end the most convenient for access of the poultry keeper. These are for four flocks respectirely, 2, 2, 2, 2 being the distant end yards for the OUTDOOR EXBROISBB. 177 sanii! flocks, and 3, 3, 3, 3 ilic luirlway yards, Liiilt liigli as was described, being intended for jumping and flying. The runways enable tlie birds to run from 1 to 2, pass- ing througli 3 on the way. Across the center of yard, 3, there is a board fence set at riglit angles with the run- way. This fence is comiwsed of a vertical frame, which supports horizontal movable boards, each six inches wide, more or less, as may be convenient. At first, leave all the boards out till the birds are used to the run- waj's. Then slide in the bottom board, after a few days add another board, and build up in this vs'ay by easy stages. The dotted lines at 3 .show the location of the fences. Now, for the incentive to running back and forth the whole length of the runways and giving a good jump and fly at the halfway house. This incentive consists in locating a series of feed droppers over 1, 1, 1, 1, and another over 2, 2, 2, 2, at the resi^cctive centers as indi- cated by the dotted lines. These droppers or cylinders may he like those previously described, which are sus- pended over the tilt boxes of the indoor exerciser. Further on, we shall describe other feed droppers in the form of pouches or sieves instead of cylinders. There is a bell at the nearby line of cylinders and another at the distant row. The operator stands at A to move the cylinders of the nearby pens and rings the bell, while, without leaving the spot, he can also ring the distant bell when desired by means of a bell wire, stretched from A to B, and he can also move the cylinders over 2, 2, 2, 2, without leaving his post at A, by means of a simple contrivance illustrated in Fig. 82. In this cut, the feeder is supposed to be looking directly down upon the cylinders and pens, it being a ground plan of three runways. The artist has broken off these runways, however, and the operating wires also, and omitted the halfway pens, the entire length being too 12 178 AN EGG FARM. great to be shown in the diagram. The two cranks in the cut are supposed to be at the nearby pens, corre- FIG. 80. TILT BOXES TURNED. sponding to the point A in Fig. 83, so as to be within easy reach of the operator. A row of cylinders oyer distant pens are seen in the background of Fig. 96. As previously stated, the cyl- inder axle of tke nearby pens may be revolved by means OUTDOOR EXERCISER. 179 of the nearby crank. The cylinder axle belonging to the distant pens has, instead of a crank, a wooden spool, eight inches in diameter, attached to one end of the axle and a small flexible wire, No. 14, passes two or three times around this spool. To the short end of the wire is attached a weight, not shown in Fig. 82, while the long end extends the whole length of the runway, terminating at a point near the nearby pens, where it winds upon a small sfiool or axle, to which a crank and a ratchet and pawl are attached. In Fig. 84, the two spools and their connecting wire are shown viewed from the end instead of from above as in Fig. 82 — Ua is the distant spool, 145 the wire and 14c the nearby spool in both figures. In Fig. 84, IF is a weight which is bung in the pit, P, dug in the ground ; G, G, four feet deej^ and walled or boarded at the sides, and furnished with a movable top or lid with a hole in it, through which the wire passes. The distance between the two spools may be fifty feet or so for young chicks, or several hundred feet for grown fowls, therefore the wire is represented as broken off the same as in Fig. 82. And we may say that in all the cuts the intention is merely to show the principles of construction, whether the illustrations are made to scale or not. In Fig. 83, the spools are represented as somewhat elaborate, with rims, but these are not essential, and in Fig. 84 the spools are simple round sticks without rims, such as may be sawed from natural poles. The spool, which has a crank attached, instead of being of wood, may consist of an iron fence ratchet and pawl, Fig. 64, such as is used to tighten wires on fences. We have used it with great satisfaction, it being strong, durable and not liable to get out of order. These ratchets are in the market wherever barbed wire is sold, price five or six cents each. To operate the fence ratchet, get a 180 AN EGG I'AllJI. plumber to make a crank of a piece of half-iiicli iron pipe, six inches long, and for the handle another piece, four inches long, and two elbows, one of which he can attach to the shank of the ratchet by cuj;ting four slits one-half inch long in one end of the elbow and hammer- ing it to slip over the shank. Drill through both shank riG. 81. FOWLS AT EXERCISE. and elbow and pin together with a common wire nail, Fig. 120. In Fig. 63, this crank of half-inch iron jiipe is shown attached to the ratchet. Tlie latter, however, is obscure in the cut, being shown on a small scale. The whole is fastened to a post, aboiit breast high, in a position for OL'TUOOii exi;i;(.'i.sj;r. 181 use. The lower wire runs to tlie spool of the distiuit row of cylinders, the sume as are numbered 1-ia in Figs. !S3 and 8-4. In Figs. 60 and 96, the reader will per- eeive the same distant row of cylinders in the buck ground. Figure 83 is an end view of the same. In 7 / / FIG. 82. PLAN OF I'ENS WITH CVLIXDEKS. Fig. 03, the upper wire is for the bell and corresponds to 22 in Fig. 82. If you want to make the nearby sj)ool of wood, you can get your blacksmith to attach an iron handle and crank fitted with a set screw. Fig. 85, or, if you prefer 183 AN EGG FARM. B A- z3 FIG. 83. GROUND PLAN OF KUNWAYS. OUTIJOOR EXteECISEE. 183 a homemade -wooden crank, it may bo fastened directly to your homemade wooden spool. Fig. G2. The nearby axle, 16, in Fig. 82, must be provided with a crank, which yon can have made of pipe, the same as for the fence ratchet in Fig. 120, only you omit to split the elbow. Keep it intact, and it will just screw onto your axle of half-inch pipe. The partitions of the nearby pens and also of the dis- tant pens must be carried up nine inches higher than the tops of the pens, so as to serve as supports of the cylinder axles, and give the cylinders with their tin flanges room to turn. See Fig. 65. The modus ojierandi can be easily discovered from the above description. Ths birds race like Jehu through the rvinway, whenever the bell is rung and grain dropped from the cylinder at eitlier end. Moreover, when the keeper is not at hand and the cylinders have not been moved for some time, they make numerous trips back and forth on their own hook, because they have only one idea in their heads, which may be expressed thus : "Let's run and see what there is good at the other end." It will be found that it is very easy to teach fowls, old or yoving and of various species, to run at the sound of the bell. They are naturally great listeners and give close attention to every sort of sound within their hear- ing, which is very acute. A cock will respond to a crowing that is a mile or more away, if the wind is not unfavorable. Their own language they understand with- out learning. But they have an aptitude for learning aural signals other tban the natural language of their species. Witness the common hen with a brood of turkey chicks, peafowl chicks or ducklings. At first, her younglings do not know what she means when she calls them to partake of a choice morsel. It is not their mother tongue. But in a few days they learn its mean- 184 AS EGG PA EM. ^1 ing and rcqiond ■vvitli alac- rity. The best bell for our Ol chicken call is the trip gong bell. Fig. 126. It is well- made, works easily, respond- ing quickly to the pull of the bell wire and is not expen- sive. After a while, the movement of the feed drop- per will attract their atten- tion and yoii do not have to ring the bell. The birds, young or old, scamper through the runway and jump and fly over the cen- tral fence with a prompt- ness and unanimity that is like that of well-drilled sol- diers on the double quick. Fig. 81, and their move- ments never fail to elicit ex- clamations of delight from bystanders. The perform- ance is not intended as a whimsey or novelty for fun's sake, but for downright busi- ness, dollars and cents. Yet it is a show all the same, as attractive as the perform- ance of well- trained dogs or li o I s e s . Figure 145 represents a group of spectators at a poultry show, witnessing, for OUTDOOK EXERCISEE. 185 tlio first time, half -grown cliicks in a runway at full speed, intent on the feed just dropped from the cylin- ders in the baekground. These cliicks were, of course, taught on their native heath, before being trotted out for exhibition. CHAPTER XXI. SUCCESS WITH DUCKS. Tlie outdoor exerciser, in a mocTifietl form, is especially useful in commercial duck raising, an industry which has already assumed enormous propnrtions and which has come to stay ; for the Chinese, who, for thousands of years, have made dncks a favorite source of food sup- 1%, knew what they were ahont, althougli Europeans had, meanwliile, hastily concluded that tlicy would not pay as well as common fowls. There is no otlier valuable animal food produced that is so cheaply raised as jiartly grown Pekin ducks by wholesale, by modern methods, Avhich insure quick growth. On a small scale, without the benefits of care, skill and system, they are not profitable, since, when kept beyond a certain age, ducks of any breed will eat their heads off. The ducklings need no apparatus for exercise, being unlike chicks in this respect, for they will shuffle around, even if kept in a very small sj^acc, whether there is any incentive to move or not. They are naturally exceedingly active when very yoiang. ISTeither do the laying ducks require siieciid ])r(jvision for exer- cise during the laying season, provided they luive iinlim- ited range and comparatively scanty feed during the remainder of the year, so that they may he induced to move about actively to forage on insects and vegetation. In this off season, they must not be kept under the pressure of high feeding, which is advantageous to their owner when the laying season approaches and early eggs for hatching are desired. ISTow a good range, after the 186 SUCCESS AVITU ]>U('K8. 187 laying season is over, with suilalilo forage, frosli water, secnritj' from iiiaraiidrrs, ami all oilier requisites, is ooni- nionly very dillienlt to olitain when the hreeding birds niunhcr not hundreds l)ut tlionsaiids; licnee, the great advantages of the outdoor exerciser for the ducks reserved for hreeding. All that is requisite is a distant row of feed cylinders, as in Fig. 05, and in jihice of covered runways a row of FIG. S5. CRANK, WITH SET SrT.F.W. long yards wide enough to admit a team for plowing, so as to keep the soil free of taint, and at the nearby end of the yards swimming tanks under the feed cylinders, as in Fig. 86. In this figure, a ditch is cut and boarded at sides and bottom ; c showing the original surface of the ground, e an inclined plane of bo;irds with lath tacked on to afford foothold, and d, a platform with a slight slant for drainage. The feed cylinder is at A and the 188 AN EGG FAEJr. long yard begins at T. If tlic "lay of the ground" admits of a shallow ditch, the approach, e, may be omitted. The tank may be two, three or four feet wide, or more, according to the quantity of running water that can be supplied. As the idea is to have the tank several hun- dred feet long and divided by wirework into sections for the accommodation of numerous ilocks, a brisk current is demanded for cleanliness's sake, therefore the tank "">-v., Y "*<.. *"<. A ~nq I. hP7777/7777/^} 7/ I ^ KXERCISER FOR WATER FOWL. should not be too wide. The depth of the water is very important. The ditch and the tank which lines it should be constructed so that the depth may be just suf- ficient to cause the ducks to assume the position shown in the cut, and grope and grovel for the feed which has been dropped from the cylinders above upon the bottom of the tank, thus giving play to all the principal sets of muscles. As they hurry through the yards, they will at times use their wings as well as their legs, and, while SUCCESS WITn DUCKS. 189 reacliiiig for tlu'ir fdoil id. iho l)()tt(>ni of tlio tank, thoir necks and bills will bo actively employed. Nature will receive her just dues. This is not like '' hogging'" feed out of a trough. Of course, there must bo a bell near the distant feed cylin- ders and another at the tank. The cylinders need not be charged oftener than once a day, and by carrying a pail of soaked wheat, barley or cracked corn in one hand aud a tin scoop in the other, the filling can be very quickly done. The establishment is supposed to have an attendant, employed at something near at hand, so that he may move the cylinders and ring the bells every hour or oftener, but the perfection of labor saving is to have this done by clockwork, simihir to that which strikes the hours in a tower clock. Pekins, which are the duck for commercial raising, are indiiferent to swim- ming, preferring dry land in fact ; yet they can be induced to work in this way to their great benefit during the off season. In this way, the stamina of the strain of selected breeding birds can be maintained generation after generation and diseases kept at bay. CHAPTER XXII. PEEFECTIiSrG THE DETAILS. The axle for a i-ow of feed cylinders may be made from iron pipe, half inch diameter, if the row is not over 150 ft. in length, and as the pressure of the weight of the grain in the cylinders tends to hold the lengths of pipe together, there is no danger of unscrewing. But, as in case of the tilt boxes, there is sometimes pres- sure, tending to unscrew the lengths of pipe, a collar, consisting of a short piece of larger pipe, sliould be slipped over the end of each length of joipe at the joint, this collar to be bolted to the pipe. Let a, a, in Fig. 87, represent each the end of a length of pif)e, meeting at the joint, e. The collar, c, encloses the end. of each pipe, being held in place by the bolts, i, i, which pass through holes drilled through both the collar and the pipes. For brooder chicks' tilt boxes, three-fourths inch pipe will answer for the axle, and no collars will be nec- essary unless the row of tilt boxes exceeds 150 ft. in length. For axles to tilt boxes of grown fowls, the pipe should be two inches in diameter, and the collars may be omit- ted if the line of tilt boxes is less than 50 ft. in length. When operations are begun on a small scale, it will fre- quently happen that it is more convenient to use wooden axles for the tilt boxes, like Fig. 74, revolved by means of a long wooden lever, Fig. 88. To prevent a very disagreeable creaking, which frightens the birds, as well as annoys their owner, when such wooden axles are made to turn, fasten strips of tin under the axles at the 190 PERFECTIKG THE DETAILS. 191 points where tlicy hour on their supports, for wood against wood will creak in spito of oiling, while wood against metal will move silently, whether lubricated or not. A wooden axle should not be over 50 or 00 ft. long, for if too long it will "give" or twist too much. To aid readers who prefer something simpler than the feed cylinder previously described for dropping grain, illustrations of a feed pouch are given. Figure 89 shows wire cloth of different - sizes of mesh, Fig. 58, nailed to •' end pieces of wood forming a ' sort of pouch, the whole being a nailed to a square stick which J serves as an axle, this axle being, ? of course, rounded at the bear- - r ing places, which are not shown ; in the cut. The narrow board i in the foreground is at the side ' where the grain is put into the pouch, the attendant going the rounds with a pail of grain in one hand and a scoop in the other, this board answering the same purpose as the flange of tin, a, in the cylinder. Fig. 60, and the board, like the flange, is set flaring, to facilitate charg- ing with grain. Such a pouch can be used indoors over a tilt box, or out of doors over a pen in the out-of-doors exerciser, and the shaft may be 3x3 n) k^ 192 AN EGG FARM. in. or 4x4 in., or any size demanded by its length and by the number of pouches fastened to it. The pouch may be two or three feet long, and the width of the end pieces must, of course, suit the size of the shaft. A still simpler style, and easier to con- struct, shown in Fig. 110, goes well with tlie rough jiole. The jirojecting bottom piece gives a sufficient surface to nail through. A flange board similar to that . in Fig. 89 may be easily added, if desired. ^ If the distant out-of-doors feed pens, such « as are shown at B, in Fig. 83, are fitted J with such a pole and pouches, no spool ^ need be used, but a wire and weight can :^ be employed, the same exactly as in Fig. M 84, the big end of the pole serving for a aj spool. s* If rounded bearings are to be made for H a square shaft of a row of tilt boxes, or ^ for a square shaft of a row of feed pouches >^ or feed cylinders, then it will not be found § a good j)laii to cut away the square cor- E= ners of your wooden sliaft, because it gg weakens it. Build onto it, instead, by 6 simjily nailing on rounded bearing pieces ^ like that shown in Fig. 90. Figure 91 gives a transverse section of a sliaft or axle, c, with four such jneces attached, a, on which the axle turns. The rounded bearing pieces may turn in a notch either square or rounded, cut in a horizontal stick and overlaid with tin, as previously mentioned. A square wooden shaft for out-of-door feed boxes may be attached to the spool on 9EKFECTINa THE DETAILS. 103 which tho vrho winds, hy Riiii])ly iiiiih'iij^ on six lialf- moon pieces of incli board, d, Figs. 1)3, '.)3, 1)4 and 95, the square end of the shaft being simply toed with nails to the end of the roller before the half-moon pieces are nailed on. Figure 121 shows one of these half-moon pieces by itself. Figures 03 to 05 in- clusive represent the same shaft and its belongings in different positions. In addition to a spool, these four cuts show both a pouch and a cylinder, and the reader can judge which is easiest to make. By studying these cuts, the different posi- tions of both pouch and cylin- der may be also noted, and it will be understood how the grain drops, little by little, through the meshes of various sizes, the cracked corn consist- ing of particles which are also of various sizes, whole wheat and broken wheat, or wheat screenings, oats, buckwheat or millet may also be employed to furnish different sizes. In these four cuts, a shows a bearing for shaft to rest on and turn on ; Z> is a feed pouch ; c, shaft; d, one of the six half-moon pieces, attached in pairs, and e is a feed cylinder. Figure 97 illustrates a still simpler home- made wooden shaft and cylinder, the roller or spool, and attachments, being made entirely of inch boards. Each end of the feed cylinder coasisto of two pieces of boards, 13 PIG. 89. FEED POUCH. 1^ AN EGG FARM. with a notch in each to receive the shaft. Three tools only are needed for making this style, a knife, a saw and a hammer. To cheapen construction, this homemade cyhnder we are describing does not extend out into a flange as at a, Fig. 60. The flange is convenient for putting in grain, but not indispensable. It being our aim to show how wood may be substi- tuted for metal in the construction of nearly all the apparatus employed to induce poultry to take exercise, and how ordinary ingenuity may build a homemade equipment without the services of a trained mechanic. ROUNDED BEARING FOR SQUARE SHAFT. we illustrate by Fig. 99 a spool for the outdoor exerciser, with a strong wooden crank and handle, and posts and frame to support these. Figure 100 is a transverse sec- tion of the same, the letters in both cuts referring to the same parts. Figure 100 is drawn to a scale one- fourth inch to a foot. The same thing, onlv larger and stronger, may be attached to the axle of tilt'boxes. All the parts are pieces of plank or scantling, excepting the stick marked m (cut off from a pole), the pin, a, which serves as a handle, and the smaller pins which keep the spool in position. Inch boards and 2x4 and 2x6 dimen- sion stuff are the principal materials. The pins, /, i PBRFKCTINO THE DETAILS. 195 and as also tlio handle, a, should ho of hard wood. The pieces, i and e, have each a half-moon notch for the spool, m, to turn hi. The crank, b, is reinforced by the pieces, c, d and e, to strengthen it where it encloses the square shank of the spool, in; also the pieces, g and h, serve to give a firm setting to the handle, a. riG. 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 he called a sieve may be used for dropiiing feed. Figure 101 illus- trates one of tlieso 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 striji 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 sieves may be fastened to an iron pipe by bolts passing through holes drilled in the latter. 196 AK EGG FARM. PEKFECTING THE 1>ETA1LS. 197 Figure 104 shows the liil, Pij^. 105 gives an end view of the sieve, and I'ig. lOG a series of sieves in position, each over a separate pen, two stout wires being stretched under the sieves to liold them leveh Tlie lioppers of tin in the lid, Figs. 104 and lOfi, are to facilitate charg- ing with grain, the lid being necessary to keep ofE spar- rows and pigeons. Figure 108 gives a top view of a sieve when the lid is off. To drop the grain, strike with a lianimer on the end of a pipe tliat is shown in the foreground in Fig. lOG. 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 slielf nearby, should weigh one to three pounds, according as the shelf or the pijie connecting the sieves is 100 to 300 ft. long. For a row of distant 198 AN EGG FARM. PEKFECTING THE UETAILS. 199 sieves have a pivoted lianimcr. Fig. 18, Page 50, and a cord ■which readies from tlie liammer to C, jiassing over two sash pulleys. Fig. 10, 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 counected ivith your feed droj^per 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 up)rights, must be immovable. Now, will the reader please turn to Page 170, and imagine that the whole of the appara- tus of Fig. 7'5 is placed under the sash pulleys, close to the uprights in Fig. 18, Page 56, in such a fiosition that when the hammer is droi^ped it will strike, kerchug, on the iron plate, A. To the board, a, attach the iron pipe which supports such a row of sieves as is shown in Fig. 106. The timber, n, is immovable, but h, 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 200 AN EGG FARM. PERFECTING THE DETAILS. 201 excepting n, and every one of tlio long line of sieves supposed to be attached is slightly jarred, and then the spring makes a move, forcing the whole lino of sieves back again. Yon can drop grain one hundred times for each charging, and only a spoonful each time. Pipe, sieves, operating wire, pulleys, cord, spring, concussion plate, h, hammer, etc., 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 advan- tage, — it is not necessary to use grain of difEerent 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. Ill, e rep- resents such a bar fastened to the board, a. The con- cussion plate, h, receives the blow. The board, a, in Fig. 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, i, it 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 spring, commends this style of feed dropper, and besides, tin and wire mesh are needed for feed cylinders and sieves, birt not for feed shelves One stroke with the hammer is enough for that time To keep the shelf in place, fasten two casters to the board, /, these boards, with the end pieces, being attached to some part of the building or to the frame ao2 AN EGG FARM. PERFECTING TIIK DETAILS. 203 supporting Mir (ill- Imv, so ;is Id Iki .slutioiiary. As will be obvious, c, a, <\ li inid d arc nioviible, luit; /, g and i are immovable. Tu'o ordinary furniture ea.ster wheels, Fig'. 113, travel on the ujijJtT side of a, and another pair I'oU against the under surfaee of a, the shelf swinging and rolling back l.>y its own weight al'ter 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 shmting. When they are fas- tened together jrat 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 j)reviously 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, sjiarrows, stray fowls 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 ^04 AN EGG FARM. l^M box not long enough and deeper than is necessary. If not convenient to hang this shelf nj) 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, b, 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 M while H remains stationary. The stick, iV, and the other scantling near C, as also the one above iV, 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 cut, 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, E, in Fig. 119, this being one of a row of cords. The spiral spring, Fig. 107, is not visible in Fig. 119, but may PEKFECTINO TIFH DETAILS. S05 be scon ill Fig. 110. Wlicii llie suspoiision plan is adopted, side casters only just cnongh to steer the shelf are used ; for nearly all the weight should be suspended by the cords or wires. Figure 12'2 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, M. As will be readily understood, M and A move at a blow, compressing the sj)iral spring against the stick, N, which, with its attachments, is immovable. FIG. 98. ELOOK AND BOLTS TO FASTEN TILT BOX TO AXLES. CHAPTER XXIII. FOE 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 grain, 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 134 give side views of such a feed trough, and Fig. 135 shows a transverse section of the same, the letters in the several cuts referring to the same details. Eegarding ducks, see Chapter XXI and Fig. 80. A good way is to have a water tank, Fig. 86, at one end of a long runway, Y, 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. 133 and 134, will be seen a row of upright slats, through whicli the birds thrust their heads to feed. The fowls stand on the floor, a. The 30C FOB SOFT FEED. 207 feed is placed in tlie box or trougli, n v, the lid, n, being raised for that iiurpose. The pieces of scantling, r, s, u, are the frame of the feed trough. Tlie feed rests, of course, on the bottom board, v. When the doors, d, arc 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 FAEM. Fig. 124, the birds will naturally withdraw their heads, the doors being raised gently and gradually. The construction of the doors is as follows : Tho board, d, Figs. 123 and 124, is of equal width at both ends and the tapering board, c, is nailed to it firmly. FIG. 100. TEANSVEKSE SF.CTIOX OF FIGURE 99. This board, c, is protected at e by a bolt or pin, so that d and c both rise together when the cord, i, is pulled. At/, ff, there is a Slot cut in the board, d, to enable it to be raised or lowered without being stopped by the pin, e. A fiat, horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, /, g, is attached FOli SOFT FEED. 209 to the board, d, next to and partly surrounding ilio slot, to give d strengtli when tlio cord i is pulled. All the cords pass ovei side pulle3's fastened to posts, and all these cords are attached to a wire, h, so that when this wire is pulled all the doors, d, c, are raised, as in Fig. 12i. At the top of each post is another side pixlley 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 pull the wire, 7i. "We call h a "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, i, a small chain such as are on the market, latterly made on purpose for pul- ley work. In all three cuts, tv rep- resents a trip gong bell, Pig. 126, operated by the bell wire, w, which may be of annealed steel, No. 16, sold on spools. Fig. 127. This bell or some other style of bell, or an aural 14 FIG. 101. A FEEDING SIEVE. 210 AN EGG FARM. signal of some sort, is necessaiy, as heretofore explained to call the birds to their meals. 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. FOE SOFT FEED. 211 i, wliich runs the wliolo longlli of the feed trough, to hold the fcL'd and to keep the birds from wusting it. The door is guided by passing between b and c. The floor, a, is nailed to tlie crossinece, o, 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, a, and from flviug above the slats; but as these do not directly concern the feeding apparatus they were omitted from the cut. The wire should be kept constantly taut by a weight of one to three pounds attached to each end, whore the wire should pass over a pulley wheel about six inches in diameter. The weight furtlicst from the ojierator should meet a shelf and find rest at the 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 XXrV. THE ALTERNATE ASTD 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, as in 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 pijoes in the usual way. But, whether the openings are at the side or the end, the ingress and egress is cut ofE 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 tlie alternate method. Another method we call the parallel method, in wliich 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 explained 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 is a 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. 213 THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 213 line through the whole 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 tliey are on the side of tlie building opposite the passage. The side of the tilt box repre- sented at T rises at the begin- ning of tilting. By reference to the ground plan. Kg. 130, The small coops with slanting sides. Fig. 77, under the tilt box, T, 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 pd tn n 214 AK 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 sticks of 2x4 and 2x6 in all four cuts. Figs. 128 and 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 sjDace 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, a and d being 2x4 and c and o being 2x6. Figure 129 is a trans- verse section substantially at an imaginary line passing through a in the ground plan. Fig. 130, the liberty usual in such cases, however, permits c, b and g to appear in the cut, aJthongh these FIG. 104. LID OF FF.F.D SIEVE. THE ALTEliNATK AND PA I! ALL EL SYSTEMS. 315 tlireo [sticks arc sliyliUy J'urllier toward tlic reiir or back- ground tluiii tlie post, a. In Fig. 139, E represents an exit for flic fowls, closed by a small door opening up- ward, as shown by the dotted lines. IF is a window, like- wise hinged at the tojj 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- l)ortant purpose, a great labor saver, 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, e and/ are jiurlines that extend the whole length of the building, being shown in three of the cuts. In Fig. 129, the slight notching at the edge of c shows where the iron axle of T rests. The building is iindergi-ound 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 i)laced 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 00 degrees outside it is but 80 degrees inside. 31S AN EGG FARM. THE ALTEKNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 217 The tilt boxes are placed with itie luuler surfaces of their floors 2 1-2 ft. higher tliiin the floor of the passage, and are 2 1-4 ft. high, with bottoms 3 1-2 ft.xO ft., the 6 ft. distance being parallel to the passage. Tlie 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 S in. liigher than the floor of the tilt box, to allow for the depth of the litter in the latter. The posts which snpport the tilt FIG. 107. spinAL spKixG. boxcs. Stationary boxes and feed cylinders, see a and d in Figs, -it, 129 and 130, and a and c in Figs. 129 and 130, extend from the floor of the building to the roof. Passing now to a consideration of the indoor exerciser on the parallel plan, the reader is asked to turn to Fig. 132, re^^resenting 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. loo 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, ^"^- i"^- '^"^ ^'"™' "^ ''™^'^- are slanting when closed, as explained in the case of the building previously described. In ordinai-y 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 318 AK EGG FAEJSI. no swelling of the sash by dampness will cause ifc to stick. The sash must have w e i g ]] t s , 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 moYO the sash, in spite of the weight, at times w h e n the admission of cold air would be very undesirable. ^ To the bottom of each ■3 sash an ordinary sash cord '' is attached, each cord ^ passing through a screw I pulley, Pig. 134, fastened H to the underside of the ^ roof. The whole series of 5 cords is attached to a half- inch iron p>ipe, located a - 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 tlie row of windows and is set loosely in staples or in holes bored in wood so as to be free to turn. For each cord, a small hole is drilled through the pipe to receive a nail, to which the cord is attached in THE ALTEKNATR AND PAUALLKL SYSTEMS. 219 sucli a way that. it. will he wound up on ihc pipe wLcjri the Litter is turned, by means of a large hand wheel, Pig. 133, which is attached to one end of the pipe within reach of the operator. The windows may all be opened a fraction of an incli, 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 m in the ground plan. Fig. 135. 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, f^ and c^, reach to the roof. The short post, Jc, forms one of the siipijorts to the passage platform, ff. This platform is the principal line of travel used by the attendant, who can, however, also go the whole length of the building between c-" 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 saving forbids handling doors, except when unavoidable, and, be it repeated, commercial poultry keeping can be prof- itable only when the utmost care and ingenuity are employed in every operation, from a to izzard, to save 220 AN EGG FARM. labor. Tlie fowls have the use of the floor, /, from the tilt box, t, 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, whicli 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, sp)ace 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, lience p is described as a pit. The crosspiece, n, sup- ports the floor, r. The tilt box aperture to admit the fowls is on the side next to TUK ALTliUNATE AXU I'AKALLEL SVS'l'KMa. 321 222 AN EGG FARM. k and the wire netting, i, is to conlino a fowl during tilting, shoiild one chance to remain in the tilt box, a thing very unlikely to occur, however, unless the bird is a new acquisition, an untrained recruit. The longitudinal section of the same building. Fig. 118, is substantially on a line through c^ iu the trans- verse section. Fig. 117, and through the same upright post, c% in the ground plan, Fig. 135. In Fig. lis, the room between c^ and c- is given to (jne flock, that is, the space is devoted to one apartment or stationary box, two call cylinders, e, e, being eiTi])loyed so as to drop grain over sjiace enough to give all the birds a fair chance. There is only a single perch for each flock and this is not sliowu, as it is not in line, but it is i)lacod over tlie roost floor, r, and extends tlie ^^■llol(; length of the room from c^ to /■-. A scaiitlino- v, FIG. 112. CASTEK i • / i , ■svHEEi. rxDEK rcaching from vj to /r, snjjpoi'ts the floor SHELF. Qj; ^YiQ, nesting apartmeni, x, the top of this apartment being indicated by u, just over which runs the cylinder axle. The movable nest Ijoxes are made so that they can be easily reached Ijy the attendant from the passage, g, in Fig. 117. The ground plan. Fig. 13.5, calls for but slight descrip- tion after it has been couijjared with the vertical sec- tions. The space seiDarated 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 wliole building, minus a little at one end, where the stairs are which lead to the attendant's passage, these stairs being indicated by s, f:, 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, iu case the latter is employed, a short wing THK ALTKKNATE AUD I'AKALLEL SYSTEMS. i>2:i ov oil imisfc be added to tlie main T)iiil(l- iug, to give the lever room to deseribc an arc. The rooms, or stationary boxes as we have named their equivalent in otliev ents, for the separate flocks may be seen on this gronnd jilan if the reader will imagine a line drawn from each block, vi, through h, f°, ('\ and thence to the wall. By referring to the transverse section. Fig. 117, it will be obvions 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 jiiece 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 floor. 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, I, 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 ufiper surface of the floor, /. The con- tinuous box, several hundred feet long, is divided into apartments by board parti- 224 AN EGG FAEir. tions, these apartments being in length the same as from the center of one block, vi, to the center of the next block, m. It is important to have the axle *'-' in; ooxes for layers large and strong, if it is a long one. The strain FIG. 114. A .SUKSTITUTE FOK TILT BOX. SKE 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 tlian 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 STSTE5IS. reinforced by (lie coUiU' at ciich joint, Fig. 35, is suitable for the first fifty feet at tlio end nearest tlie attendant. Tlie lever, if one is used, should be six to twelve feet long, ac- eording 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 l)e 3 1-3x8 ft. and 3 1-4 ft. deep. If fifteen or twenty apartments, they should be 3x10 ft. or 3x13 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, 143 and 144. Also the tilt boxes for brooder chicks should be rounded a little on the front side. In Fig. 142, 8 represents the stationary box, Y the yard out of doors, T the tilt box, and JT a. curved flap to shut off ingress and egress at the opening between T and S. Compare this cut Avith Fig. 73 and observe the dotted line, which shows the half tilt and the full tilt. The feed cylin- 15 226 AN EGTx FAi:lI. der, or a feed slielf if preferred, is at 10 and the feed drops toward T through the curved partition of wire, one-inch mesli. In both cuts, this wire mesli is indr cated in various places by small crosses. As is obvious. the chicks cannot' enter the space over the tilt box be- tween /Sand Y. The reader should study carefully the ground plan, Fig. 140. P is a passage or alley for the attendant, dug in the ground two feet, so as to bring the floor, 8, to a hight convenient for the attendant. TUB ALTEKNATE AND TAUALLEL SYSTEMS. 227 I'u which case, if already built, that is tuTaiigcd essentially like Fig. 130, tilt boxes can be introduced. Whenever tilt boxes are put into a building of this sort or of tlie kind shown in Fig. 102, it will be necessary to dig a i)it iu which the 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 iDlau and have no continuous axle with its lever or crank, and dispense also with feed cylinders or feed shelves. Kotate each tilt box 230 AK EGG I'AKII. sejiarately, by Land, just as you would rock a cradle, each having 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 shape seen in Fig. board. A good for such a box is 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 Ijox, one pinch to call them out of the tilt box to Ijcgin with. No signal will be needed to call Ihem. Their quick eyes 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 Tjrooder and the frame which supports the tilt Ijox 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 attachecl, 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 Ijrooder sliould be two inches higher FIG. 120. CRANK MADE OF PIPLNG. I'lla'K FUU ATTACHING SHAl'T TO SPOUlj. THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS. 231 than i\iQ 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 Tise lamps and either hot water or liot air for your brooders, when you have but a small number. Xow, if you have eight, ten or more brooders oceu- ]iied 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 nse feed cylinders, as in 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 stufE 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 keeping 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 compielled to work hard for nearly all they get. Meat, vegetables, and the various prej^ared articles of food take too much time, besides costing ordi- narily more than grain. Feeding milk is an uncleanly l^ractice, daubing and soiling beaks and feathers more or less. A little green stuff is useful, not, as some persons 233 AN EGG FAEM. 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 reliance. Xo matter how nutritious 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, 14^ THE ALTERNATE AND PARALLEL SYSTEMS, 333 •■^.., 5«. ■^ s o s 234: AN EGG EAKM. 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, aiii)lies to layer tilt boxes with the exception that, when yon hare but two, three or foiir 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 tri]), but a short wooden lever will be needed, whicli 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 oj^erated by a hammer held in the hand will be cheajjcr than feed cylinders. A swinging feed shelf can be very readily suspended Avhen it is indoors, the susjiension cords or wires being attached to some part of the building. The chaflE or litter for layer tilt boxes slioulcl be fine, and for chick tilt boxes very fine. Coarse, stenimy 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 steins and leaves remaining after the alfalfa seed has been threshed out. There is nothing else so good for the purjwse. CHAPTER XXV. HEALTHY, VIGOROUS BIRDS. The introduction of moclianical 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- 235 236 AN EGG FARM. respoudence columns of tlie 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 bowel, 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. AVhen tlic mus- cular system is toned up by the exercise on a free range while constautly liunting, literally, for "grnb," one set of muscles concerned in evacuation 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 diarrhoea is FIG. 125. FEED TEOUOH APPARATUS. not diarrhasa at all. The chicks are weak for lack of exercise, the whole system is enfeebled, biit the bowels HEALTHY, VIGOKOUS BIRDS. 237 PIG. 126. TRIP GONO BELL. arc not suffering a whit more than all the other organs. The troublesome synijitom of clogging near the vent is almost invarialily caused by lack of exorcise, but any- tliing else that debilitates will cause it, and it is not necessarily an ac- companiment of diarrlia3a, dysen- tery, or any other speciiiUy 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 in'oduets or various secretions of the animal economy. The feathers begin to be clogged, in the first jilace, by the thin matter that is voided last, the mnscles concerned becoming tired toward the close of the orgasm. A powerful muscular action is necessary, to throw aside the mimerons 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 in it. The poultry keeper is apt to try a change of feed, thinking that the 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 Tia. 127. "HTKE FOR GONGS. 238 AN EGG FAKM. 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 is aware, that the true nature of most of FIG.IL'S. IXTEKIOll .\1,TKRNATK SVSTKjr. !< El! FJCJS. 77 AM> 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 HEALTHY, VIGOKOUS BIRDS. 239 described begins to adbero to tbe fcatlici-s. Wlicn tboro is deterioration of healtli and strengtb on aceonnt 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, tbe 240 AIT EGG FAEM. tiD^— «n:3 -^Dr OCD h arty mentioned above wlio says lie cleared that sum two years ago, evidently has not since. Anotlier, after four years* constant effort, says he ha.s not received fifty cents a day for liis labor,i Atblxd,WbC BUSINESS POULTRY FARMING. 25? runs but a few montlis annually, says lio cannot make $1.50 per clay tor tlie time lio is In It.. "Evidenlly such a wide difference belwcoMtlie ideal anil the real calls for an e.xplanation and that can be yiven in two words, dead chicks. Incnbators halch from 50 to CO per cent o( tlie egfrs. The trou- ble is not In tlie hatcliiiig, unless lliat means weakened vitality, lint in keeping the chicks alive afterward. The dcalli rate is awful, ranging fronUiO to 80 jier cent. When one-halt a liatcli reach to the broiler state, rarely done, the business is nioderateiv profitable. If GO per cent die, a prudent man can about pay his feed 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 Aist pain- ful duties that awaits the novice is the burial of chicks ; tliey are often buried by the bucketful 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 witb. hot-water pipes and with single lamps, but the clucks die about ti';e 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 imiterfect brijoding, 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 cannot 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 17 358 AN EGG FARM. the ration might both ho right at Hammontou and jet the "infant mortality" ))e ajjpalling. Tlie riddle is solved. Canaries and 3'oung 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. Eaisers of brooder FIG. 143. LIGHT TILT BOX. 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. 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 mothei's 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 a£ exercise in a city schoolyard of very limited dimen- BUSINESS POULTllY FARMING. 259 sions, by means of gymmistic apparatus ; a caged squirrel allowed a wheel will thrive ; and brooder chicl-cs or layers provided with a gymnasium will take even more exercise than if on a free range. Yon 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. Yon need not mind the cold much, granted that your layers are through molting, if yon keep their blood stir- ring, and, as regards the kind of feed, yon 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 much 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 yon cannot always tell by what you put in exactly what you will take out. Thei-e 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 133 an interesting experiment with a milch cow : " A cow fed during iiinety-five days on a ration from which the fats had been nearly aU extracted, continued to secrete milk similar to that produced when fed on tlie same Itinds of hay and grain in their normal condition. " Hie yield of milk fat during the ninety-five days was 62.9 lbs. The 260 AN" EGG FARM. food fat eatfn fluriiif,' lliis time wa.s ll.C lbs., 5.7 lbs, only of whioli wa^ digested, f^^oiiseqnenUy at least 57.2 Ihs. of the rnilk fat must have had some souree otiier tlian fat in the food oonsiirned. " The rnilk fat could iiot have oonie from previously stored body fat. This assertion is supported by three oonsiderations: fa) Tlie cows body could have contained scarcely more than 60 lbs. of fat at the bet^inning of the experiaient; (b) slie gained 47 lbs. iu body weigttt during this period of time with no increase of body nirro^en, and was judged to l»e a niuch fatter cow at tJie end ; fc^ tlie formation of tljis quaTitity of milk tut from tlie body fat would have caused a marked condition of emaciation, wliicli, because of an increase in tiie t^ofly weight, would have required the irnprobahle increase in the body of lf;4 lbs. of water and iritestinal contents." Commenting on the above the editor of the Americav Agric7.dturut well says : "To put in plain United Slate.s language that the average dairj-man can understand, we slate thus the case learnc^Dy set forth by l>r. Jor- dan: Tliis c^w in three months gave Iri hermi]k57 lbs. more fat than siie consumed. Evidently tlie cow converted into fat part of the sugar, starch, fiber, protein, etc., that she consumed, Tliat dws can really do this was not before known. This may explain why it is that rations deficient In fat or oil rnay produce milk rich in fat, Tlie experiment also shows what wonderful aiid little understood pro- cesses go on ill the animal system. Ouly a few weeks ago they removed a womari's stomach and she is tiow well and tliriving, thus completely upsetting niuch of the ' pliysiology ' we have been taught for ypars. Assuredly, how little is really known about the animal economy ! Facts like these emphasize the marvel of life force." Yet there are very many persons who rea.son that the constituents of wheat resemhle 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 in cream, and that an omnivorous animal can digest and assimilate what it requires from a variety of foods, among which com stands pre-eminent for cheapness in this country. CHAPTER XXVIl. ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION'. The practice of tliis art reaches back to the dawn of histor}'. 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), thai I spake of before, sellen men, comonnly men and women of otlier lawe, as we done here bestes in the market. And there is a common liows in that cytee tliat is all f uUe of smale fiirne>"s ; and thidre brynjj:en wonimen of the tonn here eyren (eggs) of hennes, of gees, and of dokes, for to ben put in to the turneyses. And thei that kejien that hows covern hem with liele of hors dong, and outen lienne, goos t)r doke or .any other foul ; and at the ende of three weeks or a monelhe, thei comeii agen and taken here chickens and norissche hem and bryngen lieiu for the, so that all e thecountre is fulle of hem. And so men don there bothe wytitre 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 flre. He used a room through which jiassed 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 iH2 AN EGG i-ARM. been sat upon by a lien. 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 jiroi^er degree of heat." TILT BOX— PAKALLEL SYSTEM. This ex23eriment we shall refer to later as the type of what will eventually prove the most successful mode of artificial hatching on a large scale. The patent incuba- tors such as are now on sale, or modifications thereof, from the size of a cook stove to a billiard table, with reg- ulators attached, will always be of use for amateurs, families or ordinary raisers on a small scale, but the expense of the machines and the care involved in run- ning them are so great where thousands of chicks are ARTIFICIAL IKCUBATION. 263 wanted, that tlio aJyptiou of an imnionse egg chamber holding many thousands of oggs and designed to be entered by tlie attendants, one of whom is always on duty night and day, a sitting room or waiting room being conveniently near, and personal supervision taking tlie place of or rather supplementing automatic regulat- ors, will ultimately pre\ail, Iwcanse proving the most feasible and economical. From the year 1800 on, until aljout the middle of the century, there was a lull in experimentation till the late '60's and early '70's, when in consequence of the rage in this country for the introduced Asiatic and Mediterra- nean breeds of fowls and the general interest in poultry incited by the acquisition of these valuable races, there were some half a dozen batching machines invented and put upon the market. Very crude affairs, though, they were, which long ago went down the stream of time, having however first served the useful purpose of offer- ing hints for later inventors. The rage for incubators culminated in the early '90's. The multitude of incuba- tor patents on file, the size of the manufactories where the principal machines are turned out, the extent of the advertising thereof, the elegance and costliness of the catalogs and the enormous sales effected, as well as the time and ingenuity involved in experiments connected with the improvement of the numerous styles of hatch- ers, to say nothing of the time and care bestowed upon them by the hopeful purchasers, can be realized only by those who have made a broad survey of the matter. The last ten years have been especially prolific in styles of incubators. Curiously enough, the skill spent in contriving the artificial brooders offered for sale has not kept pace with that given to incubators, although the fact that it is much easier to hatch chicks than to rear them has been evident all along. The notion which customers have 2Gi a:^ eug farm. often had that homemade brooders would answer all puriDoses operated to limit demand for the bought article and probably somewhat diverted the attention of inventors and manufacturers from perfecting brooders. Be that as it niay, the art of artificial hatching has FIG. 1-15. WATCHING CHICKS AT EXEXiCISE. developed much beyond artificial rearing, and the weak- est point to-day in the artificial system appears in con- nection with brooders, as will be seen in later pages. Neither in hatching nor rearing must conditions be exactly thus and so to a hair's breadth. Considerable ARTIFICIAL IXCriiATloN. 2G5 latitude is allowable, both in the natural and the artifi- cial processes. In fact, when Avild liirds of any sj)ecies incubate and rear, tliere are fluctuations of woatlicr and atmosplieric eonuitions tliat would cause failure if it were necessary to maintain every requisite to an absolute nicet)'. On account of this latitude artificial hatching is not extremely difficult, although no human art has ever made or ever will make as perfectly regulated and ojierated a hatcher as is tlie live natural one. Experts in the artificial process, especially if they are incubator manufacturers or dealers, sometimes insist that the artificial method beats the hen, and are fond of citing the cases of unfaitliful birds deserting or break- ing their eggs, etc. Granted that, although the habits of all wild sjjecies are uniformly exemplary in this regard, long domestication has impaired the incubating traits of some domestic breeds and utterly destroyed those of others, crossing with which from time to time has introduced uncertainties of results more or less into some fiocks ; yet the jjoint is this, given the very best incubator, run by the very best operator, in the very best cellar, with the very best eggs ; and compared with the very best hen, set on the very best eggs, in the very best nest, located in the most suitable jilace, and the hen is decidedly the most perfect. Xo man can ever con- struct a fabric that will ecpuil a feather, or a mechanism which will control heat, moisture and ventilation as wonderfully as the mother heu's body with its feathered covering. CHAPTER XXVin. REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. To understand the points needed in an incubator, the changes which take place in the egg from the first to the twenty-first day of the hatching term should be studied. It is, however, not necessary to know all the details, which are of such wonderful comi:)lexity that to master them would need a lifetime. A farmer may fatten steers or raise wheat about as well (not quite) by atten- tion to a few prominent principles, as if he was veriied in all the intricacies of animal and vegetable physiology, and a few general considerations of heat, moisture and ventilation will enable an operator to run an incubator almost as successfully (not quite) as if he had taken so thorough a course in comparative and ornithological embryology that he could describe all the successive marvelous changes in the egg from the first to the last stage of incubation. The close study of these stages "is to be recommended, however, because of the intellectual gratification in tracing out such matchless processes of nature, Avhile, if no direct practical benefit iniares to the poultr3'man from such study, indirect benefit he will be sure to receive on account of the increased admiration he will have for the wonderful masterinece of nature, the egg, and the wonderful process of its incubation. John Randolph said on the floor of congress that he would walk a mile to kick a sheep. There are too many poultry raisers who would walk two miles to kick a sit- ting hen, not a^jpreciating the wondrous nature of her labors nor admiring her beautiful maternal Instincts cel- 200 BEQUrSITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 207 obrateil in tlio Buok, Avlicro wo reiul : "As ;i lioii gM.LIicr- utli her cliicki'iis iiikUu' hvv wings." 'V\\v, (rmililo lias been, lo tliese many _yrars, tliat very lil.llc ingenuity has been spent on contrivances for managing sitting hens, to minimize the trouble tliey cause tlieir Ivocjiers, wliile inventive talent has compassed sea and land, cavtli and air in perfecting, so far as possible, substitutes for them. In constructing an incubator the sitting lien is always, and properly, appealed to as a standard, and from her we learn that, in addition to the purely mechanical requi- site of a changing position of tlie eggs, the three chief essentials of perfect hatching are heat, moisture, and a supply of pure air. The eggs must bo right, however, in the first place, or the best incubator or mother hcTi in the world cannot turn out strong, healthy chicks. In the case of those hens which lay a great number of eggs, as was pointed out by the writer in the American Agri- culturist in 1870, those eggs laid near the close of the laying term contain germs deficient in vitality. Mr. J. L. Campbell, who is always Avorth listening to, says : " In a large flock of hens some of tliem are always right in the mid- dle of a litter, and their eggs being in with the others will acconnt for the fact that some good, strong chicks can be hatched right along all the time, and it is very well that this is so, but I shall never kick again whetr my hens want to take a rest when I want To hatch the eggs. In fact, I shall encourage them to do so whenever the eggs begin to hatch poorly. WHiy. it looks very reasonable that when a hen has laid a long time right along, day after day, something nmst be getting scarce, because the siijiply has a limit. This is proved tiy thfc fact that the hen finally has to stop. If ever I can get a flock of liens to average 2.50 eggs in a year I shall be hajipy, but I have a good bit to go yet to get there." The matter of well vitalized eggs at the start, when using the incubator, and the importance of well-liatched chicks at the outset when employing the brooder, all operators are agreed upon. But there are many other things concerning which there are interminable dis- putes, notwithstanding a cjuarter of a century of experi- ments. One book published hy an expert who has 268 AN EGG FARil. devoted twenty years to artificial incubation says : " Take the eggs out from tlie egg chamlser to turn tliem, to afford a change of air;" wliile another expert who has studied the matter an efjual length of time insists that turning should take place inside the machine and all exposure to cool air religiously avoided. One master of the art says the temperature of the egg chamher should be 102° and another prescribes 103°. One recommends providing moisture by keeping shallow pians of water near the eggs during the whole term previous to the 18th day, while a third never supplies any moisture whatever, and a fourth would supply it or omit it accord- ing to the results of tests made between the twelfth and nineteenth days. In regard to the method of turning eggs, there is a school of operators who insist that eggs must be gently rolled and that inverting the trays in which they are kept is unnatural and injurious, while another school advocates turning the trays as the quickest and easiest way, claiming that so long as the eggs are turned over it makes no difference how the revolution is accomplished. On the cpiestion of ventilation, one inventor exults in his method of a small, constant stream of air admitted near the bottom of his incubator and escaping at the top, and another, while providing apertures at the toji, closes them with valves which open automatically, gov- erned by a regulator, to allow heated air to escape when tlie temperature rises beyond a certain degree ; and still another denounces all top apertures, claiming that in car- rying off hot air they also carry off moisture and dry the eggs too much, and he would ventilate only very slowly and through holes in the egg chamber floor. A legion of incubator makers claim that the regulators to their respective machines govern the heat perfectly, leaving nothing to be desired, while one solitary individual in the United States, who makes and sells an incubator REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 269 and wlio lias written tlio best book on incubation extant, stands up boldly and says tlioro is but ono stylo of regu- lator tliat will do perfect work and that is not on his own macliino or any other, because it is too expensive, since it costs more than all the rest of a machine. In regard to changes in the contents of the egg dur- ing incubation, one expert says none of the yolk is used to nourish the embryo till at or near the time when the former is drawn bodily into the latter during the latest stages of hatching, and another expert claims that while the white principally forms the chick, yet portions of the yolk enter from day to day into the white to replen- ish its diminishing snlistance and are afterwards used for the growth of the embryo. As concerns the care of the incubator in general, many dealers represent that it is so easily managed that "a child can run it" successfully ; while others insist that no hatching machine will succeed without consider- able care and skill. When we pass from the topic of hatching to rearing, some insist that not over 20 or 30 chicks should be put in one brooder ; while on the other hand dealers are plenty who, to induce an expenditure of |10 to $20 or upwards for one of their death traps, rejjresent that it will accommodate 50 to 75 or 100 chicks, and in some cases the figures are 200 or more to a brood. One, after wrestling for several years with bringing up chickens by hand, insists that top heat only in brooding is the thing. Another, after an equally extended experience and bury- ing by the bushel chicks trampled to death, shuns top heat with the greatest persistence. Still another, after an experience of half an ordinary lifetime, uses top and bottom heat combined, while a fourth, grown gray in experiment in various localities from the Atlantic to the Pacific, says: "Side heat is as the lien, give me that and that alone." ;.^70 AST EGO FAKil. If artificial liatchiiig and re;iring is so superior to tlio natural mode, as is persistently claimed by many advo- cates of the machines, including some who are not inter- ested in their manufacture or sale, why should there be such contradictions ? The fact that there are so many mutually destructive criticisms of methods proves that all is not plain sailing. The real truth is that the nat- ural machine is as much suj^erior to the mechanical incubator and the brooder as the construction of the human body transcends that of a watch or a dynamo. All that should be claimed in imitating the hen by a machine is that we may approach l3ut never reach the perfect regulation of her animal heat and the ventila- tion afforded by those wonderful apjoendages, her feath- ers, with their matchless cpiality as non-conductors of heat, their almost impalpable weight and their innumer- able valves or shutters. Besides furnishing an egg chamber with top and sides composed, as we may say, entirely of delicate shutters, nature has an engineer on duty day and night to attend these shutters in an emer- gency, and give them a greater motion than common. The art of man could never succeed to all eternity in making one like all the millions of shutters, as we have called them, or ventilation doors, each held . by springs vastly more delicate than the hair spring of a watch and a millionth of a grain in w^eight. Do not use a cheaj) incubator. A good one cannot possibly be constructed cheajDly. Von Culin says : " The great demand for incubalors and brooders hag tempted sash manufacturers, makers of show cases and others, to get out various boxes, cases, tanks and barrels, with various attachments, and caU them incubators or hatchers. Some buy a lot of almost expired patents, and boom the new maoliine on the reputation of tlie old one, to which the patents originally applied, while the new machine pos- sesses none of the good points of the old one, which to build would cost considerably more than the new one is sold for. Many of this class never had any merit, and went out of the market, but new ones bob up along the line, have their day of deceit and disappear. Watch for them." REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUHATOK. 271 If tliere is ;uiy insiunco wliere suviiig' iib Hie spigot and wasting at tlie bunghole will apply it is in bestowing valuable time, eggs and oil (and losing the season) on an ineubator tbat gives you only worthless chicks or none at all, the latter much preferable. Tlicre are two principal modes of heating. One is to warm air by a lamj), and the other is to warm a tank of water over the top of the air chamber, by a lamp, and warm the air by this tank. There is no moisture imparted to the air, of course, by the latter mode any more than by the former, since the tank must be per- fectlj' water-tight, but the advocates of this method urge that the body of water is a protection against fluc- tuations of temperature. On the other hand the hot- air school say that by their system you can cool or warm quickly when you want to, which they claim is an advantage. It is certain that there are good incubators of both sorts, though fierce battles of words have been waged between the respective rival manufacturers of each. One objection to a tank is that if of cheap mate- rials it rusts out in a few years and sooner or later encourages profanity by exasperating leaks, wbile if well made of durable materials the cost is an obstacle. The time has passed awaj' when any one or two or four or six makers can claim to offer the only good machines, any more than the production of excellent pianos, plows, cornshellers or mowers is confined to a small number of manufacturers. Mr. Campbell says in the Poultry Keeper : *' My experiments have never been confined to tlie use of my own incubators. I have tried aU tiie machines wliich were popular in their day but are never heard of now, and I liave tried all the most popular ones of the present, and to sum up the whole matter all that I have learned by so doing is to find out that there is more in the operator than in the incubator, and very much more jn the eggs than either." It may be asked how the would-be purchaser is to decide if the interested whoopings-np of the dealer are 272 AN EGG FARM. to be disregarded. The reply is, visit some party, not an agent, who has run a machine successfully, and if more than one season so much the better. Be snre to And out the exact per cent hatci?ed, and whether the younglings stand np and face the music or are simply "born to die." Learn the princifiles on which it oper- ates as regards the three essentials, heat, air, moisture. If possible interview more than one operator using the same machine. If you cannot do this, examine the cat- alogues and cuts of the leading manufacturers and notice which gives a clear description of the modus oper- andi of their incubators. Pay no attention to their boasts but steer by what commends itself to your judg- ment in the machines themselves. On the matter of agents' representations the following is from that careful experimenter and able writer, Mr. W. H. Eudd : *'If beginners liave a preference for any particular incubator we advise them if possible to see one of them in operation, or to corre- spond -with some one who uses it, but if the person thus addressed is an agent for it or has a commission in view, we should in our own case, as the world now wiggles, take mighty little stoclc i]i his recommenda- tion, or in any of his statements concerning it." A few words may not be amiss in this connection regarding a test of the merits of an incubator by a pub- lic exhibition of hatching. The dealer or his represen- tative appears in the neighborhood about twenty days before the show opens and starts one or two machines, at nearby convenient headquarters, loaded with the very best eggs procurable, tests them rejDcatedly up to the time the gaping crowd gather to see chicks come out, culls and selects from his machines on the side and car- ries the pipped eggs (each one of which has the kick of a mule in it, all the fair to medium ones though hatcha- ble being rejected) to tlie show room, where a highly ornamented and gilded incubator stands, fired up ready to receive them, and make a hatch of 101 per cent, one egg being double yolked. The machine run by the sly- REQUISITES OP A GOOD INCUBATOR. 273 est exhibitor of course stands highest in tlie estimation of tlie uninitiated. Tlio catalogues of tlie manufactur- ers, each claiming their wares as the best, are suggestive of the emigrant who wrote to a friend on the auld sod : "America is a glorious country. There every man is as good as every other man and a sight better." A common error for an amateur or small scale operator is getting an incubator of too large a size. On this point that most trustworthy expert, Mr. C. Von Culin says : "Many beginners are undecided as to what sized incubator to get. If we wan ted a capacity of 300 eggs, we would get three incubators of 100 eggs capacity eacli ; if COO capacity, tliree of aio eggs eacli ; if 750, three of 250 each ; if 1200 capacity, three of 400 eacli ; if ISoO capacity, threi! of CiXJ eggs each. This is much better than getting one large incubator , or all the eggs. It costs more for the several smaller machines than for one large one for all the eggs, but the advantages are: You can have fresher eggs for each incubator, you can sort the eggs if you ha\'e large quantities, and select those with shells of same kind and tliick- iiess for each incubator; you can j>lace duck, turkey or goose eggs in separate machines, or use a different machine for each variety of hens' eggs. Yoxi can keep a record of each kind and quality ; you will learn more about the amount of moisture for each class of eggs, and will soon become able to hatch all kinds of eggs equally well. If you make a mistake you will discover it more easily and can rectify it more readily ; the result of a mistake or an accident will not be as expensive, and yon will have a better chance to retrieve any loss which you may sustain through accident, carelessness or neglect of rules in liatchlng, for it would h.-irdly be likely to affect but one machine, and as that one would contain only one-third of your full quota of eggs, you would have the other two-thirds left, even if all in one machine were ruined, and you would not be apt to repeat the performance (or non-performance) with either of the other two incubators." With the above we agree as regards bought incuba- tors, but, as we shall explain farther on, the incubator of the future for the large scale man will not be shipped to the customer at all ; but will he so large that it will have to be constructed on his premises, and the same remark applies to the brooder of the future for the large poultry plant Finally, having purchased your incubator, study the printed directions of the manufacturer very carefully. Do not be in a hurry. Take time to learn. Says Mr. J. 18 274 AN EGG FARM. A. Hunt, whose success in artificial Latching we have never Iviiown excelled : '* When you receive your machine and get it set up aiid in running order, take a whole day if necessary to study it in its various parts. The regulating ajjparatus should receive particular attention ; do not be satisfied in knowing that it does the work, but find out how it works, familiarize yourself with every i>art, as it may be very useful knowledge to you in future operations, for should your regulator through any accident or without accident fail to work, you will be bet- ter able to discover the difficulty and remedy it without delay." As regards the style of lamp, use none that is not as secure against accident as the best that can be bought for money, because buildings, incubators, eggs, chicks and all have in a number of instances burned, through defec- tive lamps. See if insurance experts, who make a study of such things, approve tlie style of lamji. Use the best oil, 160° test, for to tolerate anything poorer in an affair of this kind is bad economy, and keep the lamps nicely trimmed. The regulators furnished incubators are of various patterns and materials. A bar thermostat composed of metal and hard rubber makes on the Avhole the best reg- ulator, but it never can be as reliable as the heat of the hen. Cyphers says : " In running an incubator, the leading feature, and the hardest to secure, is an even temperature. This would not be the case had we a good regulator, but we have not. Not only have many hundreds of dol- lars been spent In experimenting, trying to get a good heat regulator tor an incubator, but many thousands of dollars have gone in like manner to secure a heat regulator for other ijurposes that would be controlled by dry heat, and which would keep the temperature con- stant to a degree under all reasonable conditions. It Is absolutely impossible to make such a regulator that will be delicate enough to hold the heat to a degree, powerful enough to do the necessary work, and simple and inexpensive at the same time. This has been and stih is the aim of experimenters, but it must only meet with failure in tlie future, as it has in the past. Whatever means is employed to regulate the temper.ature of the hatching chamber, it is absolutely essential that it should be kept within narrow limits. The heat and atmos- pheric conditions must balance one another, and, if they do not, incu- bation cannot be carried to a successful exclusion. My meaning is simply this: Evaporation from the egg must be held at such a point REQUISITES OF A GOOD INCUBATOR. 275 (hat the fluids in tlie embryonic structures are ample to l 296 AN EGG FAKM. 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 ta,ke 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 oi 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 esca]ie of the poisonous carbon dioxide. This escape will be slow, but constant, and the excessive drying out of the eggs, which a- curreni; of air would cause, is avoided. For an incubator of this sort, perfectly air-tight at top and sides. OABE OF THE EGGS. 297 with half-inch holes bored in the bottom. Cyphers gives the following 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 witliout opening the chamber, and unless their position is changed so as to equalize the lieat received, it is impossible to auo- cessfully 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 liave earth outside the "vvalls 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 G0°, 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 tlie 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, i^ermitting 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, ha'e been improved from the initial crooked root or snag of wood through numerous stages oOO 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, pir 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. We are 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 INCUBATOli IIOOM. 301 fj;ovi'rn iiioisiiirc, wliii'li is ;i jjhi-I of llio same machine. Surely an alleiidant, clad to .suit, or suited without u suit, can stay a slu)rt time in the oj^^g room without par- iicular discomfort. Tlierc^ arc (juite a ctmsidcrablo iiurn- i)er of crafts wliich compel workmen to encounter a decidedly liiglier tom])erature, and cannot a man, if he I'an oxidoio the rogi(ni where the oggs are, and have enough of them in the works to pay for constant super- vision, change the air by gentle curi'onts with nicely adjusted I'ans moved hy cunning machinery completely under his control':' The inculiating room can lie located in the center of a still larger room, the latter being heUl at an ainuist absolutely even temperature. The walls of the outer room can be built in such ii way as to shut out all influence of outside winds, dampness and dry- ness, heat and cold. The large incubator I'oom alluded to is at " Aratoma Farm," Stamford, Ct. The writer has never seen it nor communicated with its inventor or proprietor, Jior with anybody connected with it, but has read a newspaper account of it. Everything ])oints 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 jtroperly managed, beat the small incubators, and by small we designate all that are custo- marily 8hi])ped by rail or wagon ; but the mammoth incubator built where used will beat both. The highest latent can be allorded to run it, the highest degree of certainty in o])eration can be secured by it, at the mini- mum of cost for supplying lieat, moisture and ventila- tion, because of the great number of eggs it will hold. We have seen how the comjiaratively miseralile, small, ])uttering incubator, in its attemi)ts at letting out foul air, carried off dampness also and introduced cool air, which in becoming warmed robbed the eggs of their 303 AIT EGG FARM. normal moisture. Now tlie problem of warming dwell- ings and accomplishing ventilation at tiie 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 tlie 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 sepai-ate 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 machiue 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 i-eservoir 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 bullv of the air enclosed in so large a room. The means at tlie command of tlie 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 tlie body or feiitliors of the sitting lien that could not be I'ni'iiished by art, it might Ije impossible to construct the incubator of the future satisfactorily. But so far as is now known, not including the purely mechanical affair of change of position, tiie only requi- sites for hatching are heat, moisture and ventilation. CHAPTEE XXXI. BEOODEES. 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, or 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 witli 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 jiarticular degree of heat, as it must be, of course, if it 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 lias one hundred and seven pages on the incubator and one-half a page on the brooder. Notwithstanding, common consent has been given hv 304 BROODERS. 305 experienced, practical ()j)ei;itors to the proposition that it is much easier to liatch healthy chicks in an incubator than to keep them healthy 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 jwrfectly easy to run the brooder. Later he sends a communication for the question box of his poultry paper, asking why his chicks died off. If 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 withstaiid 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 manvifacturers 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 rung 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 oif 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. N"ow 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 temjierature 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 having regulated the hen's nest at 103°. Therefore, they huddle togetlier 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. N"ow the regulator shuts off a part of 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 sluml)cr an hour asro. In a little while the animal heat raises the tempera- ture to 103° at the eeiiter 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 91)° or so. The heat still rises because there are twenty-tive, perhaps seventy-five, little fur- naces under the hover, each 108° inside. By the time the air at the outer row of birds roaches 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, fonl 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 308 AN egg; faem. regards comparative strength, will look as if they had been drawn through a woodpile backwards, after a few nights of such dissipation, and thej' 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 sharji 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°j 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° i^lan, 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 lises 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. 30!) We have never succeeded ius well at an adjustment at either '.tS° or !HI°, as at 04°, a mean between tlic two, which initin-ates some ol' the disadvantages of each, tliougli all troubles cannot be escaped, no matter how you set your regulator. The nearest approach to i^erfec- tioii in autonurtic regulation of a brooder consists in having the air of the brooder house itself heated artifi- cially and its teniijerature governed automatically to guard against the eifeet of fJuctuations 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 'M"^ 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 a thin, light lid over a circular opening one and one-half or two inches in 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 liover. 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 tlie 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 o^ in the description of the Brooder of the 310 AN EGG FARM. Future. Objections on the score of expense are, ot course, very apparent. There must be a furnace, a boiler and pipe system for tlie 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, to 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 iiermit the use of an equivalent number of broofling 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 is 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 of small brooders and small broods, as to be afforded only when imrsued on a large scale and helped out by vei-y high prices for the product. The operator must pass up and down the lines of brooders, and, — guided by thermometers, or, better, by the sense of feeling which, after a little practice, becomes marvel- 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 reo-- 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 BKOODEKS. 311 Iioat is insufficioiit. One important tiling must not bo neglected, — the flume of the lamp must bo led 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 rooi. CHAPTER XXXII. METHODS OF HEAXraG AXD YEXTILATIKG BROODERS "When the rage for brooders began in tlie 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 Tital heat of the brood would soon 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. Oa 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, tlie 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 313 HEATIXO AND VKNTILATIN-(1 BUOOIIEUS. 313 pliitfovms to stuiul oil, tlic possi'ssiou of wliicli is fought for ; fratricidos ligliting for the dciul bodies of their brethren. At this slage in tlie progress of brooder bnilding tlio 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, wliich 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 jireviousl}', 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 tlic parties adopting it said they found decidedly fewer chicks trampled to death and pressed as flat as a floimder, 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 the}' 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 sleep in the daytinio because resting so poorly at night, and various other symptoms gave warning that something was wrong. 314 AN EGG TAEM. Next followed the invention of side heat, one of the ablest advocates of which is the eminent expert, Mr. 0. 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 lien as possible. Now how is a 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 ar.d 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 notpinned down under the breastbone or foot of the h3n. The heat from the hen certainly cannot be termed ' bottom heat,' nor yet ' top heat.' It is— a? 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 lies 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. HEATINO AND VENTILATING BROODERS. 315 It is wcirtli iioLuuiig Lli.-il,, owing l-o ilic fact tliiifc hcafc rises to llio Lop of ilie iiovcr, Llio Kido liwit plun is really a combinutiou i)lan as well as tlic other. One is a com- bination of top and bottom heat and the otlier is a com- bination of top and side heat. The writer unhesitatingly jirefcrs the "\'on Cnlin plan 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 Avhen the source of comfort is at tlio 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 lieat 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 Vou 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 as 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 demeiit is that since there is a difficulty in always gang- 316 AN EGG EAEM. 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-regulator plan will accomj^lish 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 lamji 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 maj^ be closed in whole or 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 owly a few days, have outdoor exercise, the weather admitting, without the WliATINGi AND VENTILATINCi BROODERS. Zllt necessity for (wtsiilo yards or roofed runways, of liberal area, or tlio exercising ap])araius described in this book. The disadvantages, as compared witli tlio indoor brood- ers are, tluit tlio attendant lias to cliaso 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 BKOODEK. 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 apjoaratus 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 receive 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 tlie 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 projier supjoly of both pure air and warmth, if the temj^erature 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 is 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 topis to their brooders lined with sheepskin, with the wool on, or soft cloth depending in numerous folds. Says Von Culin : "Theflannnelor 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 he comfortaljle and thrifty. Pleated floor or ceilinjj is not enough. Would yon like to heat a bedroom up to 70° or 80° and lie on tjie 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 VENTTLATTNG BROODERS. 319 cover which nature gives. Unlike Uii- feuUiers, ii; is not furnislied with millions of interstices for tiieairto strain through, nor will it permit the csca])e of the poisonous elements derived from the lungs of the hirds. 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 pijjes 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 do it. Yet, at best, the death rate at his establishment is too great. Take all the brooder houses in the coun- try, little and big, ono-horso 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 : " Oub 320 AX egct farji. 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-fonrths or five-sixths. But tak- ing the average of a series of years the business is 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 jjleases 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 VKNTILATINO BROODERS. 321 shows tliat tlic growtli of rivilizaiion is sure, oven if slow, and justifies tlic prediction that wlieii 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 jDhrase, 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 j^ards, 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 runs, literally, as the whole floor space of the 332 THE BROODER OF THE FUTLTUB. 323 , room was available for each, but when a brood is confined in a pen 3 or 4 ft.xG ft., as is nnlia])pily often the case, there is no opportunity for the pi'isoncrs to got 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 in 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 dooi's, to keep chicks away while stirring straw to cover grain on the scratching grounds of half-grown chickens, by means of two wooden 334 AX 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 sci-een, the frame of which is attached to the machine and to the tijis 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 tliey 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 jjrotecting against all manner of vicissitudes, are all accomplished at the very smallest amount of labor conceivable, there being so many in a room 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 BUOODEK OF THE FUTUIIE. '62b division into ten flocks of about 100 each, in five min- utes, if the pens are made riglit and tlio doors are of the right size and sliape 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 ])reveut crowding. The whole operation can be managed by any person with enough ingenuity to be fit to attend to cliickens, without scaring them in the least or hardly letting them know tliat anything has been done to tliem. 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 Incti- 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 f)lant 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- 32G AX EGG FAEJI. 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 j)ersonal 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 tlie 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, jjuts his head under the bedclothes to get warm, in which case carbonic acid gas accumulates rapidly. Or suj^pose it is neitlier 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 mucli of a stickler one is for imitat- ing nature, he cannot imitate tlie hen's style of a hover top closely enough to make the imitating business work in this instance ; and the best imitation of tlie hen's hover-top conditions is produced by no brooder top at all. It being very desirable to have chickens run and flaji 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 G ft.xS ft., or 10 ft.xl2 ft., or such a matter, and a bird cannot get under full headway in such siiace, any more than a locomotive can run a mile a minute in a switchyard. A large room gives opportunity for run- ning, flying, leaping and scratching, irrespective of the Aveather. Each room is supposed to communicate with a large yard outdoors, which sliould also have a feed dropper at each end. There is a special advantage in IHE BROODEK 01? TUB FUTURE. 32'2' allowing tlio birds outdoors only when the weather is Just right. Often in winter there will bo a short time in the middle of the day when the yard can be used to good advantage, when access to it nights and morn- ings would do more barm than good. In case of snow, paths can be opened by a snow plow and team mov- ing through gates leading from one yard to another, whereas the labor of clearing small single brooder vards by hand is discouraging when one snowfall follows another. INDEX PAGB Alfalfa, for poultry 25 for tilt boxes 234 Alley, sunken 75 Alternate system 212 Beariiiss, rounded 192 Bell call, the 165 Bin, for dry earth 33 for earth 141 BoTvel disease, cause of 236 test for 241 Breeders, houses for 51 overfat 120 Broiler business in Xew Jersey 256 Broilers, profits in 256 Brooder, covers for 318 h.ouse, details of 213 Brooders, indoor and out- door 316 lining for 318 mammoth 322 methods of heating 316 old style 312 personal supervision 310 regulator 306 requisites of 304 side heat 314 ten to manage 231 top and bottom heat 314 twenty to manage 232 uncovered 319 ventilating the 317 Brooding, theories on 269 Buildings, protected, sum- mer 50 special 139 Business poultry keeping 5 Car for transportation 76 (Cellar for incubators 83 Chaff for tilt boxes 234 Chickens, by colony plan 19 on a small scale 229 coops for 97 Chicks, at hatching time 279 cause of dead 305 early food for 132 critical time for 132 329 Chicks— Continued care of 124 and care of hens 243 calling the 163 feeding young 100 feeding young 123 feeding apparatus for 323 foes of 134 grains for 324 healthy 235 litter for 323 mortality of brooder 257 number in flock 324 shelter for 136 strong, to get 130 temperature for young 317 trained to exercise 184 waterlogged 289 weaning 100 Clockwork for tilt boxes 199 close breeding, place of 119 Cold storage 14 Combs, cutting 106 large, drawbacks of 106 Cook house 139 Cooling not necessary 283 Coops, for chickens 97 moving the 99 small, for chickens 98 A-shaped 135 temporary 213 Colony plan 17 Corn, value of 116 Cover for feed shelf 203 Covers for brooders 318 Crops for colony plan 23 Cyphers, on incubators 274 on moisture 293 Cylinders, duck, filling 189 feed 155 for brooder house 220 homemade 193 operation of 156, 183 spool 179 Disease, treatment of 144 Drag, homemade 20 Dressing fowls, place for 141 :i30 INDEX. PAGE Dropper, feed 152 Drum, hot air 315 Ducks, feed cylinder for 187 laying 186 Peliin 186 success with 186 Sarth, 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 chicjis, need of 255 importance of 46 in runways 177 testing value of 255 to cure bowel disease 237 Exerciser, by alternate system 212 details of 152 for d ucks 187 indoor, parallel 217 outdoor 172 simple 149 Failure, cause of 246 Feed box 43 for ch-ickens 99 Feeding, by colony plan 20, 21 high pressure, mode of 109 room 43 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 227 spare, for chicken coop 137 Food, kinds of 112 soft, place ot 114 Fowls, for breeding, sale of 250 foi sitters 110 to an acre 111 PAOB Gates for sitters 85 Grain, broadcasting the 90 food, variety of 113 for cylinder 155 scattering 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 Hosfiital, chicken 141 House, arranged for sum- mer 40, 47 Houses for breeders 51 House, for brooders 213 for early pullets 47 for 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 36 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 277 ventilation of 294 antiquity of 261 compared 271 INDEX. 331 Incubator^CoretintteiJ lu Egypt 2r>l inferior to liens I'liS not economical 122 old types of 261 public tests of 272 studying 274 under ground 298 Insects, to prevent 144 trap for 23 Intensive plan 14U Jacobs, P. II., experience of 322 Labor, cost of 248 hired 248 Lamp, care of 311 styles of 274 Layers, and sitters 87 breeds for 102 condiments for 134 feeding the 87 producing 118 selecting for 103 separating from sitters 89 Leghorns, large combs of 104 Lice, killers, patent 145 on young chicks 124 Location, an ideal 9 a northern 12 a southern 10 Locations compared 11 Machine for turning eggs 285 Machinery, for mixing 158 importance of 6 regulating labor 252 time saved by 244 Mats, use of 49 Meat, need of 114 scraps, use of 117 Millet for chicks 235 Mixing food and straw 150 Moisture, during incuba- tion 287 Von Culin on 289 Movable houses 22 Xests, for sitters 63 for sitters to make 122 marking the 89 Nursery apartment 141 Pens and runways 176 Pen, for moving fowls 42 temporary for chicks 136 Perch 222 Pit for tilt box 229 Platform for drying earth 31 Pouch, wire, for feeding 191 Poultry, business, compe- tition in 245 Poultry — Continued industry, divisions of 1 in small flocks 4 in the south central states 2 jilant of the future 246 plants expensive 246 Pullets preferred 108 Pure bred stock, sale of 250 Railroad for poultry house 75 Range needed 111 Ration, balancing the 114 Regulation, double 309 Regulators, for incubators 274 plan of three 310 Roads for poultry farm 28 Room, large for incubators 300 Roost for hatching house 96 Root bin 141 Runs, long, advantages of 59 Runways, for breeders 57 foi ciJicKens 24 for outdoor exercise 172 movable, for sitters 66 series of 1-75 Scraper, earth 29 Selection, for laying 119 of layers 103 Shades for fowls and chicks 136 Shade, temporary 45 Shaft, homemade 193 wooden 192 Shelf, feed 57 feed, operating 201 Shelter, winter 137 Shelves, changing the 90 Shovel for dry earth 30 Sieve, for feeding 195 for indoor use 197 operating the 197 Sitters, activity of 125 apparatus for 77 best fowl for 70 care of in detail 80 cost of 70 fowls for 110 habits of 275 handling the 95 houses for 62 in mild climates 74 in small pens 67 large flocks of 88 nest for 63 program for 92 to remove 128 versus incubators 72 Sitting, to encourage 111 Sled for poultry farm 28 Soft feecf, giving 206 ■d33 HTDEX. PAGB Soil, kind of 14 Soutnern poultry raising 2 Spool for cylinder axle 179 Straw, stirring the fiO System for ten brooders 231 Tank, for ducks 188 I'eCider, use of 20 Temperature, at hatching time 280 for chicks, limits of 308 governed automatically 309 in incubation 277 Testing eggs, room for 299 Thermostat 274 Tilt box 158 axle for 190, 224 compound 222 tlap for 164 for brooder house 217, 220 for small yards 258 layer, to manage 2'^4 material for 234 operating 159, 165 to turn 170 wooden axle for I SO Transportation facilities 14 Trap, for sitters 76 Trap setter 96 Trays, changing the 287 Trough for soft feed 207 PAex Turning eggs, 284 Underground fowl bouse 49 Vegetable food, 45 Ventilation 47 during incubation 294 for chicken house 97 of chicken coops 134 of incubator cellar 299 of main building 143 Vigor, sources of 121 to secure E4 Vitality, need of 57 Von Culin on moisture 289 Wagon, for carrying earth 32 for poultry farin 27 Watering fowls, wagon for 28 Water supply 26 Weather strips 46 Weight for feeding appa- ratus 211 Western poultry farms 9 Wild fowls, nature of 3 Windbreaks 45 Windows, apparatus for 217 to open and close 219 Winter, house for 36 quarters 45 Wooden feeding apparatus 194 Work bench 141 STANDARD BOOKS PUBLISHED BY ORANGE yUDD COMPANY NEW YORK CHICAGO 439-441 Lnfayettc Street Marquette Building TiOOKS sent to all parts of the iiiorld for catalog price. Discounts for large quantities on appli- cation. Correspondence invited. Brief descriptive catalog free. Large illustrated catalog, six cents. Soils By Charles William Burkett, Director Kansas Agri- cultural Experiment Station. The most complete and popular work of the kind ever published. As a rule, a book of this sort is dry and uninteresting, but in this case it reads like a novel. The author has put into it his individuality. The story of the properties of the soils, their improvement and manage- ment, as well as a discussion of the problems of crop growing and crop feeding, make this book equally valuable to the farmer, student and teacher. There are many illustrations of a practical character, each one suggesting some fundamental principle in soil manage- ment. 303 pages. sVi X 8 inches. Cloth $1.25 Insects Injurious to Vegetables By Dr. F. H. Chittenden, of the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture. 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Cloth $1.50 Clovers and How to Grow Them By Thomas Shaw. This is the first book published which treats on the growth, cultivation and treatment of clovers as applicable to all parts of the United States and Canada, and which takes up the entire subject in a systematic way and consecutive sequence. The importance of clover in the econ- omy of the farm is so great that an exhaustive work on this subject will no doubt be welcomed by students in agriculture, as well as by all who are interested in the tilling of the soil. Illustrated. 5x7 inches. ^^7 pages. Cloth. Net . . .$1.00 The New Egg Farm By H. H. SxoDnARn. A practical, reliable manual on producing eggs and poultry for market as a prolitablc business enterprise, either by itself or coimccted with other branches of agriculture. It tells all about how to feed and manage, how to breed and select, incubators and brooders, its labor- saving devices, etc., etc. Illustrated. 331 pages. 5x7 inches. Cloth. $1.00 Poultry Feeding and Fattening Compiled by G. .B. I<"iske. A handbook for pottltry keep- ers on the standard and improved methods of feeding and marketing all kinds of poultry. The subject of feeding and fattening poultry is prepared largely from the side of the best practice and experience here and abroad, although the underlying science of feeding is explained as fully as needful. The subject covers all branches, including chickens, broilers, capons, turkeys and waterfowl ; how to feed under various conditions and for different purposes. The whole subject of capons and caponizing is treated in detail. A great mass of practical information and experience not readily obtainable elsewhere is given with full and explicit directions for fatten- ing and preparing for market. This book will meet the needs of amateurs as well as commercial poultry raisers. Profusely illustrated. 160 pages. 5x71-2 indies, Cloth. , $0.50 Poultry Architecture Compiled by G. B. Fiske. 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Cloth . . , $1.00 Farmer's Cyclopedia of Agriculture A Compendium of Agricultural Science and PraBice on Farm, Orchard and Garden Crops, and the Feeding and Diseases of Farm Animals : : ■ "By EARLEY VERNON WILCOX, Ph.D arid CLARENCE BEAMAN SMITH, M.S Associate Editors in tltc Office of Experiment Stations, United States Department of Agriculture THIS is a new, practical, and complete pres- entation of the whole subject of agricul- ture in its broadest sense. It is designed for the use of agriculturists who de- sire up-to-date, reliable information on all matters pertaining to crops and stock, but more particularly for the actual farmer. The volume contains Detailed directions for the culture of every important field, orchard, and garden crop grown in America, together with descriptions of their chief insect pests and fungous diseases, and remedies for their control. It contains an ac- count of modern methods in feeding and handling all farm stock, including poultry. The diseases which affect different farm animals and poultry are described, and the most recent remedies sug- gested for controlling them. Every bit of this vast mass of new and useful information is authoritative, practical, and easily found, and no effort has been spared to include all desirable details. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 topics covered in these references, and it contains 700 royal 8vo pages and nearly 500 suberb half-tone and other original illustrations, making the most perfect Cyclopedia of Agricul- ture ever attempted. MandjomeJy bound in cloih, ^3.30: half morocco {•Very jumptuouj), ^•4-. 50, pojipaid ORANGE JUDD COMPANY, '^■'l^^^S^^z;^^^:''- \ Ki^ ^ '»'-''• S.'- ' ^?tx ^-4^V*f^rf.>^ ^.v