The soils that are valuable for early truck are equally valuable for poultry. Sand with a little loam, or very fine sand, if a few green crops are turned under to provide humus, are ideal poultry soils. The Norfolk fine Sand and Norfolk Sandy Loam of the U.S. soil survey, are types of such soil.

These soils absorb the droppings readily and are never covered with standing water. The winter snows do not stay on them. Crops will keep greener on them in winter than on clay soils three hundred miles farther south.

The disadvantage of such soils is that they lose their fertility by leaching. The same principles that will cause the droppings to disappear from the top of the ground will likewise cause them to be washed down beyond the depths of plant roots. This loss must be guarded against by not going to the extreme in selecting a light soil and may be largely overcome by schemes of running the poultry right among growing crops or by quick rotations.

Land sloping to the southward is commonly advised for the purpose of getting the same advantages as are to be had in a sandy soil. In practice the slope of the land cannot be given great prominence, although, other things being equal, one should certainly not disregard this point. In heavy lands it is necessary to raise the floors and grade up around the houses. The quickly drained soil does away with this expense.

Timber on the land is a disadvantage. Poultry farming in the woods has not been made a success. It's the same proposition of the droppings going to waste. I know a man who bought a timbered tract because it was cheap and who scraped up the droppings to sell by the barrel to his neighbor, who used them to fertilize his cabbage patch and in turn sold the poultryman cabbages to feed his hens, at 5 cents a head. Of course, this man failed, as does practically every man who attempts to scrape dropping boards and carry poultry manure around in baskets, instead of using it where it falls.

There is little to be said in favor of uncleared land for the poultry business, but there is something that can be said in favor of the poultry business for uncleared land. A man who buys a timbered land for trucking can get no income whatever the first year, but the poultryman can begin his operations in the woods, clearing the land while he is raising a crop of chickens on it. The coops may be placed in the cleared streak and most of the droppings utilized. In fact, the plan of a streak of timber alongside the houses is not bad for a permanent arrangement—the birds certainly enjoy the shade. But the shade of growing crops is the most profitable kind for poultry.

Marketing—Transportation.

The possibilities of working up a local trade of high grade eggs at fancy prices varies greatly with the locality. Large cities and wealthy people are essentials. Other than this the principal distinctions are that regions where a general surplus of eggs are produced offer little chance for a fancy trade. Where the great bulk of eggs are imported fancy trade is more feasible. St. Louis is the smallest western city that supports anything like a fancy trade in eggs and there it is only on a small scale. Minneapolis, Omaha, etc., would not pay 3 cents premium for the best eggs produced, but cities of the same size east of the Appalachians and especially in New England, will pay a good premium. The Far West or the mountain districts will pay up better than the Mississippi Valley. The South will pay a little better than the upper Mississippi Valley, but has few cities of sufficient size to make such markets abundant. The Southerner has little regard for quality in produce and the most aristocratic people consume eggs regularly that the wife of a Connecticut factory hand wouldn't have in the house. The egg farmer who expects to sell locally had best not locate south of Washington or west of Pittsburg, unless he goes to the Pacific Coast.

Where marketing is not done by wagon the subject of railroad transportation is practically identical with the question of marketing. It is the cost in freight service and freight rates that count. The proposition of transportation, especially for the grain buying poultry farm, catches us coming and going and both must be considered.

A poultry farm in Section 7 will buy one hundred pounds of feed per year per hen and market one-third of a case of eggs. On this basis the grain rate from Chicago or St. Louis and the egg rate to New York must be balanced against each other. Don't take these things for granted. Look them up.

Jamesburg and Freehold, two New Jersey towns ten miles apart and equi-distant and with equal freight rates from New York, might seem to the uninitiated as equally well situated to poultry farming. We will suppose two men bought forty-acre farms of equal quality and equi-distant from the railroad stations at these two towns. Suppose, further, they each kept five thousand hens. Jamesburg is on a Philadelphia-New York line of the Pennsylvania and its Chicago grain rate is the same as that of New York, namely: 19-1/2 cents per hundred. Freehold is on a branch line; its rate is 24-1/2 cents. In a year the difference amounts to $250. Figured at six per cent. interest, the land at Jamesburg is worth just about one hundred dollars an acre more than that at Freehold.

Lumber rates or local lumber prices should also be taken into consideration. Whether one plans to ship his product out by express or freight will, of course, be an important consideration in deciding the location.

As a general thing, the individual poultry farmer will, for shipping his product, use express east of Buffalo and north of Norfolk. The poultry community could use freight in these same regions and get as good or better service than by express.

The location in relation to the railroad station is equally important to the freight rate. Besides heavy hauling frequent trips will be necessary in marketing eggs. These on the larger farms will be daily or at least semi-weekly. On the heavy hauling alone, at 25 cents per ton mile, distance from the railroad will figure up 1-1/4 cents per hen which, on the basis of the previous illustration, would make a difference of twenty-five dollars per acre for every mile of distance from the station. One of the most successful poultry farms I know is right along the railroad and has an elevator which handles the grain from the cars and later dumps it into the feed wagons without its ever being touched by hand. The labor saving in this counts up rapidly.

The poultry community can have its own elevator and the grain can be sold to the farmer to be delivered directly into the hoppers in his field with but a single loading into a wagon.

Availability of Water.

One more point to be considered in location is water.

The labor of watering poultry by carrying water in buckets is tremendous and not to be considered on any up-to-date poultry plant. Watering must be accomplished by some artificial piping system or from spring-fed brooks. The more length of flowing streams on a piece of land, provided the adjacent ground is dry, the more value the property has for poultry. Two spring-fed brooks crossing a forty-acre tract so as to give a half mile of running water, or a full mile of houses, would water five thousand hens without labor. This would mean an annual saving of at least one man's time as against hand watering, or a matter of a thousand dollars or more in the cost of installation of a watering system.

If running water cannot be had the next best thing is to get land with water near the surface which may be tapped with sand points. If one must go deep for water a large flow is essential so that one power pump may easily supply sufficient water for the plant.

The land should lay in a gentle slope so that water may be run over the entire surface by gravity. Hilly lands are a nuisance in poultry keeping and raise the expense at every turn.

A Few Statistics.

The following table does not bear directly upon the poultry-man's choice of a location, but is inserted here because of its general interest in showing the poultry development of the country.

It will be noted that the egg production per hen is very low in the Southern States. This may seem at variance with my previous statements. The poor poultry keeping of the South is a fault of the industrial conditions, not of the climate. Chickens on the Southern farm simply live around the premises as do rats or English sparrows. No grain is grown; there are no feed lots to run to, no measures are taken to keep down vermin, and no protection is provided from wind and rain. In the North chickens could not exist with such treatment.

The figures given showing the relation between the poultry and total agricultural wealth is the best way that can be found to express statistically the importance of poultry keeping in relation to the general business of farming. These figures should not be confused with the distribution of the actual volume of poultry products. Iowa, the greatest poultry producing state, shows only a moderate proportion of poultry to all farm wealth, but this is because more agricultural wealth is produced in Iowa than in all the "Down East" states.

Table showing the development of the poultry industry in the various states, according to the returns of the census of 1900:

No. of Percentage of No. of Farm value eggs per farm wealth eggs of eggs per capita earned by per hen dozen States poultry



Alabama 124 4.9 48 9.7 cents Arizona 80 4.5 60 19.9 Arkansas 235 6.8 58 9.1 California 197 5.4 74 15.8 Colorado 127 5.4 71 15.0 Connecticut 105 11.3 89 19.1 Delaware 231 14.7 68 13.7 Florida 96 8.2 46 13.1 Georgia 156 4.4 41 10.4 Idaho 213 5.0 67 16.2 Indiana 338 10.0 77 10.5 Iowa 536 7.4 64 10.1 Illinois 215 3.7 62 10.3 Kansas 597 8.2 73 9.9 Kentucky 198 8.3 62 9.8 Louisiana 111 4.0 40 10.0 Maine 233 11.0 100 15.3 Maryland 126 10.4 71 12.6 Massachusetts 56 11.7 96 19.9 Michigan 270 9.7 82 11.2 Minnesota 296 5.8 67 10.5 Mississippi 144 4.7 43 9.9 Missouri 291 11.6 68 9.8 Montana 148 4.3 67 21.0 Nebraska 463 6.1 66 9.9 Nevada 68 3.7 71 20.8 New Hampshire 238 11.5 96 17.3 New Jersey 76 12.0 72 16.2 New Mexico 45 2.7 65 18.7 New York 102 7.1 83 13.9 North Carolina 112 5.7 55 10.2 North Dakota 249 2.6 64 10.5 Ohio 265 9.6 77 11.2 Oklahoma 315 6.4 60 9.3 Oregon 224 6.2 72 15.1 Pennsylvania 112 10.8 75 13.5 Rhode Island 90 19.7 77 20.4 South Carolina 80 4.0 41 10.3 South Dakota 502 5.2 68 10.0 Tennessee 189 8.4 61 9.8 Texas 228 4.8 52 8.0 Utah 146 5.1 76 12.5 Vermont 219 7.5 94 15.3 Virginia 165 8.9 67 11.1 Washington 171 7.1 74 16.8 West Virginia 216 10.2 74 10.9 Wisconsin 268 7.1 68 10.5 Wyoming 121 2.4 79 17.4 Entire U.S. 205 7.4 65 11.1



CHAPTER V

THE DOLLAR HEN FARM

As has already been emphasized, the way to get money out of the chicken business is not to put so much in.

Land, however, well suited to the purpose, should not be begrudged, for interest at six per cent, will afford a very considerable extra investment in land well suited to the business if it in any way cuts down the cost of operation.

The Plan of Housing.

The houses are the next consideration. On most poultry farms they are the chief items of expense. I know of a poultry farm near New York City where the house cost $12.00 per hen. The owner built this farm with a view of making money. People also buy stock in Nevada gold mines with a view of making money. I know another poultry farm owned by a man named Tillinghast at Vernon, Connecticut, where the houses cost thirty cents per hen. Mr. Tillinghast gets more eggs per hen than the New York man. Incidentally, he is sending his son to Yale, and he has no other visible means of support except his chicken farm.

For the region of light soils and the localities which I have recommended for poultry farming, the following style of poultry house should be used:

No floors, single boarded walls, a roof of matched cypress lumber or of cheap pine covered with tarred paper. This house is to have no windows and no door. The roosts are in the back end; the front end is open or partly open; feed hoppers and nests are in the front end. The feed hoppers may be made in the walls, made loose to set in the house, or made to shed water and placed outside the house. All watering is to be done outside the houses; likewise any feeding beyond that done in hoppers.

The exact style of the house I leave to the reader's own plan. Were I recommending complex houses costing several dollars per hen, this certainly would be leaving the reader in the dark woods. With houses of the kind described it is hard to go far amiss. The simplest form is a double pitched roof, the ridge-pole standing about seven feet high, and the walls about four. The house is made eight by sixteen, and one end—not the side—left open. For the house that man is to enter, this form cannot be improved upon.

The only other points are to construct it on a couple of 4x4 runners so that it can be dragged about by a team. Cypress, or other decay-proof wood should be used for these mud-sills. The framing should be light and as little of it used as is consistent with firmness. If the whole house costs more than twenty-five dollars there is something wrong in its planning.

This house should accommodate seventy-five or eighty hens.

For smaller operations, especially for horseless, or intensive farming, a low, light house may be used, which the attendant never enters. A portion of the roof lifts up to fill feed-hoppers, gather eggs or spray. These small houses may be made light enough to be moved short distances by a pry-pole, the team being required only when they are moved to a new field.

Not one particle of poultry manure is to be removed from either style of house. Instead, the houses are removed from the manure, which is then scattered on the neighboring ground with a fork, or, if desired to be used on a field in which poultry may not run, it may be loaded upon a wagon together with some of the underlaying soil.

There have been books and books written on poultry houses, but what I have just given is sufficient poultry-house knowledge for the Dollar Hen man. If he hasn't enough intelligence to put this into practice, he has no business in the hen business. Additional book-knowledge of hen-houses is useless; it may be harmful.

If you are sure that you are fool-proof, you may get Dr. Feather or Reverend Earlobe's "Book of Poultry House Plans." It will be a good text-book for the children's drawing lessons.

The Feeding System.

Oyster shells, beef scraps, corn, and one other kind of grain, together with an abundance of pasturage or green feed, is the sum and substance of feeding hens on the Dollar Hen Farm.

The dry feeds are placed in hoppers. They are built to protect the feeds from the weather. The neck must be sufficiently large to prevent clogging, and the hopper so protected by slats in front that the hen cannot toss the feed out by a side jerk of her head. These hoppers may be built any size desired. The grain compartments should, of course, be made larger than the others. Weekly filling is good, but where a team is not owned, it would be better to have the hoppers larger so that feed purchased, say, once a month, could be delivered directly into the hoppers.

Water Systems.

The best water system is a spring-fed brook.

The man proposing to establish an individual poultry plant, and who after reading this book goes and buys a tract of land where an artificial water system is necessary, would catch Mississippi drift-wood on shares. But there are plenty of such people in the world. A man once stood all day on London Bridge hawking gold sovereigns at a shilling a-piece and did not make a sale.

Next to natural streams are the made streams. This is the logical watering method of the community of poultry farmers. These artificial streams are to be made by conducting the water of natural streams back of the land to be watered, as in irrigation. It is the problem of irrigation over again. Indeed, where trucking is combined with poultry-growing, fowl watering should be combined with irrigation.

It may be necessary to dam the stream to get head, sufficient supply or both. In sandy soils, ditches leak, and board flumes must be substituted. The larger ones are made of the boards at right angles and tapered so that one end of one trough rests in the upper end of the next lower section. The smaller, or lateral troughs may be made V-shaped.

The cost of the smaller sized flume is three cents a foot. Iron pipe costs twelve cents a foot.

The greater the slope of the ground the smaller may be the troughs, but on ground where the slopes are great, more expense will be necessary in stilting the flumes to maintain the level, and the harder it will be to find a large section that can be brought under the ditch.

Fluming water for poultry is, like irrigation, a community project. The greatest dominating people of history have their origin in arid countries. It was co-operate or starve, and they learned co-operation and conquered the earth. If a man interferes with the flume, or takes more than his share of the water, put him out. We are in the hen, not the hog business.

Community water systems, where water must be pumped and piped in iron pipe, is of course a more expensive undertaking. It will only pay where water is too deep for individuals to drive sand points on their own property. There is certainly little reason to consider an expensive method when there are abundant localities where simple plans may be used.

On sand lands, with water near the surface, each farmer may drive sand points and pump his water by hand. In this case running water is not possible, but the pipes or flumes may be arranged so that fresh pumping flushes all the drinking places and also leaves them full of standing water. The simplest way to arrange this will be by wooden surface troughs as used in the fluming scheme. The only difference is that an occasional section is made deeper so that it will retain water.

A more permanent arrangement may be made by using a line of three-fourths inch pipe. At each watering place the pipe is brought to the surface so that the water flows into a galvanized pan with sloping sides. This pan has an overflow through a short section of smaller tubing soldered to the side of the pan. The pipe line is parallel with the fence line, the pans supply both fields. By this arrangement the entire plant may be watered in a few minutes. The overflow tubes are on one side. Using these tubes as a pivot the pans may be swung out from under the fence with the foot and cleaned with an old broom. Where the ground water is deep a wind mill and storage tank would be desirable.

Outdoor Accommodations.

The hen house is a place for roosting, laying and a protection for the feed. The hen is to live out doors.

On the most successful New England poultry farms, warm houses for hens have been given up. Hens fare better out of doors in Virginia than they do in New England, but make more profit out of doors anywhere than they will shut up in houses. If your climate will not permit your hen to live out doors get out of the climate or get out of the hen business.

There is, however, a vast difference in the kind of out-of-doors. The running stream with its fringe of trees, brush and rank growing grass, forms daylight quarters for the hen par excellence. Rank growing crops, fodder piled against the fences, a board fence on the north side of the lot, or little sheds made by propping a platform against a stake, will all help. A place out of the wind for the hens to dust and sun and be sociable is what is wanted, and what must be provided, preferably by Nature, if not by Nature then by the poultryman.

The hens are to be kept as much as possible out of the houses, in sheltered places among the crops or brush. They should not herd together in a few places but should be separated in little clumps well scattered over the land. These hiding places for the hens must, of course, not be too secluded or eggs will be lost.

Equipment for Chick Rearing.

Just as the long houses for hens have been weighed and found wanting, so larger brooder houses, with one exception, have never been established on what may be called a successful basis. By establishment on a successful basis, I mean established so that they could be used by larger numbers of people in rearing market chickens. There are plenty of large brooder houses in use, just as there are plenty of yarded poultry plants, but many intelligent, industrious people have tried both systems only to find that the cost of production exceeds the selling price. This makes us prone to believe that some of those who claim to be succeeding may differ from the crowd in that they had more capital to begin with and hence last longer.

The one exception I make to this is that of the South Shore Roaster District of Massachusetts. Here steam-pipe brooder houses are used quite extensively. The logical reason that pipe brooder houses have found use in the winter chicken business and not in rearing pullets is that of season and profits. When chicks are to be hatched in the dead of winter the steam-heated brooder house is a necessity. In this limited use it is all right, where the profits per chick are great enough to stand the expense and losses.

For the rearing of the great bulk of spring chicks the methods that have proven profitable are as follows:

First: Rearing with hens as practiced at Little Compton. For suggestions on this see the chapter entitled "Poultry on the General Farm."

Second: Rearing with lamp brooder. Many large book-built poultry plants have been equipped with steam, or, more properly, hot water heated brooder houses, only to have a practical manager see that they did not work, tear out the piping and fill the house with rows of common lamp brooders. The advantage claimed for the lamp brooder is that they can be regulated separately for each flock. As a matter of fact, the same regulation for each flock of chicks could be secured with a proper type of hot water heaters and one of the most practical poultry farms in the country is now installing such a system.

A brooder system where hot air under the pressure of a blower or centrifugal fan would seem ideal. So far the efforts made along these lines have been clumsy and unnecessarily expensive. If the continuous house is ever made practical, I believe it will be along this line, but at present I advise sticking to the methods that are known to be successful.

Individual lamp brooders in colony houses are perhaps the most generally successful means of rearing chicks on northern poultry farms. They are troublesome and somewhat expensive, but with properly hatched chickens are more successful than hen rearing. In buying such a brooder the chief points to be observed are: A good lamp, a heating device giving off the heat from a central drum, and an arrangement which facilitates easy cleaning. The brooder should be large, having not less than nine square feet of floor space. The work demanded of a brooder is not as exacting as with an incubator. The heat and circulation of air may vary a little without harm, but they must not fail altogether. The greatest trouble with brooders in operation is the uncertainty of the lamp. The brooder-lamp should have sufficient oil capacity and a large wick. Brooder-lamps are often exposed to the wind, and, if cheaply constructed or poorly enclosed, the result will be a chilled brood of chicks, or perhaps a fire.

The chief thing sought in the internal arrangements of a brooder is a provision to keep the chicks from piling up and smothering each other as they crowd toward the source of heat. This can be accomplished by having the warmest part of the brooder in the center rather than at the side or corner. If the heat comes from above and a considerable portion of the brooder be heated to the same temperature, no crowding will take place.

The temperature given for running brooders vary with the machine and the position of the thermometer. The one reliable guide for temperature is the action of the chicks. If they are cold they will crowd toward the source of heat; if too warm they will wander uneasily about; but if the temperature is right, each chick will sleep stretched out on the floor. The cold chicken does not sleep at all, but puts in its time fighting its way toward the source of heat. In an improperly constructed or improperly run brooder the chicks go through a varying process of chilling, sweating and struggling when they should be sleeping, and the result is puny chicks that dwindle and die.

The arrangement of the brooder for the sleeping accommodations of the chicks is important, but this is not the only thing to be considered in a brooder. The brooder used in the early season, and especially the outdoor brooder, must have ample space provided for the daytime accommodation of the chick. In the colony house brooder such space will, of course, be the floor of the house.

When operating on a large scale it will not pay to buy complete brooders. The lamps and hovers can be purchased separately and installed in colony houses which do both for brooders and later for houses for growing young stock. The universal hover sold by the Prairie State Incubator people is about as perfect a lamp hover as can be made.

The cold brooder, or Philo box, as it has been popularly called, is the chief item in a system of poultry keeping that has been widely advertised. The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth. The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick. This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage. That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly proven, but most poultrymen believe that it will pay better, especially in the North, to give the little fellows a few weeks' warmth.

Curtis Bros. at Ransomville, N.Y., who raise some twenty thousand chicks per year, have adopted the following system: The chicks are kept under hovers heated by hot water pipes for one week, or until they learn to hover. Then they are put in Philo boxes for a week in the same building but away from the pipes. The third week the Philo boxes are placed in a large, unheated room. After that they go to a large Philo box in a colony house.

To make a Philo house of the Curtis pattern, take a box 5 in. deep and 18 in. to 24 in. square. Cut a hole in one side for a chick door, run a strip of screen around the inside of the box to round the corners. Now take a second similar box. Tack a piece of cloth rather loosely across its open face. Bore a few augur holes in the sides of either box. Invert box No. 2 upon box No. 1. This we will call a Curtis box. It costs about fifteen cents and should accommodate fifty to seventy-five chicks.

A universal hover in a colony coop or colony house, for which a Curtis box is substituted, as early in the game as the weather permits, is the method I advise for rearing young chicks. The lamp problem we still have with us, but it is one that cannot be easily solved. Large vessels or tanks of water which are regularly warmed by injection of steam from a movable boiler, offers a possible way out of the difficulty. On a plant large enough to keep one man continually at this work, this plan might be an improvement over filling lamps, but for the smaller plant it is lamps, or go south.

Rearing young chicks is the hardest part of the poultry business. There is a lot of work about it that cannot be gotten rid of. Little chicks must be kept comfortable and their water and feed for the first few days must needs be given largely by hand. They are to be early led to drink from the regular water vessels and eat from the hoppers, but this takes time and patience.

The feeding of chicks I will discuss in the chapter on "Poultry on the General Farm," and as the same methods apply in both cases, I will refer the reader to that section.

After chicks get three or four weeks old their care is the simplest part of the poultry farm work and consists chiefly of filling feed hoppers and protecting them from vermin and thieves.

Board floor colony houses are used as a protection against rats and this danger necessitates the protection of the opening by netting and the closing of the doors at night.

Cockerels must be gotten out of the flocks and sold at an early age. Those that are to be kept for sale or use as breeding birds should be early separated from the pullets. Coops for growing chickens, especially Leghorns, cannot be put among trees, as the birds will learn to roost in the trees, causing no end of trouble to get them broken of the habit.

All pullets save a few culls should be saved for laying. They are to be kept two years. They should lay sixty-five to seventy per cent as many eggs the second year as the first. They are sold the third summer to make room for the growing stock.

Twenty-five Acre Poultry Farms.

This section will be devoted to a general discussion of the type of poultry farms best suited to Section 4 and the southerly portions of Section 7 as discussed in the previous chapter.

We will discuss this type of farm with this assumption: That they are to be developed in large numbers by co-operative or corporate effort. This does not infer that they cannot be developed by individual effort, and nine-tenths of the operations will remain the same in the latter case.

Suppose a large tract of land adjacent to railroad facilities has been found. The land in the original survey should be divided into long, relatively narrow strips, lying at right angles to the slope of the land. The farmstead should occupy the highest end of the strip. For a twenty-five acre or one-man poultry farm these strips should be about forty rods in width. The object of this survey is to permit the water being run by gravity to the entire farm.

The first thing is the farmstead, including such orchard and garden as are desired. This stretches across the entire front end of the place. The remainder of the strip is fenced in with chicken fence. The farm is also divided into two narrow fields by a fence down the center of the strip. This fence, at frequent intervals, has removable panels.

The year's season we will begin late in the fall. All layers are in field No. 1 pasturing on rape, top turnips or other fall crops. In lot No. 2 is growing wheat or rye. As the green feed gets short in the first lot the hens are let into lot No. 2. Sometime in March the houses that have been brought up close to the gaps are drawn through into the wheat field. The feed hoppers are also gradually moved and the hens find themselves confined in lot No. 2 without any serious disturbance.

Lot No. 1 is broken up as soon as weather permits and planted in oats, corn, Kaffir corn and perhaps a few sunflowers. The oats form a little strip near the coops and watering places and the Kaffir corn is on the far side. As soon as corn planting is over the farmer begins to receive his chickens from the hatchery. The brooders are now placed in the corn field. The object of the corn is not green food but for a shade and a grain crop.

The chicks are summered in the corn field and the hens in the wheat or rye. Whether the latter will head up will depend upon the number of the flock. It will be best to work the houses across to the far side and let that portion near the middle fence head up. As the old grain gets too tough for green food strips of ground should be broken up and sown in oats. The grain that matures will not be cut, but the hens will be allowed to thresh it out. The straw may be cut with mower or scythe for use as nesting material.

Sometime in June or early in July a little rape vetch or cow-peas is drilled in between the rows of corn as on the far side from the chicken coops. During July or about the first of August, after all cockerels have been sold, the gates are opened and the pullets are allowed to associate with the hens. After this acquaintance ripens into friendship the hen houses are worked back into the pullet lots. Surplus hens are sold off or new houses inserted as the case may be until there is room for the pullets in the houses. Each coop is worked up alongside a house and after most of the pullets have taken to the houses the coops are removed. The vacant lot is now broken up and sown in a mixture of fall green crops.

The flock is kept in the corn field until the corn is ripe. The Kaffir corn and sunflowers are knocked down where they stand and are threshed by the hens. As soon as the corn crop is ripe the houses are run back and the corn cut up or husked and the wheat planted in the corn field.

The next year the lots are transposed, the young stock being grown in the lot that had the hens the previous year.

If the ground is inclined to be at all damp when the fields are broken up the plowing is done in narrow lands so as to form a succession of ridges, on which are placed the coops or houses. The directions of these ridges will be determined by the lay of the land—the object being neither to dam up water or to encourage washing. The location of the ridges are alternated by seasons, so that the droppings from the houses are well distributed throughout the soil.

This system with the particular crops found that do best in the locality, give us an ideal method of poultry husbandry. We have kept hens and young stock supplied with green food the year round; we have utilized every particle of manure without one bit of labor. We have a rotation of crops. We have the benefits to the ground of several green crops turned under. We have raised one grain crop per year on most of the ground. We have no labor in feeding and watering except the keeping of the grain, beef and grit hoppers filled, and the water system in order.

The number of fowls that may be kept per acre will be determined by the richness of the soil. The chief object of the entire scheme is to provide abundant green pasture at all times and to allow the production of a reasonable amount of grain. With one hundred hens per acre on the entire tract, and with houses containing eighty hens each, it will be necessary to set the houses ninety-five feet apart. This will give the flock a tract of 95 by 330 feet in which to pasture.

The above estimate with a little land allowed for house, garden, orchard and a little cow and team pasture, will permit the keeping of two thousand hens on a twenty-five acre farm. In regions where grain is to be raised most farmers would want more land. They may also wish to own a few extra cows, hogs, etc., or to alternate the entire poultry operations with some crop that will, on such highly fertilized land, give a good cash profit. Forty acres is a good size for such uses.

The cost of land when purchased in large tracts in Virginia is very small, but the cost of clearing is often much more than that of the land. Twenty-five to fifty dollars an acre should secure such a tract of land and put it in shape for poultry farming.

The cost of the farm home, etc., will, of course vary altogether with the taste of the occupant. If they are constructed by a central company, from five hundred to a thousand dollars should cover the amount.

The cost of poultry buildings and equipment used on the farm will depend largely on the efficiency of the labor of construction. If constructed in large numbers by a central company, the cost would be reduced, but the company would expect to make a profit on their work.

A plot laid out for two thousand hens will require in material: 250 rods of fence with 6-ft. netting which should cost about fifty cents a rod. My estimate of this fence put up would be $150. If the neighboring field contained no other poultry, a portion of this fence might be done away with, although its protection against dogs and strangers may be worth while. Of course, if poultry fields of different owners lay adjoining, the fence must be used, but the cost will be reduced one-half.

The next most expensive piece of equipment will be a line of about eighty rods of 3/4 in. gas pipe and about fifty elbows and twenty-five galvanized iron pans. The cost of installation will depend largely on how deep it is necessary to go to get below the frost line. One hundred and seventy-five dollars should cover cost of material and by the use of a plow the line ought to be put in for twenty-five dollars.

The source of water, and the cost of getting a head, will necessarily vary with the location. The installation of a wind mill and tank to hold supply for several days, or of a small gasoline engine, would cost in the neighborhood of one hundred dollars, but it is a luxury that may be dispensed with if the well is not too deep.

The houses for the hens, of which there are twenty-five, are constructed in accordance with some of the plans previously discussed. The cost should be about twenty-five cents per hen.

At least twice as many brooders as colony coops will be needed as there are hen houses, but of the lamps and hovers not over twenty-five will be required, as the chicks soon outgrow the need of this aid.

This makes a list of equipment required for the keeping of two thousand layers and their replenishing:

25 acres of farm land, at $50 per acre $1250.00 250 rods of fence 150.00 One farmstead 1000.00 One team, plow and farm implements 300.00 One watering system 300.00 25 hen houses, at $20 500.00 50 colony coops, at $2.50 150.00 25 lamps and hovers, at $5 125.00 ———— $3775.00

[Transcriber's note: "50 colony coops, at $2.50" is $125.00, not $150. The total should therefore be $3750 rather than $3775. This was, presumably, a printing error, because the correct total is used in the further calculations below.]

This is a good, liberal capitalization. The business can be started with much less. Figured interest at 6 per cent. we have $225.00 per year.

The upkeep of the plant will be about 15 per cent. on the capital, not counting land. This equals $375, which, added to interest, gives an annual overhead expense of $600, which is our first item to be set against gross receipts.

The cost of operation will involve cost of chicks at hatchery, purchased feed, seed for ground, and feed for team.

The price of chicks at the Petaluma hatcheries is from six to eight cents each. We expect to raise enough pullets to make up for the accidental losses, and to renew bulk of the flock each year. The number required will, of course, depend upon the loss. This loss will be much less when the chicks are obtained from a modern moisture controlled hatchery, than from the box type incubator. I think a 33 per cent. loss is a liberal estimate, but as I am treading on unproven ground, I will make that loss 40 per cent., which is on a par with old style methods. To replace 1,000 hens, this will require 3,500 chicks at a cost of about two hundred and fifty dollars.

Green pasturage throughout the year will materially cut down the cost of feed. The corn consumed out of the hoppers will be about one bushel per hen. The beef scrap will also be less than with yarded fowls, perhaps twenty-five cents per hen. Now, of the corn we will raise on the land, at least ten acres. This should yield us five hundred bushels. This leaves fifteen hundred bushels of corn to be purchased. At the present high rates, this will cost $1,000 which, added to beef scrap cost, makes an outside feed cost of $1,500. The seed cost of rye, rape, cow-peas, etc., will amount to about $50 per annum. For expense of production we have:

Interest and upkeep of plant $600.00 Chicks 250.00 Purchased corn 1000.00 Beef scrap and grit 500.00 Seed 50.00 Team feed 100.00 ————- $2,500.00

This figures out the cost of production at a little more than a dollar per hen. The income from the place should be about as follows: Eleven hundred cockerels sold as squab broilers at 40 cents each, $440.00; four hundred and seventy-five old hens at 30 cents, $140.00.

The receipts from egg yield are, of course, impossible of very accurate calculation, for it is here that the personal element that determines success or failure enters. The Arkansas per-hen-day figures (see last chapter), multiplied by the average quotation for extras in the New York market, will be as fair as any, and certainly cannot be considered a high estimate, as it is only 113 eggs per hen per year.

Price per doz Income for Eggs per Extras month from hen day in New York 2000 layers ——————————————————————- January .32 $ .30 $494.00 February .30 .29 404.00 March .62 .22 700.00 April .38 .19 350.00 May .44 .19 429.00 June .42 .18 377.00 July .34 .21 367.00 August .38 .22 429.00 September .21 .25 262.00 October .22 .28 316.00 November .18 .33 267.00 December .15 .32 246.00 ————- Total $4,641.00

The total income as figured will be $5,221. From this subtract the cost of production, and we have still nearly $3,000, which is to be combined item of wages and profit. We have entered no labor bill because this is to be a one-man farm, and with the assistance of the public hatchery and co-operative marketing association, which will send a wagon right to a man's door to gather the eggs, it is entirely feasible for one man to attend to two thousand hens. In the rush spring season other members of the family will have to turn out and help, or a man may be hired to attend the plowing and rougher work.

This is a good handsome income, and yet the above price of the man's labor—it is only about one dollar per hen, which has always been the estimated profit of successful poultry keeping. As a matter of fact, this profit is seldom reached under the old system of poultry keeping, not because the above gross income cannot be reached, but because the expenses are greater. Under the present methods, with the exception of the rearing of the young chicks, one man can easily take care of three thousand hens. Indeed, practically the only work in their care is cultivating the ground and hauling around and dumping into hoppers, about two loads of feed per week.

But, young chicks must be reared, and this is more laborious. For this reason I advise going into some other industry on a part of the land, which will not require attention in the young chick season. One of the best things for this purpose is the cultivation of cane fruits as blackberries, raspberries and dewberries. The work of caring for these can be made to fall wholly without the young chick season. Peaches and grapes for a slower profit can be added, but spraying and cultivation of these is more liable to take spring labor. All these fruits have the advantage of doing well in the same kind of soil recommended for chickens. Young chickens may be grown around such berry crops and removed to permanent quarters before the berries ripen. Strawberries would be a very poor crop because their labor falls in the chick season.

Another plan, and perhaps a better one, is to have about three fields, and rotate in such a manner that a marketable crop may be always kept growing in the third field. Any crop may be selected, the chief labor of which falls between July and the following March. Late cabbage and potatoes, or celery, will do if the ground is suitable for these crops. Kale and spinach are staple fall crops. Fall lettuce could also be grown. If the market is glutted on such crops, they can be fed out at home. Whenever a field is vacant, have some crop growing on it, if only for purposes of green manuring. Never let sandy ground lie fallow.

A modification of the above plans suited to heavier ground, is to seed down the entire farm to grass. It is then divided into three fields and provided with three sets of colony houses. Coops are entirely dispensed with, and cheap indoor brooders are used in the permanent houses. The pullets stay in these same houses in the same field until the moulting season of the third year, or until they are two and a half years old. One field will always be vacant during the fall and winter season which time may be utilized for fresh seeding.

The difficulty of maintaining a sod will necessitate somewhat heavier soil than by the previous plan. The houses should be moved around occasionally, as the grass kills out in the locality. This plan is a lazy man's way, taking the least labor of any method of poultry keeping known. It is adapted to the cheaper ground in the region farthest from market. On the Atlantic seaboard, the more enterprising man will use the third field for rotation, and sell some of the fertility of the western grain in the form of a truck crop.

Five Acre Poultry Farms.

Can a living for a family be made from a five acre poultry farm? Yes; by individual effort, where the marketing opportunities are good; by corporate or co-operate effort, any place where the fundamental conditions are right.

This type of poultry farm is well suited for development near our large cities, where the cry of "back to the land" has filled with new hope the discouraged dweller in flat and tenement. No greater chance for humanitarian work, and at the same time no greater business opportunity, is open to-day than that of the promotion of colonies of small poultry and truck farms where the parent colony not only sells the land, but helps the settler to establish himself in the business and to successfully market the product. The natural location for such projects is in the sandy soils of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

We have already discussed the twenty-five acre farm, representing the largest probable unit for such an enterprise. We will now discuss the five acre farm which represents the smallest probable unit.

On the five-acre farm a considerable difference of methods will be necessary. In the first place, it is to be a horseless farm. All hauling and plowing must be attended to by the central company, or the same results could be obtained by a team owned in common by a small group, say of six farmers, each of whom is to use the team one day of the week.

A single isolated farmer in a community of farms or market gardeners, could hire a team by the day as he needed it. I do not recommend this scheme, however, but would suggest that the single individual get a larger plot of ground, at least ten acres, and a team of his own. In the co-operative community the five-acre teamless farm is entirely feasible.

The tract should be surveyed about twice as long as wide, which, for five acres, makes it 20 by 40 rods, or 330 by 660 feet. Measure off a strip one hundred feet back from the road. Fence the remainder of the tract. Now run a partition fence down the center until we have come to within twelve rods of the back side. Here run a cross fence. This gives us three yards of about one and one-half acres each. The gates are arranged so that one passes through the three yards in a single trip.

Where the middle partition fence adjoins the front fence, a well is driven. A water line is run down the partition fence to the rear yard.

The plot around the house is set in permanent crops, such as berries, fruit trees, asparagus, rhubarb, etc. Of the other three yards, at least one is kept in growing marketable crops. Every inch is cultivated, and crops of the leafy nature, as lettuce, cabbage, kale and spinach, are chiefly grown, as they utilize the rich nitrogenous poultry manure to the best advantage, and the waste portions, or worthless crops, are utilized for the poultry. The method of supplying the fowls with green food is entirely by soiling. This means to grow the food in an adjoining lot and throw it over the fence. The above mentioned crops are all good for the purpose. Rape, which is not grown for human food, is also excellent.

Kale is one of the very best crops for soiling purposes. It is planted in the fall and fed by pulling off the lower leaves during the winter. In the spring the hardened stalks stand at a considerable height and the field may be used for growing young chicks, giving shade, and at the same time producing abundant green feed, without any immediate labor, which means a great saving in the busy season.

A set of panels or netting stretched on light frames is provided. They are of sufficient number to set along the longest side of one of the fields. A strip along the fence, four or five feet wide, can be planted to sunflowers, corn, rape, kale, or other rank growing crop and the panels leaned against the fence to protect the young plants from the hens. In this way the fence rows can be kept provided with the shade of growing crops, which relieves the otherwise serious fault of this plan of poultry farming, in that the hens would be required to live in absolutely barren and sunburned lots, for we propose to keep five or six hundred hens on one and a half acres of ground, and no green things could get a start without protection.

Rotate the houses from field to field as often as the crops allow. Never permit hens to run in one bare field for more than six months at a time. Always keep every inch of ground not in use by the chickens, luxuriant in something green. If you have a crop of vegetables which are about matured, drill rape or crimson clover between the rows; by the time the crop is harvested and the hens are to be moved in, such crops will have made a good growth. The hens will kill it out but it will be a "profitable killing."

By this system of intensive combination of trucking and poultry farming, we have a combination which for small capital and small lands cannot be beaten. The hens should yield better than a dollar profit per head on this plan; the one and a half acres automatically fertilized and intensely cultivated, growing two or three crops a year, should easily double the income.

Twelve hundred dollars a year is a conservative estimate for the net income from such a plant, and the original investment, exclusive of residence, will not be over one thousand dollars.



CHAPTER VI

INCUBATION

The differences in the process of reproduction in birds and mammals is frequently misunderstood. The laying of the bird's egg is not analogous to the birth of young in mammals.

The female, whether bird or beast, forms a true egg which must be fertilized by the male sperm cell before the offspring can develop. In the mammal, if fertilization does not occur, the egg which is inconspicuous, passes out of the body and is lost. If fertilized, it passes into the womb where the young develops through the embryonic stages, being supplied with nourishment and oxygen directly by the mother.

In the bird, the egg, fertilized or unfertilized, passes out of the body and, being of conspicuous size, is readily observed. The size of the egg is due to the supply of food material which is comparable with that supplied to the mammalian young during its stay in the mother's womb.

The reptiles lay eggs that are left to develop outside of the body of the mother, subject to the vicissitudes of the environment. The young of the bird, being warm blooded, cannot develop without more uniform temperature than weather conditions ordinarily supply. This heat is supplied by the instinctive brooding habit of the mother bird.

Fertility of Eggs

In a state of nature the number of eggs laid by wild fowl are only as many as can be covered by the female. These are laid in the spring of the year, and one copulation of the male bird is sufficient to fertilize the entire clutch. Under domestication, the hen lays quite indefinitely, and is served by the male at frequent intervals. The fertilizing power of the male bird extends over a period of about 15 days.

For most of my readers, it will be unnecessary to state that the male has no influence upon the other offspring than those which he actually fertilizes within this period. The belief in the influence of the first male upon the later hatches by another male is simply a superstition.

The domestic chicken is decidedly polygamous. The common rule is one male to 12 or 15 hens. I have had equally good results, however, with one male to 20 hens. In the Little Compton and South Shore districts, one male is used for thirty or even forty hens.

By infertile eggs is meant eggs in which the sperm cell has never united with the ovum. Such eggs may occur in a flock from the absence of the male, from his disinclination or physical inability to serve the hens, from the weakness or lack of vitality in the sperm cells, from his neglect of a particular hen, from lifelessness, or lack of vitality in the ovule, or from chance misses, by which some eggs fail to be reached by the sperm cells.

In practice, lack of sexual inclination in a vigorous looking rooster is very rare indeed. The more likely explanation is that he neglects some hens, or that the eggs are fertilized, but the germs die before incubation begins, or in the early stages of that process. The former trouble may be avoided by having a relay of roosters and shutting each one up part of the time. The latter difficulty will be diminished by setting the egg as fresh as possible, meanwhile storing them in a cool place. The other factors to be considered in getting fertile eggs, are so nearly synonymous with the problems of health and vitality in laying stock generally, that to discuss it here would be but a repetition of ideas.

In connection with the discussion of fertile eggs, I want to point out the fact that the whole subject of fertility as distinct from hatchability, is somewhat meaningless. The facts of the case are, that whatever factors in the care of the stock will get a large percentage fertile eggs, will also give hatchable eggs and vice versa. This is to be explained by the fact that most of the unfertile eggs tested out during incubation, are in reality dead germs in which death has occurred before the chick became visible to the naked eye. Such deaths should usually be ascribed to poor parentage, but may be caused by wrong storage or incubation. Likewise, it would not be just to credit all deaths after chicks became visible to wrong incubation, although the most of the blame probably belongs there.

Likewise, with brooder chicks, we must divide the credit of their livability in an arbitrary fashion between parentage, incubation, and care after hatching.

By the hatchability of eggs, we then mean the percentage of eggs set that hatch chicks able to walk and eat. By the livability of chicks, we mean the percentage of chicks hatched that live to the age of four weeks, after which they are subject to no greater death rate than adult chickens. By the livability of eggs, we mean the product of these two factors, i.e.: the percentage of chicks at four weeks of age based upon the total number of eggs set.

As before mentioned, the fertility of eggs bears fairly definite relation to the hatchability, so likewise the hatchability bears a relation to the livability of chicks. When poor hatches occur because of weak germs, as because of faulty incubation, this same injury to the chick's organism is carried over and causes a larger death among the hatched chicks.

Moreover, the relation between the two is not the same with all classes of hatches, but as hatches get poorer the mortality among the chicks increases at an accelerating rate. The following table gives a rough approximation of these ratios:

Per cent. of Per cent. of chick Per cent. of egg Hatchability. Livability. Livability. 100 100 100 90 95 85 80 88 70 70 84 50 60 72 43 50 55 27 40 40 16 30 24 7 20 10 2 10 2 1

These figures are based on incubator data. Eggs set under hens usually give a hatchability of 50 per cent. to 65 per cent., and livability of 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. The reason for the greater livability is that the real hatchability of the eggs is 70 per cent. to 75 per cent., and is reduced by mechanical breakage. The hatchability of eggs varies with the season. This variation is commonly ascribed to nature, it being stated that springtime is the natural breeding season, and therefore eggs are of greater fertility.

While there may be a little foundation for this idea, the chief cause is to be found in the manner of artificial incubation, as will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. The following table is given as the seasonable hatchability for northern states. This is based on May hatch of 50 per cent:

January 38 July 40 February 42 August 40 March 47 September 42 April 49 October 43 May 50 November 40 June 46 December 35

Most people have an exaggerated idea of the hen's success as a hatcher. I have a number of records of hen hatching with large numbers of eggs set, and they are all between 55 per cent. and 60 per cent. The reasons the hen does not hatch better are as follows:

First: Actual infertile eggs—usually, running about 10 per cent. in the best season of the year.

Second: Mechanical breakage.

Third: Eggs accidentally getting chilled by rolled to one side of the nests, or by the sick, lousy or crazy hens leaving the nests or standing up on the eggs.

Fourth: Eggs getting damp from wet nests, dung or broken eggs; thus causing bacterial infection and decay.

The last three causes are not present in artificial incubation. From my observation they cause a loss of 15 per cent. of the eggs that fail to hatch, when hens are managed in large numbers. This would properly credit our hens with hatches running from 70 per cent. to 75 per cent., which, for reasons later explained, is not equal to hatches under the best known conditions of artificial incubation.

The assumption that the hen is a perfect hatcher, even barring accidents and the inherited imperfection of the egg, is not, I think, in harmony with our general conception of nature. Not only are eggs under the hens subject to unfavorable weather conditions, but the hen, to satisfy her whims or hunger, frequently remains too long away from the eggs, allowing them to become chilled.

For directions of how to manage setting hens, consult the Chapter on "Poultry on the General Farm."

The Wisdom of the Egyptians.

Up to the present there have been just three types of artificial incubation that have proven successful enough to warrant our attention. These are:

First, the modern wooden-box-kerosene-lamp incubator which is seen at its best development in the United States.

Second, the Egyptian incubator of ancient origin, which is a large clay oven holding thousands of eggs and warmed by smouldering fires of straw.

Third, the Chinese incubator, much on the principle of the Egyptian hatchery, but run in the room of an ordinary house, heated with charcoal braziers and used only for duck eggs.

I have no accurate information on the results of the Chinese method, and as it is not used for hen eggs, we will confine our attention to the first two processes only.

I do not care to go into detail in discussing makes of box incubators, but I will mention briefly the chief points in the development of our present machines.

The first difficulties were in getting lamps, regulators, etc., that would give a uniform temperature. This now has been worked out to a point where, with any good incubator and an experienced operator, the temperature of the egg chamber is readily kept within the desired range.

These are two principal types of box incubators now in use. In the earliest of these, the eggs were heated by radiation from a tank of hot water. These machines depended for ventilation or, what is much more important, evaporation, upon chance air currents passing in and out of augur holes in the ends or bottom of the machine.

The second, or more modern type, warms the eggs by a current of air which passes around a lamp flue where, being made lighter by the expansion due to heat, the air rises, creating a draft that forces it into the egg chamber. There it is caused to spread by muslin or felt diaphragms so that no perceptible current of air strikes the eggs. This type is the most popular type of small incubator on the market. Its advantage will be more readily seen after the discussion of the principles of incubation.

Hazy tales of Egyptian incubators have gone the rounds of poultry papers these many years. More recently some accurate accounts from American travelers and European investigators have come to light, and as a result, the average poultry editor is kept busy trying to explain how such wonderful results can be obtained "in opposition to the well-known laws of incubation."

The facts about Egyptian incubators are as follows: They have a capacity of 50 to 100 thousand eggs, and are built as a single large room, partly underground and made of clay reinforced with straw. The walls are two or three feet thick. Inside, the main rooms are little clay domes with two floors.

The hatching season begins the middle of January and lasts three months. A couple of weeks before the hatching begins, the fireproof house is filled with straw which is set afire, thoroughly warming the hatchery. The ashes are then taken out and little fires built in pots are set around the outside of the big room. The little clay rooms with the double floors are now filled with eggs. That is, one is filled at a time, the idea being to have fresh eggs entering and chicks moving out in a regular order, so as not to cause radical changes in the temperature of the hatchery.

No thermometer is used, but the operator has a very highly cultivated sense of temperature, such as is possessed by a cheese maker or dynamite dryer. About the twelfth day the eggs are moved to the upper part of the little interior rooms where they are further removed from the heated floor. The eggs are turned and tested out much as in this country. They are never cooled and the room is full of the fumes and smoke of burning straw. The ventilation provided is incidental.

This is about the whole story save for results. The incubator men pay back three chicks for four eggs, and take their profits by selling the extra chicks that are hatched above the 75 per cent. This statement is in itself so astonishing and yet convincing, that to add that the hatch runs between 85 per cent. and 90 per cent. of all eggs set, and that the incubators of the Nile Delta hatch about 75,000,000 chicks a year seems almost superfluous. As for the explanation of the results of the Egyptian incubators compared with the American kerosene lamp type, I think it can best be brought about by a consideration in detail of the scientific principles of incubators.

Principles of Incubation.

HEAT.—To keep animal life, once started, alive and growing, we need: First, a suitable surrounding temperature. Second, a fairly constant proportion of water in the body substance. Third, oxygen. Fourth, food.

Now, a fertile egg is a living young animal and as such its wants should be considered. We may at once dispose of the food problem of the unhatched chick, by saying that the food is the contents of the egg at the time of laying, and as far as incubation is concerned, is beyond our control.

In consideration of external temperature in its relation to life, we should note: (A) the optimum temperature; (B) the range of temperature consistent with general good health; (C) the range at which death occurs. Just to show the principle at stake, and without looking up authorities, I will state these temperatures for a number of animals. Of course you can dispute the accuracy of these figures, but they will serve to illustrate our purpose:

External External External Internal Internal Optimum Healthful Fatal Optimum Fatal Point Range Range Point Range

Man 70 0 to 100 50 to 140 98 90 to 106

Dog 60 70 to 140 70 to 140 101 95 to 110

Monkey 90 30 to 140 30 to 140 101 95 to 108

Horse 80 20 to 120 20 to 120 99 95 to 105

Fowl 80 20 to 140 20 to 140 107 100 to 115

Newly hatched chick 90 70 to 100 40 to 120 108 100 to 115

Fertile egg at start of incubation 103 32 to 110 31 to 125 103 31 to 125

Egg incubated three days 103 98 to 105 80 to 118 103 95 to 118

Egg incubated eighteen days 103 75 to 105 50 to 118 106 98 to 116

This table shows, among other things, that we are considering in the chick not a new proposition to which the laws of general animal life do not apply, but merely a young animal during the process of growth to a point where its internal mechanism for heat control, has power to maintain the body temperature through a greater range of external temperature change.

In the cooling process that occurs after laying the living cells of the egg become dormant, and like a hibernating animal, the actual internal temperature can be subjected to a much greater range than when the animal is active. After incubation begins and cell activity returns, and especially after blood forms and circulation commences, the temperature of the chick becomes subject to about the same internal range as with other warm blooded animals.

In the case of fully formed animals, the internal temperature is regulated by a double process. If the external temperature be lowered, more food substance is combined with oxygen to keep up the warmth of the body, while, if the external temperature be raised, the body temperature is kept low by the cooling effects of evaporation. This occurs in mammals chiefly by sweating. Birds do not sweat, but the same effect is brought about by increased breathing. Now, the chick gradually develops the heat producing function during incubation, until towards the close of the period it can take care of itself fairly well in case of lowered external temperature. The power to cool the body by breathing is not, however, granted to the unhatched chick, and for this reason the incubating egg cannot stand excess of heat as well as lack of it.

The practical points to be remembered from the above are:

First: Before incubation begins, eggs may be subjected to any temperature that will not physically or chemically injure the substance.

Second: During the first few days of the hatch, eggs have no appreciable power of heat formation and the external temperature for any considerable period of time can safely vary only within the range of temperature at which the physiological process may be carried on.

Third: As the chick develops it needs less careful guarding against cooling, and must still be guarded against over-heating.

Fourth: It should be remembered, however, that eggs are very poor conductors of heat, and if the temperature change is not great several hours of exposure are required to bring the egg to the new temperature.

Temperature is the most readily observed feature about natural incubation and its control was consequently the first and chief effort of the early incubator inventors.

A great deal of experimental work has been done to determine the degree of temperature for eggs during incubation. The temperature of the hen's blood is about 105 to 107 degrees F. The eggs are not warmed quite to this temperature, the amount by which they fail to reach the temperature of the hen's body depending, of course, upon the surrounding temperature. 103 degrees F. is the temperature that has been generally agreed upon by incubator manufacturers. Some of these advise running 102 degrees the first week, 103 degrees the second, 104 degrees the third. As a matter of fact it is very difficult to determine the actual temperature of the egg in the box incubator. This is because the source of heat is above the eggs and the air temperature changes rapidly as the thermometer is raised or lowered through the egg chamber. The advice to place the bulb of the thermometer against the live egg is very good, but in practice quite variable results will be found on different eggs and different parts of the machine.

With incubators of the same make, and in all appearances identical, quite marked variation in hatching capacity has been observed in individual machines. Careful experimentation will usually show this to be a matter of the way the thermometer is hung in relation to the heating surfaces and to the eggs. Ovi-thermometers, which consists of a thermometer enclosed in the celluloid imitation of an egg, are now in the market and are perhaps as safe as anything that can be used.

As was indicated in the previous section greater care in temperature of the egg is necessary in the first half of the hatch. The temperature of 102 degrees F. as above given is, in the writer's opinion, too low for this portion of the hatch. An actual temperature of 104 degrees at the top of the eggs will, as has been shown by careful experimental work, give better hatches than the lower temperature.

Moisture and Evaporation.

The subject of the water content of the egg and its relation to life, is the least understood of poultry problems.

The whole study of the water content of the egg during incubation hangs on the amount of evaporation. Now, the rates of evaporation from any moist object is determined by two factors: vapor pressure and the rate of movement of the air past the object. As incubation is always carried on at the same temperature, the evaporating power of the air is directly proportioned to the difference in the vapor pressure of water at that temperature, and the vapor pressure of the air as it enters the machine. Thus, in order to know the evaporative power of the air, we have only to determine the vapor pressure of the air and to remember that the rate of evaporation is in proportion to this pressure, i.e.: when the vapor pressure is high the evaporation will be slow and the eggs remain too wet, and when the vapor pressure is low the eggs will be excessively dried out.

The reader is probably more familiar with the term relative humidity than the term vapor pressure, but as the actual significance of relative humidity is changed at every change in outside temperature, the use of this term for expressing the evaporating power of the air has led to no end of confusion.

The influence of air currents on evaporation is to increase it directly proportional with the rate of air movement. Thus, 10 cubic feet of air per hour passing through an egg chamber would remove twice as much moisture as would 5 cubic feet.

If the percentage of water in any living body be changed a relatively small amount, serious disturbances of the physiological processes and ultimately death will result. The mature animal can, by drinking, take considerable excess of water without danger, for the surplus will be speedily removed by perspiration and by the secretion from the kidneys. But the percentage of water in the actual tissues of the body can vary only within a narrow range of not more than three or four per cent. The chick in the shell is not provided with means of increasing its water content by drinking or diminishing it by excretion, but the fresh egg is provided with more moisture than the hatched chick will require, and the surplus is gradually lost by evaporation. This places the water content of the chick's body at the mercies of the evaporating power of the air that surrounds the egg during incubation.

To assume that these risks of uncertain rates of evaporation is desirable, is as absurd as to assume that the risks of rainfall are desirable for plant life. As the plants of a certain climate have become adapted to the amount of soil moisture which the climate is likely to provide, so the egg has by natural selection been formed with about as much excess of water as will be lost in an average season under the natural conditions of incubation. Plant life suffers in drought or flood, and likewise bird life suffers in seasons of abnormal evaporative conditions. This view is substantiated by the fact that the eggs of water fowl which are in nature incubated in damper places, have a lower water content than the eggs of land birds.

The per cent. of water contained in the contents of fresh eggs is about 74 per cent., or about 65.5 per cent, based on the weight, shell included. Unfortunately no investigations have been made concerning the per cent. of water present in the newly hatched chick.

Upon the subject of the loss of water for the whole period of incubation, valuable data has been collected at the Utah, Oregon and Ontario Experiment Stations.

In these tests we find that as a rule the evaporation of eggs under hens is less than in incubators. With both hens and incubators, the rate of evaporation is greatest at the Utah Station, which one would naturally expect from the climate. The eggs under hens at the Ontario Station averaged about 12 per cent. loss in weight, and those at the Utah Station about 15 per cent. At both stations, incubators without moisture ran several per cent. higher evaporation than eggs under hens. The conclusions at all stations were that the addition of moisture to incubators was a material aid to good hatches of livable chicks.

At Ontario the average evaporation ran from as low as 7 per cent. At Utah it reached as high as 24 per cent. Now as the entire loss of weight is loss of water, the solid contents remaining the same, and as the original per cent, of water contained in the egg (shell included) is only 65.5, the chicks of the two lots with the same amount of solid substance would contain water in the proportion of 58.5 to 41.5. Based on the weight of the chick, this would make a difference of water content of over 25 per cent.

That human beings or other animals could not exist with such differences in the chemical composition of the body, is at once apparent. In fact I do not believe that the chick can live under such remarkable circumstances. As I have picked the extreme cases in the series given, it is possible that these extremes were experimental errors, and as in the Utah data, no information is given as what happened to the chicks, I have no proof that they did live. But from the large number of hatches that were recorded below 9 per cent, and above 15 per cent., giving a variation of the actual water content in the chick's body of about 10 per cent., it is evident that chicks do hatch under remarkable physiological difficulties. One explanation that suggests itself is, that as there is considerable variation in evaporation of individual eggs due to the amount of shell porosity, and the chicks that hatch in either case may be the ones whose individual variations threw them nearer the normal.

By a further study from the Ontario data of the relation of the evaporation to the results in livable chicks, it can be readily observed that all good hatches have evaporation centering around the 12 per cent. moisture loss, and that all lots with evaporations above 15 per cent. hatch out extremely poor.

The general averages of the machines supplied with some form of moisture was 35 per cent. of all eggs set, in chicks alive at four weeks of age, while the machines ran dry gave only 20 per cent. of live chicks at a similar period.

Now, I wish to call attention to a further point in connection with evaporation. If the final measure of the loss of weight by evaporation were the only criterion of correct conditions of moisture in the chick's body, the hatches that show 12 per cent., or whatever the correct amount of evaporation may be, should be decidedly superior to those on either side. That they are better, has already been shown. But they are far from what they should be. An explanation is not hard to find. The correct content of moisture is not the only essential to the chick's well being at the moments of hatching, but during the whole period of incubation. Under our present system of incubation, the chick is immediately subject to the changing evaporation of American weather conditions. The data for that fact, picked at random, will be of interest. The following table gives the vapor pressure at Buffalo, N. Y., for twenty consecutive days in April:

April 1..................170 2..................130 3...................95 4..................103 5..................110 6..................106 7..................154 8..................183 9..................245 10.................311 11.................342 12.................286 13.................219 14.................248 15.................217 16.................193 17.................241 18.................306 19.................261 20.................204

Supposing a hatch to be started at the beginning of the above period, by the end of the first week, with the excessive evaporation, due to a low vapor pressure, the eggs would all be several per cent. below the normal water content; the fact that the next week was warm and rainy, and the vapor pressure rose until the loss was entirely counterbalanced, would not repair the injury, even though the eggs showed at the end of incubation exactly the correct amount of shrinkage. A man might thirst in the desert for a week, then, coming to a hole of water fall in and drown, but we would hardly accept the report of a normal water content found at the post-mortem examination as evidence that his death was not connected with the moisture problem.

The change of evaporation, due to weather conditions, is, under hens, less marked than in incubators. This is because there are no drafts under the hen, and because the hen's moist body and the moist earth, if she sets on the ground, are separate sources of moisture which the changing humidity of the atmosphere does not affect. Among about forty hens set at different times at the Utah Station and the loss of moisture of which was determined at three equal periods of six days each, the greatest irregularity I found was as follows: 1st period, 5.81 per cent; 2d period, 3.86 per cent; 3d period, 6.15 per cent. Compare this with a similar incubator record at the same station in which the loss for the three periods was 5.63, 9.18 and 2.15.

I think the reader is now in position to appreciate the almost unsurmountable difficulties in the proper control of evaporation with the common small incubator in our climate. It is little wonder that one of our best incubator manufacturers, after studying the proposition for some time, threw over the whole moisture proposition, and put out a machine in which drafts of air were slowed down by felt diaphragms and the use of moisture was strictly forbidden.

The moisture problem to the small incubator operator presents itself as follows: If left to the mercies of chance and the weather, the too great or too little evaporation from his eggs will yield hatches that will prove unprofitable. In order to regulate this evaporation, he must know and be able to control both vapor pressure and the currents of air that strike the eggs. Now he does not know the amount of vapor pressure and has no way of finding it out. The so-called humidity gauges on the market are practically worthless, and even were the readings on relative humidity accurately determined, they would be wholly confusing, for their effect of the same relative humidity on the evaporation will vary widely with variations of the out-of-door temperature.

If the operator knows or guesses that the humidity is too low, he can increase it by adding water to the room, or the egg chamber, but he cannot tell when he has too much, nor can he reduce the vapor pressure of the air on rainy days when nature gives him too much water. As to air currents he is little better off—he has no way to tell accurately as to the behavior of air in the egg chamber and changes in temperature of the heater or if the outside air will throw these currents all off, since they depend upon the draft principle.

Taking it all in all, the man with the small incubator had better follow the manufacturer's directions and trust to luck.

The writer has long been of the conviction that a plan which would keep the rate of evaporation within as narrow bounds as we now keep the temperature, would not only solve the problem of artificial incubation, but improve on nature and increase not only the numbers but the vitality or livability of the chicks. With a view of studying further the relations between the conditions of atmospheric vapor pressure, and the success of artificial incubation, I have investigated climatic reports and hatching records in the various sections of the world.

The following are averages of the monthly vapor pressures at four points in which we are interested:

Buffalo, St. Louis, San Fran- Cairo Month N.Y. Mo. cisco. Egypt January 87 98 311 279 February 81 94 310 288 March 138 224 337 287 April 171 283 332 311 May 301 423 317 328 June 466 550 345 365 July 546 599 374 413 August 496 627 382 435 September 429 506 389 372 October 285 327 342 365 November 271 225 285 321 December 143 133 243 397

A study of the extent of daily variations is also of interest. As a general thing they are less extreme in localities when the seasonal variations are also less. In Cairo, however, which has a seasonal variation greater than San Francisco, the daily variations during the hatching season are much less than in California. This is due to a constant wind from sea to land, and an absolute absence of rainfall, conditions for which Egypt is noted.

Nearness to a coast does not mean uniform vapor pressure, for with wind alternating from sea to land, it means just the opposite.

As will be readily seen the months in spring which give the best hatches, occupy a medium place in the humidity scale. The fact that both hens and machines succeed best in this period, is to me very suggestive of the possibility that with an incubator absolutely controlling evaporation, much of the seasonal variation in the hatchability would disappear.

The uniform humidity of the California coast is shown in the above table. This is not inconsistent with the excellent results obtained at Petaluma.

The Egyptian hatcher in his long experience has learned just about how much airholes and smudge fire are necessary to get results. With these kept constant and the atmosphere constant, we have more nearly perfect conditions of incubation than are to be found anywhere else in the world, and I do not except the natural methods. The climatic conditions of Egypt cannot be equaled in any other climate, but as will be shown in the last section of this chapter, their effect can be duplicated readily enough by modern science and engineering.

Mr. Edward Brown, who was sent over here by the English Government to investigate our poultry industry, was greatly surprised at our poor results in artificial incubation. Compared with our acknowledged records of less than 50 per cent. hatches, he quotes the results obtained in hatching 18,000 eggs at an English experiment station as 62 per cent. I have not obtained any data of English humidity, but it is undoubtedly more uniform than the eastern United States.

Ventilation—Carbon Dioxide.

The last of the four life requisites we have to consider is that of oxygen. The chick in the shell, like a fish, breathes oxygen which is dissolved in a liquid. A special breathing organ is developed for the chick during its embryonic stages and floats in the white and absorbs the oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide. The amount of this breathing that occurs in the chick is at first insignificant, but increases with development. At no time, however, is it anywhere equal to that of the hatched chicks, for the physiological function to be maintained by the unhatched chicks requires little energy and little oxidation.

Upon the subject of ventilation in general, a great misunderstanding exists. Be it far from me to say anything that will cause either my readers or his chickens to sleep less in the fresh air, yet for the love of truth and for the simplification of the problem of incubation, the real facts about ventilation must be given.

In breathing, oxygen is absorbed and carbon dioxide and water vapor are given off. It is popularly held that abundance of fresh air is necessary to supply the oxygen for breathing and that carbon dioxide is a poison. Both are mistakes. The amount of oxygen normally in the air is about 20 per cent. Of carbon dioxide there is normally three hundredths of one per cent. During breathing these gasses are exchanged in about equal volume. A doubling or tripling of carbon dioxide was formerly thought to be "very dangerous." Now, if the carbon dioxide were increased 100 times, we would have only three per cent., and have seventeen per cent. of oxygen remaining. This oxygen would still be of sufficient pressure to readily pass into the blood. We might breathe a little faster to make up for the lessened oxygen pressure. In fact such a condition of the air would not be unlike the effects of higher altitudes.

Some investigations recently conducted at the U.S. Experiment Station for human nutrition, have shown the utter misconception of the old idea of ventilation. The respiratory calorimeter is an air-tight compartment in which men are confined for a week or more at a time while studies are being made concerning heat and energy yielded by food products. It being inconvenient to analyze such an immense volume of air as would be necessary to keep the room freshened according to conventional ventilation standards, experiments were made to see how vitiated the air could be made without causing ill effects to the subject.

This led to a remarkable series of experiments in which it was repeatedly demonstrated that a man could live and work for a week at a time without experiencing any ill effects whatever in an atmosphere of his own breath containing as high as 1.86 per cent. of carbon dioxide, or, in other words, the air had its impurity increased 62 times. This agrees with what every chemist and physiologist has long known, and that is that carbon dioxide is not poisonous, but is a harmless dilutant just as nitrogen. This does not mean that a man or animal may not die of suffocation, but that these are smothered, as they are drowned, by a real absence of oxygen, not poisoned by a fraction of 1 per cent. of carbon dioxide.

In the same series of experiments, search was made for the mysterious poisons of the breath which many who had learned of the actual harmlessness of carbon dioxide alleged to be the cause of the ill effects attributed to foul air. Without discussion, I will say that the investigators failed to find such poisons, but concluded that the sense of suffocation in an unventilated room is due not to carbon dioxide or other "poisonous" respiratory products, but is wholly due to warmth, water vapor, and the unpleasant odors given off by the body.

The subject of ventilation has always been a bone of contention in incubator discussions. With its little understood real importance, as shown in the previous section, and the greatly exaggerated popular notions of the importance of oxygen and imagined poisonous qualities of carbon dioxide, the confusion in the subject should cause little wonder.

A few years ago some one with an investigating mind decided to see if incubators were properly ventilated, and proceeded to make carbon dioxide determinations of the air under a hen and in an incubator. The air under the hen was found to contain the most of the obnoxious gas. Now, this information was disconcerting, for the hen had always been considered the source of all incubator wisdom. Clearly the perfection of the hen or the conception of pure air must be sacrificed. Chemistry here came to the rescue, and said that carbon dioxide mixed with water, formed an acid and acid would dissolve the lime of an egg shell. Evidently the hen was sacrificing her own health by breathing impure air in order to soften up the shells a little so the chicks could get out. Since it could have been demonstrated in a few hours in any laboratory, that carbon dioxide in the quantities involved, has no perceptible effect upon egg shells, it is with some apology that I mention that quite a deal of good brains has been spent upon the subject by two experiment stations. The data accumulated, of course, fails to prove the theory, but it is interesting as further evidence of the needlessness in the old fear of insufficient ventilation.

At the Ontario Station, the average amounts of carbon dioxide under a large number of hens was .32 of one per cent., or about ten times that of fresh air, or one-sixth of that which the man breathed so happily in the respiratory calorimeter. With incubators, every conceivable scheme was tried to change the amount of carbon dioxide. In some, sour milk was placed which, in fermenting, gives off the gas in question. Others were supplied with buttermilk, presumably to familiarize the chickens with this article so they would recognize it in the fattening rations. In other machines, lamp fumes were run in, and to still others, pure carbon dioxide was supplied. The percentage of the gas present varied in the machines from .06 to .58 of one per cent. The results, of course, vary as any run of hatches would. The detailed discussion of the hatches and their relation to the amount of carbon dioxide as given in Bulletin 160 of the Ontario Station, would be unfortunately confusing to the novice, but would make amusing reading for the old poultryman. Speaking of a comparison of two hatches, the writer, on page 53 of the bulletin says, "The increase in vitality of chicks from the combination of the carbon dioxide and moisture over moisture only, amounting, as it does, to 4.5 per cent. of the eggs set, seems directly due to the higher carbon dioxide content." I cannot refrain from suggesting that if my reader has two incubators, he might set up a Chinese prayer machine in front of one and see if he cannot in like manner demonstrate the efficacy of Heavenly supplications in the hatching of chickens.