Figure 11.—Brooder.
Let it be understood that a good brooder is, next to the incubator, the most important thing in the business. It is worse than useless to get out large hatches of strong, healthy birds, only to have them smothered or chilled in worthless brooders. Numbers of the patent brooders now on the market are made by men who never raised a chick or duck in their lives, and are regular fire and death traps. Many instances have come under my personal notice where not only ducks, chicks, and brooders, but the buildings themselves have been entirely consumed by these fire traps.
Again, those brooders are always rated for higher than their actual capacity. Ignorant parties buy them, fill them up according to instructions, when a sad mortality is sure to follow from overcrowding and consequent overheating. This is especially the case with chicks. Ducklings never smother each other from overcrowding, but, of course, will not thrive when too closely packed. These 150-duck brooders can be run at an expense of two cents per day for oil. In extreme cold weather artificial heat should be kept up in these brooders for three weeks; in warm weather, a week is sufficient. The same brooders can be used over and over as fast as the new hatches come out. When brooders are removed, closed boxes can be used instead.
When the operator does business large enough to require the use of five or six brooders, it would be cheaper for him to put in a heater at once, as the original cost of the heater would be less than that of the brooders. Years ago, when the question of heaters was first agitated, the cost was enormous, and the consumption of coal in proportion. Large hot-house boilers were used, often at a cost of several hundred dollars before the thing was ready for use. Now a good heating system can be arranged for a building one hundred feet long at an expense not exceeding $100. This, of course, would be much less than a complement of brooders for the same building.