XVII
FILLING THE INCUBATOR
Shortly after the new stock had been delivered at Brookside Farm, Bob and his aunt put the new Leghorn chickens in the old sheep shed back of the barn, and the white Plymouth Rocks in a small pen near the cider mill, so as to keep the two flocks apart. They saved all the eggs from each flock and as fast as the common hens on the farm showed a disposition to set, the eggs were supplied to them, until the incubator house was finished.
The incubator was a modern machine of five hundred egg capacity. After a conference, they decided to send to two well-known poultry farms specializing in white Leghorns and white Plymouth Rocks for additional settings of eggs, in order to have new blood for the next year. They got fifty eggs of each breed from the two breeders, making two hundred eggs in all, and took three hundred eggs from their own stock. A careful record of the different eggs was made, so they could keep the chicks separate after they were hatched.
Before the eggs arrived, the incubator was cleaned and tested.
"Won't you let me help you with the eggs, Bob?" asked Edith, as he was getting ready to place the eggs in the incubator. "I've been reading a lot in the bulletins about chickens, and I would like to help you look after them."
"I don't think it would be such a hard job, Edith," he replied, "if you understand how to regulate the heat and keep the eggs turned. Of course, it will be necessary to look after them carefully."
"I already know how to regulate the temperature, and turn and cool the eggs."
"Do you know how to test them?" asked Bob, "to tell which eggs are fertile?"
"Yes," replied Edith, "that's easily done. You can use a candle and an old shoe box by removing one end and cutting a hole a little larger than the size of a quarter in the bottom of the box, located so that when it sets over the kerosene lamp, the hole in the bottom will be opposite the flame. Of course, you'll have to cut another hole in the box, so that the heat will escape, and the eggs are tested with the large ends up. This is done so the size of the air cell may be seen, as well as the condition of the embryo."
"How do you tell when an egg is fertile?" asked Bob.
"That's easy," said Edith. "The infertile eggs, when held before the small hole when the lamp is lighted inside the box, will look perfectly clear, same as a fresh one, while the fertile ones will show a small dark spot, which is known as the embryo. Of course, you have to learn to tell whether the embryo is living or dead, but that's easy to learn."
"I think I could take care of an incubator all right," she continued. "The first thing you do is to see if it is running steadily at the desired temperature before filling it with eggs; then you must fill the whole tray at one time and not add fresh eggs to a tray after it's once started. The eggs must be turned twice daily after the second and until the nineteenth day. The eggs must also be cooled once daily from the seventh to the nineteenth day, depending on the weather."
"Do you fix the lamps first, Edith, or turn the eggs?" asked Bob.
"Oh, you must turn the eggs before you fix the lamps," she replied, "and, of course, the machine must be cared for at regular hours, just the same as your dairy cows, and the lamp and the wick must be kept clean at all times—otherwise you would not get a uniform heat."
"When do you test the eggs?" asked Bob.
"On the seventh and fourteenth days; after the eighteenth day you must not open the machine until the chicks are hatched."
"If you'll look after the incubator for us, Edith, it'll save me a lot of time—particularly now when we want to start work on the new cow barn."
"Will you let me run it all myself, Bob?" she asked, her eyes sparkling in anticipation.
"I don't see why you can't do it all yourself. You understand it just as well as I do; besides, I've had no actual experience myself."
They carefully filled the incubator with the eggs, making a record in a special book of the different breeds and the different breeders.
"How are you going to mark them, Bob, to tell them apart?" asked
Edith.
"Oh, that's easy," said Bob. "You punch small holes between their toes and make a code of the marks, so you can tell which is which.
"You can make ever so many combinations."
"Doesn't that hurt them?" asked Edith.
"No, not if it's done when they are very young—though the hole is a very small one, it never closes up, and you can always tell, by referring to your code, the age and breed of each chick. Later, of course, when they grow up, we'll put numbered aluminum bands on their legs, but when they're small the holes are better.
"Just think, Bob, five hundred little chicks for me to look after.
Won't it be perfectly splendid?"
"You won't get five hundred, Edith. If we get sixty to seventy per cent, hatched, it will be as much as we can expect. Unless, of course, we have especially good luck and you might get as high as eighty or ninety per cent."
"What will we do with the eggs that are not fertile?" she asked.
"Oh, we'll boil those and feed them to the young chicks after they're hatched; they make good chicken feed."
"How many of the chicks do you suppose we can raise in the brooder?"
"If we hatch 300 to 400 out of the 500 eggs, we'll be doing fine, and if we can raise sixty per cent of the full hatch, it's considered very good. Of course, considerable will depend on the way they're fed and cared for, but with good care, you ought to average that many. We'll have to raise these in one of the new pens we've just built for the laying hens, because our brooder house will be one of the last buildings we'll put up, and we may not get it ready until late fall. When the chicks are large enough, you can put them in colony houses out in the orchard."
"I hope we can raise more than sixty per cent, Bob. Won't it be fine to have so many chicks? When we get these hatched, are we going to hatch more?"
"Yes," replied Bob, "Aunt Bettie thinks we should hatch at least 1000 to 1500 eggs in order to have a good pen of layers this fall. Of course, you know half the chicks will be roosters, and these we will dispose of. The white Plymouth Rocks we can caponize and easily sell, and the white Leghorns we will either have to kill and sell as broilers, or it may be we can sell them to the farmers around here to improve their flocks. So you see, if we have 1000 chicks, we can't count on over 500 hens."
"What would you do, Bob, if you had 1000 hens?" asked Edith.
[Illustration: A WELL MANAGED FLOCK OF POULTRY WILL RETURN GOOD
PROFITS AND CAN EASILY BE CARED FOR BY THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN]
"Don't you remember the hen house is made so it may be extended? Of course, by the end of the summer, when the chicks have grown up, Mr. Brady will have taken so much sand from the pit that Uncle Joe will be willing that we should go ahead and complete our buildings, and one person can care for 1000 hens almost as easy as 500. A 1000 hen flock is about the right size. Aunt Bettie and I didn't exactly deceive Uncle Joe, but we thought we'd educate him a little at a time."
"I heard him tell Aunt Bettie the other day he was going to let her have all the money that they made from the dairy and poultry," said Edith.
"Well, if he does," said Bob, "Aunt Bettie will make a lot of money— almost as much as Uncle Joe, outside of the sand pit."
"How would that be, Bob?"
"Because it is possible to make very big profits in these if they're properly looked after," said Bob; "but of course, the chickens will have to pay rent for the houses, based on their cost and use of the land they occupy—the same as cows do for their stable and pasture, and all the labor and feed Uncle Joe supplies will be charged up against them. I've been reading the story of a successful poultry and dairy farm in one of the bulletins. They kept twenty cows, the same as Aunt Bettie is planning to do, and it stated that in addition to the milk, cream and butter used by the family, they sold almost $2400 worth of butter, and they got almost as much more from their poultry. The bulletin didn't say, of course, how much it cost to produce it, but with our system of cost-keeping where we charge up labor, feed and rent and credit them for whatever they produce, we'll be able to tell almost to a cent just what they earn."
"Won't you let me keep the cost-accounting system for the chickens, Bob?" asked Edith. "I'm sure I'd like very much to look after them all myself. I think that farming, if done intelligently, is the most interesting business that one can engage in."
They were standing on opposite sides of the incubator, and Edith was handing Bob an egg as she made this remark. Bob's hand closed over the egg and fingers that encircled it. He held it for a moment, while he looked into her eyes; then, as she blushingly withdrew her hand, he stammered:
"I'm glad, Edith, you like farming the same as I do."
"Well, it is interesting, Bob, and I do like it," she said, looking at him shyly.
"What are you two doing in here with all those eggs?" asked Ruth, bursting suddenly in upon them. "One would think you were in church, you're so quiet."
"Why, we're going to raise chickens by machinery," explained Bob.
"Do you have a motor to run it?" she asked. "How do you make it go, Bob? It must be terribly hot in here," she added, looking at them questioningly.
"Why?" asked her cousin, without looking up from the tray of eggs she was filling. "Why, Bob's so red in the face. I never saw his face so red before, except the time he ran down to the pond to take the turtle off Duncan Wallace's nose."
"You must have the room warm where you keep the incubator," said Edith evasively.
"Let me put the eggs in, Edith," said Ruth, "I know how to do things like this," as she began mixing the Leghorns and Plymouth Rocks together.
"Oh, don't do that, Ruth; we must keep them all separate. We write the names and dates on them and make all kinds of records, so we'll know the chicks when they're hatched."
"How can you tell from an old egg what kind of a chick you'll get. How do you know you won't get black chickens out of white eggs."
"Maybe we will," laughed Bob. "Anything is liable to happen on a farm where you get girls off apple trees and turtles off Scotchmen's noses."
"Pretty near ready for dinner?" called her aunt, looking in for a moment as they completed the work of filling the incubator.
"We've just finished," said Edith. "Bob said I might take care of the incubator and keep the record of the chicks, if you were willing, Aunt Bettie."
"Yes, Edith, I'd be only too glad to have you do it," replied her aunt.
"Thank you, Aunt Bettie. I like farming better every day," and she gave Bob a shy glance, as he closed the door of the new incubator house.