Making Home Profitable

by Kate V. Saint Maur

The reason for such fluctuation in the moisture may need some explanation. During the first stages of incubation it is necessary to prevent the escape of the water which is part of the egg, as it is needed to keep the albumen in the right condition for the development of the germ. After the tenth day, when the embryo is formed, the water should be gradually allowed to evaporate, so that the amount of air inside the shell increases, as it is needed to aid the circulation of the blood and permit the growth of the chick. Increasing the moisture again on the nineteenth day is simply done to soften the inside skin of the egg and make it easy for the chick to break through.

When extra moisture is to be supplied, place a pan of wet sand or a damp sponge in the bottom of the incubator. If the machine is standing in a very damp cellar, the difficulty is often to keep down the moisture rather than to increase it.

In this case, keep the trays out of the machine for a greater length of time when you turn the eggs each day, and open the ventilators. Probably the safest and simplest way to learn how to gauge this important point of moisture, is to set a hen at the same time that you start the incubator, and then compare the development of the air-cell in the egg every few days. If the development is too slow, open the ventilators at the side of the incubator wider, and air the eggs a little longer each day when you have the trays out to turn the eggs. Reverse affairs if the development is too quick. It is better to run the machine a degree or two above the given temperature than below it, especially during the last few days.

After the morning of the twentieth day don’t open the incubator until the hatch is over, or until late on the twenty-second day, and don’t get nervous if the temperature runs to one hundred and four or even to one hundred and five; it is caused by the animal heat of the chicks, and will do them no harm. Turning down the lamp slightly will of course reduce the heat; but be very careful not to let it run below one hundred and three during the last twenty-four hours. Low temperature prolongs the hatch, weakens the chickens and makes them susceptible to all sorts of ailments.

Individual outdoor brooders I think are the best, for in very cold weather they can stand in a light outhouse. I used to monopolise the summer kitchen from February to April, and then have them placed out in the orchard. Placing an outdoor brooder under cover is really only for the convenience of the attendant, for they are storm proof. If you commence with an incubator that holds one hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty eggs you will require two brooders, and if in a cold or Northern locality, some small house which can be warmed during very cold weather, if you propose commencing to incubate in January. A brooder supposed to hold one hundred chickens will accommodate that number comfortably for about nine days, after which not more than fifty should be kept in it. Hence the necessity for two brooders. When the chicks are six weeks old in cold weather, and four weeks old in moderate weather, they can be removed to the small house (the temperature of which should be kept at sixty degrees during the night). Remember, incubation takes only twenty-one days, so you must allow at least three weeks to elapse before starting the incubator a second time.

Give the brooder a good coat of whitewash inside before using it. Cover the drum which furnishes the heat under the hover with two or three thicknesses of flannel, to make it soft for the little bodies to cuddle up against. Cover the floor of the hover compartment with a piece of old carpet or felt, and the outside compartment with sweepings from the haymow. Have the heat running steadily at ninety-five degrees for several hours before the chicks are to be put into it, and keep it at that heat the first seven or eight days. Then gradually let it fall to seventy-five degrees. Of course, I mean the heat under the hover. The rest of the brooder will be—and should be—several degrees lower.

THE CARE OF THE CHICKS IN THE BROODER

Keep fresh water in vessels into which the chicks can get only their bills in the outer compartment. Never neglect seeing that they are all safely cuddled up to the heat at dusk.

During the bright, sunny hours in the middle of the day let the chicks have plenty of fresh air in the playroom; at feeding time, when they are all busy, give the hover compartment a thorough airing.

When Biddy is doing the brooding, remember she is pretty sure to need dusting with some good insect powder. The nest box she sat in should have been cleaned, and a handful of camphor balls scattered under the hay of the nest. Moreover, each hen should be dusted before setting, twice during the twenty-one days, three days after the hatch is out, and each week so long as she broods the chicks.