Making Home Profitable

by Kate V. Saint Maur

A distinct branch of the poultry business, and one that is extremely profitable for those who can run it successfully, is raising young chicks in the winter for early broilers. To commence on a large scale requires as large capital, but there are hundreds of men and women who have accommodations on their premises that would enable them to start in a small way, and by investing the profits from the first year they could obtain a really good equipment for the business.

Of course, the real starting-point should be a good flock of healthy hens, all of one breed, preferably Wyandottes or Rocks, for really the hen who lays the egg has as much to do with the success in broiler-making as the care one may bestow on the business.

Next in importance is a well-constructed new incubator. Don’t be tempted to buy a second-hand machine, which has usually been allowed to stand in a damp cellar or in some outside shed while not in use, for it will in all probability warp or go to pieces when put in commission again.

Brooders come third on the list, but are quite as important as the two foregoing, for there is no use hatching a chick unless it can be reared, and the heat and ventilation of the artificial mother is more than half the battle.

The up-to-date broiler plant consists of an incubator-cellar, a nursery, or brooder-house, as it is usually called, and a broiler-house. Both the latter are divided into small pens, about two feet wide and five feet long. In the nursery-house, the top ends of the pens are inclosed like boxes to the depth of about a foot and a half, and have hot-water pipes running through them to furnish heat for the chicks to brood under. A flannel curtain cut into strips falls from the top of the inclosed part to divide it from the rest of the pen, which runs down to the outer wall of the house, where a large window lets in light and sun. The pens should have board floors slightly elevated above the main floor, to avoid dampness, and the divisions are made with a foot board about nine inches high, and one inch netting two feet high above that. The brooder-house is divided in the same way, but the hot-water pipes only run around the walls of the house, as the birds don’t need the immediate heat to brood under, after they leave the nursery, when they are five or six weeks old.

But, until you can afford the proper equipment, one or two incubators can be run in the cellar of the house or an unused room where there is no other heat. Individual brooders can be used in place of the nursery and brooder-house, if you have any light outbuilding to stand them in. In fact, I like the individual brooders better for the nursery period than the pipe-house system, because it is only necessary to heat as many as are needed, and with the pipe system the entire house has to be heated, even if you are only going to use one section.

Most of the different makes of brooders on the market are made with two compartments: A chamber with a round hover, which is heated with a lamp, and an outer compartment for exercise and feeding. The average price is nine dollars, and the machines are supposed to hold one hundred chickens, but seventy-five are quite enough; and even that number should be decreased to fifty the second week, and twenty-five the fourth week—that is, if the chicks are to be confined entirely to the brooder. But if it stands in a warm room, where a small outer inclosure can be made on the floor of the house for a playroom, fifty chicks can be carried through to the squab-broiler age in one brooder.

Chicks hatched specially for the broiler trade have to be steadily pushed along; plump, juicy meat being the main object. The first requisite is warmth. Have the compartment in which the hover is situated heated up to ninety-eight degrees before the chicks are put in and keep it so for the first three days and nights. Keep the door in the outer compartment shut for the same length of time. On the fourth day it can be opened and the chicks allowed to run into it, but the room in which the brooder stands should be warm, and the little ones should be watched toward bedtime, for they are apt to remain in the outer compartment and become chilled.

Being chilled even for a short time is fatal to young chicks, for if it does not kill outright, it causes bowel trouble and gives them a bad setback which will surely delay the day of marketing, if nothing worse. After they are three weeks old, the door in the outer compartment can be opened, so that they can run out on to the floor of the room. Let them have plenty of scratching material. If the weather is fine and mild, it will do them good to let them have an outside run for an hour or two in the middle of the day, but don’t be in a hurry to harden them before they are five weeks old, for it is a risky experiment.

Wyandotte chickens when hatched will weigh two ounces. If all goes well they should gain two ounces during the first ten days; four ounces for the third week; another two ounces in the fourth week, and at the end of the eighth week they should weigh two pounds.