Sixteen years' experience in artificial poultry-raising

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I

I ARTIFICIAL

Introduction

Artificial incubation is not, as many suppose, of recent origin, but was in successful operation thousands of years ago in Egypt. The celebrated egg-ovens of that country are a matter of history, but the secrets of their success have never been fully divulged. A close investigation of the subject shows that the management of these ovens was confined to a certain class and its secrets carefully transmitted from father to son. The eggs were brought to the ovens by the country people, who at the end of the three weeks returned, paid their fees and took their chicks — some fifty to seventy per cent, according to the fertility of their eggs. The real truth of the matter is, that the men, by long practice, had become so expert in the business that in a climate where the average temperature was but a few degrees below that required for incubating the egg, it was a comparatively easy matter to keep an even heat, simply using the body as a thermometer.

This, in our climate of ice and snow, would be quite a different thing and next to impossible. Besides, the enterprising Yankee of the present day has got the impression that his time is of more value than that of a sitting hen, and has invented ma-

4: INTRODUCTION.

chines that not only regulate their own heat automatically, and generate their own humidity of atmosphere, and with a very little attention on his part, hatch his chicks for him without in anyway interfering with his regular business.

Incubators have been in use in this country for more than thirty years, and in England, France and Germany for nearly a century, but with so little success that the business has not been considered practical even by the most sanguine. In years past thousands of these machines have been thrust upon a credulous public, whose only use seemed to be to disappoint their purchaser and addle his eggs, and if possible increase the antipathy which already exists in the public mind against incubators. Within a few years, great improvements have been made in the construction and regulation of these machines ; so much so, that there are some now upon the market that in the hands of the average man or woman, not only do better work, but are more reliable than the best hens. There are many others which though successful in the hands of their inventors themselves are of no use to the general public.

For the past thirty years I have been engaged in growing thousands of chicks and ducks yearly; the first fourteen years of that time hatching and growing them in the natural way, but for the last sixteen years have been using incubators of different patterns. The result of this experience is, that I consider hens essential to furnish eggs, but a nuisance for hatching and growing chicks. I propose in the following pages to give the readers my actual experience with incubators during the past sixteen years. I am aware that in so doing I shall advocate many points which the manufacturers of other incubators flatly contradict in their instructions, but I shall advance nothing but sound theory, confirmed by actual experiment, and when the reader has acquainted himself with my miserable failures and the success I have achieved through these experiments, he will be in a condition to draw his own conclusions.

CHAPTER I. 3fY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH INCUBATORS

THE OLD WAY— SETTING HENS— TENDING THE MACHINE— DIS- ASTROUS RESULTS.

In the year 1868 quite an excitement was created in poultrycircles in the vicinity of Boston by the introduction of an incubator. The manufacturer claimed that it not only hatched as well or better than hens, but that it regulated its own heat, required little or no care and attention and could be easily operated without in anyway interfering with one's regular business.

Now this was just what I had been looking for. I had been engaged in growing poultry from boyhood and at the time spoken of had gotten the fever badly. For some ten years previous I had been in the habit of getting out from twelve to fifteen hundred chicks and ducks during the spring months of each year by the old hen process, and it ^ad not always proved satisfactory. For though I could always find a ready market for early spring chicks at from sixty to seventy-five cents per pound at the club houses and first-class hotels in Boston, I could not always induce biddy to commence business in time to furnish them. She was carefully fed, fancy nests were fixed up in the nooks and corners and filled with porcelain eggs; in fact every facility was afforded her as an inducement to begin, but with only partial success.

Then again, during the months of May and June, when we wished to retire from business, the nests were invariably filled with persistent sitters. There was a constant battle with waterbarrels, red rags, solitary confinement on the one side and persistent obstinacy on the other. I did not then know that the introduction of a vigorous young cock among a yard of sitters, with plenty of food and exercise, was far more effective in inducing a change of mind than more vigorous treatment, cold bath and signals included.

This machine was going to relieve me from all further trouble, and hatch out the chicks just when they were the most valuable. I visited Boston and saw the machines in operation. The eggs were taken out and broken at different stages of development. Everything appeared to be satisfactory, a fivehundred egg machine was purchased, taken home and set up and in due time filled with eggs, precaution being taken to set fifteen or twenty hens at the same time. These hens were intended to accommodate the machine chicks in addition to their own. The machine was a very expensive one, and I soon found, it had at least two good qualities: It was most thoroughly built in every part and could generate all the heat needed to incubate eggs in a temperature below freezing point.

I soon found, however, that the difficulty did not consist so much in generating the heat as iu controlling it. The regulating apparatus consisted of a glass syphon, some two feet long filled partly with alcoh)l and partly with mercury; the alcohol being inside of the machine and the mercury outside. In this mercury was inserted a wired cork. The heat was expected to expand the alcohol, force up the mercury and raise the cork. Now as this cork was attached by a small wire to the ventilator and by a second wire to a cut-off on the lamp and worked simultaneously on both, the least expansion or coutraction of the alcohol by heat or cold was expected to control the heat in the egg chamber. But unfortunately the alcohol was placed in the extreme bottom of the machine, where there was the least heat, and the eggs in the top where there was the most heat, so that, as the heat increased the eggs got the benefit of it first and the liquor afterwards, the damage was done before the remedy was provided.

I wrote to the manufacturer stating the difficulty. He assured me that the machine was all right and that the trouble was in me and entirely the result of my own ignorance and inexperience, and that I would soon get the hang of it. This was not consoling, but I resolved that if there was any virtue in persistency, I would succeed.

I will here digress enough to say that a course of twelve years with that machine did not give me experience enough to run it without the regular nightly visitations. The thing sat like an incubus on my shoulders, and during the four months of each year I never knew the luxury of sleeping a single night without being obliged to get up, dress, and wend my way to that incubator room, often in storms or wallowing through snowbanks sometimes with the mercury below zero. But I did not flinch. I resolved that if a failure it was, it would not be through me.

During this time the twenty hens were properly cared for. My habit was to take off the birds during the extreme cold weather in the warmest part of the day and during the fifteen minutes they were off feeding and dusting, the eggs were carefully covered with a circular piece of paper so that when the birds were returned to the nests the eggs had cooled but a few degrees. At the endof twenty days there was a great chipping and chirping under the hens, and at the close of the twenty-first day more than two hundred lively Brahma chicks had made their appearance, but there were no signs of life in the machine. I felt much discouraged about this, because experience had often taught me that when chicks came out forty-eight hours behind time, their number was sure to be small and their life short. During the twenty-second day a faint chirping was heard and a few eggs pipped. At the close of the twenty-third day about thirty chicks, with my assistance, made their appearance ; without that, they never would have seen the light of day. They were a sorry looking set at best. The down was plastered to their bodies by a sort of mucilaginous secretion from the eggs. They seemed lifeless and debilitated and when consigned to the old hen, kept her in a constant fever with their sickly plaints. They refused to eat, dropped oS one by one and were soon a thing of the past. All this time their natural and more favored brothers were doing first-class work as far as consumption of food and growth were concerned.

CHAPTER IL

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE CONTINUED,

"I TOLD YOU SO"-KEEP THE INCUBATOR A SECRET-NOT DIS- CO URA GED-INSTR UCTIOiYS FOLLO WED^MORE FAIL URES-THE FOR- LORN HOPE-THE MACHINE CHICKS SHUFFLE OFF-RESULTS OF CAREFUL WORK.

Well, my first attempt at artificial incubation had proved a disastrous failure. Biddy had come out a long way ahead, and to add to my trouble, my neighbors, who had looked on incredulously from the first, now began to console me with the old refrain: "What did I tell you?"

By the way, I advise every one who intends purchasing an incubator to keep it a profound secret from his neighbors. Call the thing a " cold blast refrigerator," or anything you please, but keep the neighbors out of the way until you have a good hatch, then invite them in to see the chicks come out. If you happen to have a poor hatch, and they should find it out, as they always will, you will feel like whipping somebod}'^.

My courage, though somewhat abated, had not all oozed out. I was resolved to try again, yet I did not see how I could improve Jipon what I had done. I could get neither advice or consolation from the inventor. The instructions were few and simple, and I liad followed them to the letter. " Trim your lamps once and turn your eggs twice a day. Run your machine at 103°. Change your trays twice each day, putting your lower ones above and your upper ones below each time. Be sure and cool your eggs off fifteen minutes each day, taking them out of the machine to do it. Keep your evaporating pans full of water."

My machine was again filled with eggs, twenty-five dozen more were consigned to the care of brooding hens at the same time, and the same routine carried out as before, though the details, were if possible, more carefully observed than ever. In the meantime the business was conducted in the natural way the same as of yore. Whenever a hen became broody she was supplied with eggs and I had forty or fifty sitters constantly at work. In due time the hens that were set with the machine duplicated their former hatch. The machine did the same and came out as far behind as ever.

That machine was filled a third and fourth time with no better success. A fifth time it was filled with duck eggs, out of which I did not get a single duck, except two or three which I picked out, and those died at once, while my hens that behaved themselves, got out an average of eleven ducks out of every twelve eggs intrusted to their care.

It thus was an open question in my mind whether artificial incubation under the most favorable circumstances could be made

Fig. 1.— My First Incubator. a success. I had put nearly two hundred dozen eggs through that machine. Those eggs were worth the greater part of the time fifty cents per dozen. (That was the price I obtained for them the entire winter from private families in Boston, they paying the express.)

Out of that two hundred dozen eggs I had got out less than two hundred sorry-looking chicks. Those chicks had come out apparently in all stages of development, and in every conceivable deformity. There were crooked legs, twisted bills, humpbacks, clump feet. Numbers came out with the digestive organs attached on behind like the antennae of a wasp, outside of the chick instead of inside, where it ought to be. One in particular introduced himself with one leg below and the other on his back

Above, both so attached that he could make use of neither. Those machine chicks, uulike their natural brothers, had a strong antipathy to locomotion; activity was their aversion. Their general aspect was that of profound meditation. Their favorite attitude was reclining on their broadside. They were boimd to shuffle off this mortal coil at all hazards and no amount of petting or coaxing could induce them to reconsider their decision.

1 have my doubts to-day if I succeeded in maturing a single one of those machine chicks. There could be no fault with the eggs or the fowl from whence they came. In an experience of thirty years, I have never had so highly fertilized eggs during the winter months as during these trials; fully ninety-eight per cent were fertile. Hens that behaved themselves came out with broods of from ten to twelve chicks and sometimes hatched every egg. On May 1, in summing up the winter's work, the account was thus: From one hundred and eighty dozen eggs consigned to hens, nearly one thousand chicks and two hundred and eighty ducklings. From two hundred dozen put through the incubator, 00.

CHAPTER III, Uf PROVING THE INCUBATOR

I DO SOME THINKING-A VITAL ERROR DISCOVERED-THE PROS AND coys OF COOLING EGGS-SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS— I AM JUBILANT AND PREDICT GREAT THINGS— PRIDE HAS A FALL BUT SOME ADVANCE IS MADE-NO DOUBTS ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INCU- BATION— I REBUILD THE MACHINE.

During this time I had clone some thinking. There was plainly a cause or causes for these failures. It was for my interest to discover and remove them or else throw aside the machine as worthless, which I was no': yet prepared to do. It had cost too much money for that.

There was one thing that was entirely amiss. The machine chicks had invariably come out behind time and yet I had repeatedly put glasses under hens to ascertain the temperature, which I found about 103°, and then run the machine the same. But I found that when the five hundred eggs were taken out of the incubator and cooled off in a cold room for fifteen minutes, that when they were returned to the machine there was such a large body of them that the eggs seemed to cool the air in the machine instead of the air warming the eggs; so much so, that when the room was cold, it was often three and even four hours before the eggs reached their normal heat. Thus in reality I had been running at a temperature of from 75° to 103°.

How had biddy been running? I would find out about that. A hen was taken off the nest for fifteen minutes and then returned ; when finally settled down, a glass was carefully placed under her. In twenty minutes those eggs, brought into immediate contact with the rapidly pulsating arteries of the hen's body, were back to their normal heat of 103°. Here was a solution of the difficulty and yet my instructions were imperative to cool the eggs fifteen minutes each day. But I found that cooling the eggs fifteen minutes at a temperature of 40° did as much execution as cooling them fifty minutes with the room at a temperature of 80°. Evidently things were mixed at headquarters.

It now occurred to me that though cooling off the eggs might be a necessity to the old hen, it might not be at all essential to the welfare of the embryo chick. Nothing easier than to find out. I would run an experimental machine for the purpose and settle the thing once for all.

I procured three paper-box covers, perforated the bottom with holes, and placed them in the machine in the centre of the drawers with a dozen eggs in each.

One box of those eggs was taken out daily and cooled to the usual temperature. Another was taken out and cooled while trimming the lamp, about three minutes. The other box was not taken out during the hatch, the eggs being turned in the machine. The result of that experiment was six chicks from the box of cooled eggs, and dead chicks in the other six eggs, in all stages of development.

The box taken out for a moment or two, hatched ten chicks and two died in the shell. From the box that was not moved, 1 took eleven lively chicks, the remaining egg being unfertile. Those eleven chicks came out with that fine yellow tinge which characterizes your healthy Brahma chick hatched in the natural way.

To say that I felt relieved does not express it. I was jubilant. I even went so far as to tell some of my loquacious neighbors that they would see a thing or two when the next season opened.

I made arrangements for an early start the coming winter, as what broilers I had sold had brought sixty-five cents per pound at the club houses in Boston and I did not have enough to supply the demand. I started machines and hens about the first of January, taking every precaution to ensure success. My chagrin may be imagined, when as I had confidently expected at least ninty per cent to hatch, I in reality got but forty per cent. The rest of the eggs contained chicks dead in all stages.

It was true it was a decided improvement on the last winter. I had got three times as many chicks and they had come out stronger and were doing well. They had also come out in time, which was a great point. I tried a second hatch with the same result, biddy coming out as usual.

I had no longer doubts about the success of artificial incubation. Those eleven chicks the previous year had proved it beyond a doubt. Notwithstanding the inventor's assertion, I believed the trouble was in the machine and not in me, because I had heard in a roundabout way that he himself was not doing any better than I was ; in fact, not as well, and I found that a great many others were victimized with it like myself.

In an unfortunate moment, just after I was through with that experimental hatch the season before, the inventor had written me for a testimonial, and being- elated at the time, I wrote him that I had just got a one hundred per cent hatch. Of course he made a free use of it, and it materially assisted him in victimizing others.

Being thoroughly convinced that the machine was at fault and not myself, I overhauled it in every part. I found that the egg-chamber was heated by perpendicular tanks on all sides except that occupied by the door in front; also by a tank over the top.

The machine was ventilated through the tank over the top, in the centre of the egg-chamber, the cold air being admitted through the doors in front. By this arrangement at the back of the egg-chamber where it was all tank and constant heat radiating therefrom, there was no ventilation, while in front, where there was no heat, was located all the ventilation.

It was easy to see now where the trouble was. But why had I not seen this before? I had blindly thrown away hundreds of dollars' worth of time and eggs during the first two years. I wrote the inventor plainly stating the defects in the construction of his machine and asked him if he would not remodel it to suit me. He answered me by asking if I pretended to know more about the machine than the manufacturer who invented it.

I purchased a dozen glasses at once, resolved to know the extent of the trouble. I placed those glasses in every part of the egg-chamber. I found that while the temperature was 103° in the centre it was 109° at the back and sides, and 100° at the front ; and while the glasses represented 103° on the upper trays, the lower ones represented 98°.

This at once accounted for my previous failures. I then closed up the draft in front, and drawing the water out, bored holes through the tank in the back and sides, admitting ventilation where it was needed most, filling up the tank to just below the egg-trays. This evened up the heat in the egg-chamber to a great degree and decidedly increased my percentage of eggs hatched.

-^14—

CHAPTER IK

THE OLD, OLD STORY.

NOT SATISFIED— NEW SELF-REGULATING INCUBATORS— THE OLD DIFFICULT V, UNEVEN TEMPERATURE-RECENT IMPROVEMENTS.

But this was not satisfactory, for though I was tolerably sure of from sixty to seventy per cent of the eggs hatching, yet I could use but one tray, thus cutting the machine down to one-third its original capacity, which made a very expensive machine of it. I ran this incubator in connection with hens for a number of years, and they made about an even thing of it.

Sometimes when I over-slept myself, biddy would come out a little ahead; and again, when she would prove refractory, smash eggs and give up the business just before the hatch was due, the odds would be in favor of the machine.

I was dissatisfied with this state of things. Sad experience had taught me what the requirements of a good incubator were. How to get them all in one machine was the difficulty. In the meantime, a number of new machines had been invented in different parts of the country, all claiming to do first-class work, and to completely supercede the old machines which were denounced as worthless. The heat in these machines was regulated by batteries, thermostatic bars, etc., even to the fractional part of a degree. The machines were accompanied by testimonials from different parties, apparently genuine, claiming eighty, ninety, and even one hundred per cent hatches.

I now thought my time had come, though I had done fairly well with my machine for a number of years, yet I did not get first-class hatches and there was altogether too much night work connected with it, I was ready to buy another machine, if it was as represented; and as some of them had drifted into the adjoining counties, I thought I would go and interview the owners of these machines, and by personal investigation satisfy myself as to their merits.

One man said that he had put in a few eggs the first time and hatched a pretty good percentage of them, and then filled up his machine and somehow the battery got out of fix and he did not hatch anything, but at the present time it was running nicely.

On visiting another of different pattern (also run by battery), the operator said that he had put in a small number of eggs and hatched nearly one hundred per cent. (By the way his testimonial had particularly attracted my attention). But when he had put in a large number of eggs his percentage was much smaller. In fact the greater the number of eggs the smaller was his percentage of hatch.

I thought of my own experience several years before. With the owner's permission I introduced glasses in different parts of the machine. It was as I expected: no uniformity of heat in the egg-chamber. The worst feature of my investigation was that there were very few chicks to be seen and those few had a strong resemblance to some of mine I had got out in similar manner six or eight years before.

There was one exception, however. One man had about one thousand chicks, but as he had also some seventy-five to one hundred hens sitting at the same time, I was not sure of their origin. I did not find things as favorable as I expected, for on comparing notes the balance was decidedly in favor of my own machine.

Let it be here understood that I do not wish to detract anything from machines run by electricity. Some of these machines have become greatly improved, as well as their batteries, and are really doing good work. Others still have been more recently invented and now stand side by side with the older machines.

Chapter V. A Home-made Machine

I BUILD AN INCUBATOR— IT HAS SOME GOOD AND SOME BAD POINTS —REMEDYING THE DEFECTS.

I had now either got to run the old machine or make something better myself. I had had experience enough in this business to know what the requirements of a good incubator were, but how to get them all into one machine and have them work together harmoniously was something that had puzzled brighter heads than mine.

During the autumn of 1878, I constructed a machine in the shape of a parallelogram, with the hot water flowing through a tanlc above the egg-trays and returning through a pipe which wound round the machine several times, next the outside, and entered the bottom of the boiler. This tank was so constructed that the warm water flowed next the sides and the centre. Though it was filled with water; as it was still water, it radiated little or no heat. I had always noticed that the centre of a machine was invariably the warmest, and my object was to obviate this difficulty as much as possible. I also constructed concave egg-trays with a depression of about two inches in the centre, thus removing the eggs that much further from the tank in the centre of the machine, my object being to even up the heat on the eggs.

This worked very well in one direction, but badly in another ; for when the chick pipped in the bottom of that concave, he stood a very poor chance of getting out with so many eggs pressing down upon him from above. The only chance for these pipped eggs was to place them on the outside above. This required constant care during hatching, or a great loss of chicks was the result.

This machine, though regulated in the same way as the old one, ran much steadier and did far better hatching, my average being eighty per cent. After running it two years in connection with the old one, I saw where great improvements could be made and resolved to build another machine on a different principle.

On examining the eggs that did not hatch, (some twenty per cent of them), I found them nearly all matured and ready to break the shell but for some reason did not come out. On examining those which did not hatch under hens, I found that these died in all stages, especially the earlier part of the hatch. (These last are the eggs which prove so oderiferous when roughly handled by the boys). This proved conclusively that the machine did better work during the first part of the hatch than the hens, but for some reason they did not come out. This perplexed me the most of anything in the whole business.

Other manufacturers had been troubled in a greater degree than I had, and had settled down finally to the point that it resulted from carbonic acid gas. This was a deadly gas generated in large quantities by the maturing chicks, and unless quickly removed was most fatal in its consequences.

Now we were told that this was a very heavy gas and could not be forced out by common ventilation but must be got rid of by counter currents of air. I had read much about this gas, and not being much of a chemist had got it badly on the brain. Besides, it really accounted for what otherwise seemed to to me inexplicable.

CHAPTER VL

ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION A SUCCESS.

THE NEW MACHINE— THE TEMPERATURE SUCCESSFULLY CON- TROLLED—ANOTHER OBSTACLE— EXPERIMENT UPSETS ALL PRE- VIOUS THEORIES— ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION A SUCCESS-EVAPOR- ATION AND OTHER TROUBLES— THEY ARE PROVIDED FOR— SOME GOOD HATCHES.

The new machine was built, completely double, with an inch air-space all around it and so arranged with a downward current of air as to force the carbonic acid gas out without in any way interfering with the regular ventilation of the machine. This machine about the middle of December was filled with about six hundred eggs. Things worked admirably for a few days, as it was regulated on an entirely new principle.

Previous to its construction I had been investigating the science of hydrostatics with the view of learning the exact expansion of water through h6at compared to that of air; also the amount of water necessary in the tank, that its expansion and contraction might give complete control of the ventilation and lamps of the machine. This would be making the principle which generated the superfluous heat provide for its own escape, thus anticipating all trouble. This regulating principle was applied to the machine. It exceeded even my wildest anticipation. No more night work now. It was really a pleasure to care for it.