Largest Poultry Farm In the World.

Manawatu Herald, 21 April 1903, Page 2

Largest Poultry Farm In the World.

In Shelby County, Ohio, says the “ Farm and Fireside,” is the largest chicken and egg plant in the world. It is further distinguished from all other poultry houses in five ways—first, it produces for the market only, caring nothing for fancy breeds or other side lines; second,; it is operated on an absolute system; third, it never loses a chicken by disease; fourth, it produces unfertile eggs; fifth, and the most important, it is based on “ kindness.” The daily output is 200 dozen unfertile eggs, which sell at an advance of 7id over the market price, never less than Is 3d, and 330 lib and Jib broilers or Jib “ squabs,” both unequaled for tenderness, quality and flavour.

The plant divides into two separate industries—-on producing chickens, and the other unfertile eggs. Let us follow the former from thW beginning. In, a building by itself are 900 Plymouth Rock hens in 60 pens, 15 to a pen, 1 rooster to 15 hens. They are selected, not according to points, but for health and strength only. To avoid favouritism the roosters are changed once a t week. The hens lay all the. year through, this being'sccompliahad by watching their diet. The eggs are taken to a room in the basement 'of the main building, which contains 30 30-day incubators .of 300 egg capacity each. Two mcubatocar are , started one day, one the next, so that every day would average 450 chickens if all hatched. Very-few fail. At the end of seven days a lamp test is made, and unpromising ecgs are taken out and sold .tp /local bakers Seven days later another teet is made After hatching, the chicks are left in the machine* one day, for their systems to dry put. A year round average-of 330-chicks goes up every day in a little elevator to the “ nursery.” Herd isji. Jxprlsei shoe of 30 pens,.gradually,increasing in size. A chicken never spends two days in the same pen, but throughout the entire system moves up one pen every day, the entire-, change requiring only 15 minutest Thus the system is on a most arithmetical foundation.

During the first 36 hours in the nursery the chicks receive no food. The floods of the first pens are covered with removable cloth, and there is no sand that the chicks can pick up and so injure their tender organa. The first food is a bare pinch of finely ground corn placed on a board. The chicks learn to go to the hoard for food, and it ia

always found there and nowhere else. At pen No. 8 the cloth is replaced hy sand on the boards. Water is furnished from a selffeeding can with a narrow trought around it. Gentle heat come from hot water pipes a foot or so from the floor over one end of the pen, the distance from the floor being increased every ten pens. The ground corn diet is increased gradually from pen.to pen until they reach pen 30, when a handful is given three times a day for the entire brood On the 31st day of their lives' the chicks are transferred from the nursery to the “ horse shoe/’ a similar, hut far larger building, under the same roof, 840. feet in length, the end of it. being right across the driveway from the starting point On the theory that a chick when cold will crouch on the ground, expecting heat from above, “ mothers ” are provided In each pen is a largo metal disc, which reflects down the heat from two natural gas burners under it, the discs become higher from the ground in every pen. This keeps the temperatura at about 65 deg, 15 deg. lower than in the nursery Supplementary heat can he furnished frpm steam pipes, and ventilation is afforded by cold air ducks every 37 feet. The population of the “ horseshoe” averages 21,000, that of the nursery 9000, making a total of 30,000, chicks of all ages. (To be continued)