Incubators.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 224, 15 October 1887, Page 3

Incubators.

(By Chanticleer. )

Amoxgst poultry breeders there is still considerable difference of opinion as to the practical value of artificial incubation in the breeding of poultry. There are some people who appear to take a pleasure in adopting any plan which professes to be an improvement on the arrangements of nature. They are always ready to believe that human invention and intelligence has surpassed the clumsy devices of Providence. But they forget that the only successful inventions of man are thosB in which the inventors have either imitated nature as closely as possible, or have discovered howto apply one of her laws which bofore no one knew anything about. Another class of people have a prejudice again&t anything which professes to be superior to the primitive processes of nature left to herself. Directly anyone attempts to so make use of natural laws that results are produced which could not be produced without the directing and governing mind of man they condemn the method adopted as " so unnatural, you know !" or, in more homely language, "agin natur." Either of theso attitudes of the mind is avoided by the man of practical sense. Ho uses, if it suits him, artificial means to accomplish his purposes in such a way as not to run counter to any inherent principle of nature. In the hatching of eggs the natural law he cannot disregard is the necessity for an equable temperature of a certain degree, most of the heat being derived from above the eggs. Proper ventilation and moisture are two other essentials which he has to provide, and liko the old hen he has to turn the egcs from time to time if he wants to hatch the chickens successfully. There is nothing artificial in all this, which U provided for in a good incubator. The artificial part of the affair is the means by which these necessary conditions are obtained. Nature does it by an old hen in a fever ; man does it by means of a box and a kerosene lamp. I am not going to say that in the matter of rearing chickens the hen has no advantage over the incubator, because she certainly has merits as a chicken-rearer that no artificial apparatus possesses. Her chief merit is that the owner of the chickens need not take so much personal trouble about them when they are in charge of a good natui-al mother as when they are reared in artificial brooders or what not of that kind. That is the reason why some men would do no good with incubators unless they had hens ready to take charge of the chickens as they were hatched. In the first place, many people would never take the requisite trouble to be successful in raising chickens without a hen mother, while others, even if they were enthusiastic enough to take the trouble, would not know all that was required of them, and would not have the knack of picking it up. A good poultry breeder, as I have often said, is born, and not made. Of course everyone, however naturally fitted for the work, requires experience, but all the experience and practice in the world would never teach some people how to manage fowls properly. Right here, as the Yankees say, I may give readers of Thk Farmer the views of a practical poultry man on incubators. This man is G. 0. Brown, who conducts the poultry department in the American Farmer, Answering a correspondent who writes giving his objections to incubators he says:— "He" (the objector) " seems to forget that there are thousands of people who are ' running ' the machines, who acknowledge they have far better success than they did with the hens, hatching a larger per cent. We fully agree with 1 him that with the average farmer an incubator would be useless— but not because the machine would not work perfectly, but for vhe reason that the ' average farmer ' would • run ' it in about as careless and indifferent a way as he generally manages his setting • hens. Farmers, or indeed anyone else, need never expect to be successful with an incubator, when they try to manipulate it as a side issue. Success in any undertaking is assured only by close application, and a certain knowledge of how and when -to do a thing — and doiwj it at the proper time. Managing an incubator is not the exceedingly difficult job generally, imagined, it requires a little system or regularity— -and 1 have managed one with less than half an hour's time each day, and hatched ninety per cent, the entire season, and during the time was called away iour days and nights — \ and my daughter, then twelve years old, was shown how to attend to it in ten minutes, and had not theleastdifficulty duringmy absence. There is very little trouble hatching the chicks ; that is comparatively easy— but to raise the Ichicks artificially is much more difficult. ' Simply hatching the eggs isn't infringing on or trying to out-do the laws of nature — but the artificial mother [hovering) is, as the nano' implies artificial. Doubtless the ' best way— even' where an incubator is used, is to set also a lot of hens, and after one week remove the eggs to the incubator, and as soon a3 there are twentyfive or thirty chicks hatched out— a£ night give them to one of the setting hens and put her eggs'inthemachine. In this way each hen can be made to secure some of the required rest nature may require, and to a degree satisfy her motherly instincts— as well as giving her a larger brood than she would have the old way, and thereby making her of much more practical value. "Among the advantages an incubator possesses, you may set your oggfc when you are ready, If you wish to mark p, chicken from a certain egg you can watch for its coining and do so. The incubator does not < break your best eggs, and besmear a whole nesfc, spoiling all ; doesn't step on the young chicks and crush them as soon as they are hatched ; doesn't leave the egga to got cold ;

and -go ond-dust on~th& -warm sido of the shed and forget its business ; doesn fc try to go into angry partnership with another hen 1 , and in doing so break m> her embryo family and let her own get chilled ; doesn fc get its back up and persist in Sitting standing up; doesn't turn cannibal when you have paid three dollars for aJsittmg of eggs, and turn around and eat them up ; doesn't bring out a lot of chicks completely covered with vermin— well, not much, but it does go steadily on attending to busmess, and if the farmer or whoever may be in charge of the machine will do his part all will be well and satisfactory: While the objections to the' hen are^-well, just about what we've said the incubator doesn t do, the hens can pretty generally be depended "up6ntodo." . I can't go quite so far as Mr Brown in his attack on the old hen as an egg-hatcher. Most of the crimes he lays to her charge have been committed by hens, and may be again ; but it is going too far to say that they may " generally be depended upon to commit all these villanies. Proper management has a great deal to do with a hen's "behaviour on a nest of eggs ; and then good careful sitters can always be chosen, especially if you keep some crossbred Gamo- Brahma hens.