POULTRY NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 199, 24 June 1903, Page 4

POULTRY NOTES.

[Br Wyandotte ] Items of interest will be thankfully received from poultry-raiseri. Pleisa address to " "Wyandotte," Saws office.]

AHTIFIOIAL ISCUBATION. FANOIER3 AND INCUBATORS. | Fcmeieri Gazette.] Oah a poultry fancier well afford to do without an iccubator ? This is a question we would have ti answer with "No," for the reason that an old hen will sit just when sho wants to and not before, regardless of all your loving and petticg. If you were wanting early chicks for next winter shows (early ones make the best Aow birds) and you were waiting en her to take tha silting notion, you would be apl to be disappointed, and be sure to lose several valuable eg?s whila waiting on her to make up ber mind. Bat with an incubator you may sit it any time you wish and have early thickers, which you cm almost see growing into fine show- birds. Another reason, the would-be poultry m raiser is not apt to want to sit a fioe breeiiog hen, so he is obliged to buy bis sitting hen, and by this he is apt to bring into his flx-k disease?, such as cholera, roup, etc., also 1 ce, if ha hat not already got them, which he should not have if fce his used powder and lice-killer freely. And then a hen maybe siting or, fifteen fine eggs, and before you know . it she has changed her micd, and bid her nest adieu, and you, her servant, hive a lot of valuable egg 3 that you were expecting to have hatch 3d in due time nicety-six-prints birds from every egg, bat also, you fiod you are mistakes. You have fifteen spoiled 6£gs. Three or four hens are almost as much trouble, if not more so, than an incubator, and then it tak< s from thirteen to fifteen hens to place in a two-hundred-egg incubator. If thasa henswere sold on the market they would bring money enough to buy oil to run an incubator the whole s a?on. I have been ssked if I thick (h» incubator batches as wall as hens, I answer, " Ye*, indeed I do," and better, too. It is true a htn irisy sis on fifteen eggs and hatch fif *een cnicks, bus how often is this the casi ? It is more often they hatch only three or four chicks. You may take any good make 0: incubator (<md there are plenty cf gcod makes to fe'ect from), and p'ace good fertile eggs that have no' been chilled in them, and you may get from 75 to 90 per cent., batches. The umn object is to have tha breeding stock io good healthy condition. Thy.-hcu.! ;.tive good, warm, dry houaco, .vi.a ploaty of light and free from divifts. I have seen good farmers who thought tbey would bni'd more for outside shows than f.r thi comfort of their fowls. Toey wou'd think they were doing fiae by putt'ng glass windows in i"-, hut the windows would be bo high that the sun would never strike the floor, and tben they would p tint in red and trim in white, and then they would think what a fioe new red ben house they bad, with sLes windows' and whi - e corns r<?. But come, let's go inside, and we may Cad cracks that you could poke your fiager thrcugh on all sides, and the tbor a dirty filthy mess. It would look as if it had not baen cleaned out all the wiuter. We would fiod to scratching department, with plenty o? elaau, 'dry straw, but would fce sure to find a row of ceats on all sides of tiie bub thes3 wculi not tempt hens. And still these farmers would bemiaa their hens and say they hvi cot gjt an egg all the winter.