+-----------------+ +-----------------+ | INCUBATOR NO. | |HOVER NO. | +-----------------+ +-----------------+ |Set P. M. 191 | | 191 | +-----------------+ +-----------------+ | Eggs | | Chicks | | Clear | +-----------------+ | Dead | |on 191 | | ---- ---- | +-----------------+ | Hatchable | |Moved to | +-----------------+ | Colony House No.| | Chicks| +-----------------+ +-----------------+ | | |Turn P. M.| | | +-----------------+ | | |14th day | | | +-----------------+ | | |18th day | | | +-----------------+ | | |21st day | | | +-----------------+ +-----------------+ [Illustration: BROODER HOUSE SHOWING CHICK RUNS Extension of Building Nearing Completion] CHAPTER XIX Rearing Chicks in Brooder House--The Following Two Years’ Results Depend Upon Success in Brooding The Brooder House is built over the Sprouted Oats Cellar and the Incubator Cellar. Its total length is 264 feet. 118 feet of this is 16 feet wide, and the balance is 22 feet wide. Incubation might be termed a mechanical operation, and, as outlined in the previous chapter, a very fair hatch is usually obtained. But after all is said and done artificial rearing of young chicks is the most difficult problem which a poultryman has to solve. Chicks running with a hen will stand climatic conditions, and in fact thrive under conditions, which, if they were being handled in a Brooder House, would mean a tremendous mortality. The hen will feed her brood on substances which would mean the annihilation of ones’ entire flock of youngsters, should one attempt it, and, perhaps, the most curious feature of the feeding part is the fact that one may give the brood, running with the hen, food Nature never intended a small chick to eat, and many of the brood will thrive on it, and the mortality will, in most cases, be confined to the weak ones. Corn Not Proper Chick Food In past decades, wet corn meal seemed to be about the standard ration which the chicks were fed on by the farmer’s wife, and in fact this practice has not yet entirely gone out. Naturally, it brought about a large mortality which everyone deplored but could not understand. Corn in any form was never intended for a chick to eat, but when you place it before them in the form of meal, and this made into a sloppy mass, the wonder is, not at the largeness of the mortality, but rather that any of them live at all.