The Dollar Hen Part 9

Where the middle part.i.tion fence adjoins the front fence, a well is driven. A water line is run down the part.i.tion fence to the rear yard.

The plot around the house is set in permanent crops, such as berries, fruit trees, asparagus, rhubarb, etc. Of the other three yards, at least one is kept in growing marketable crops. Every inch is cultivated, and crops of the leafy nature, as lettuce, cabbage, kale and spinach, are chiefly grown, as they utilize the rich nitrogenous poultry manure to the best advantage, and the waste portions, or worthless crops, are utilized for the poultry. The method of supplying the fowls with green food is entirely by soiling. This means to grow the food in an adjoining lot and throw it over the fence. The above mentioned crops are all good for the purpose. Rape, which is not grown for human food, is also excellent.

Kale is one of the very best crops for soiling purposes. It is planted in the fall and fed by pulling off the lower leaves during the winter. In the spring the hardened stalks stand at a considerable height and the field may be used for growing young chicks, giving shade, and at the same time producing abundant green feed, without any immediate labor, which means a great saving in the busy season.

A set of panels or netting stretched on light frames is provided.

They are of sufficient number to set along the longest side of one of the fields. A strip along the fence, four or five feet wide, can be planted to sunflowers, corn, rape, kale, or other rank growing crop and the panels leaned against the fence to protect the young plants from the hens. In this way the fence rows can be kept provided with the shade of growing crops, which relieves the otherwise serious fault of this plan of poultry farming, in that the hens would be required to live in absolutely barren and sunburned lots, for we propose to keep five or six hundred hens on one and a half acres of ground, and no green things could get a start without protection.

Rotate the houses from field to field as often as the crops allow.

Never permit hens to run in one bare field for more than six months at a time. Always keep every inch of ground not in use by the chickens, luxuriant in something green. If you have a crop of vegetables which are about matured, drill rape or crimson clover between the rows; by the time the crop is harvested and the hens are to be moved in, such crops will have made a good growth. The hens will kill it out but it will be a "profitable killing."

By this system of intensive combination of trucking and poultry farming, we have a combination which for small capital and small lands cannot be beaten. The hens should yield better than a dollar profit per head on this plan; the one and a half acres automatically fertilized and intensely cultivated, growing two or three crops a year, should easily double the income.

Twelve hundred dollars a year is a conservative estimate for the net income from such a plant, and the original investment, exclusive of residence, will not be over one thousand dollars.

CHAPTER VI

INCUBATION

The differences in the process of reproduction in birds and mammals is frequently misunderstood. The laying of the bird's egg is not a.n.a.logous to the birth of young in mammals.

The female, whether bird or beast, forms a true egg which must be fertilized by the male sperm cell before the offspring can develop.

In the mammal, if fertilization does not occur, the egg which is inconspicuous, pa.s.ses out of the body and is lost. If fertilized, it pa.s.ses into the womb where the young develops through the embryonic stages, being supplied with nourishment and oxygen directly by the mother.

In the bird, the egg, fertilized or unfertilized, pa.s.ses out of the body and, being of conspicuous size, is readily observed. The size of the egg is due to the supply of food material which is comparable with that supplied to the mammalian young during its stay in the mother's womb.

The reptiles lay eggs that are left to develop outside of the body of the mother, subject to the vicissitudes of the environment. The young of the bird, being warm blooded, cannot develop without more uniform temperature than weather conditions ordinarily supply. This heat is supplied by the instinctive brooding habit of the mother bird.

Fertility of Eggs

In a state of nature the number of eggs laid by wild fowl are only as many as can be covered by the female. These are laid in the spring of the year, and one copulation of the male bird is sufficient to fertilize the entire clutch. Under domestication, the hen lays quite indefinitely, and is served by the male at frequent intervals. The fertilizing power of the male bird extends over a period of about 15 days.

For most of my readers, it will be unnecessary to state that the male has no influence upon the other offspring than those which he actually fertilizes within this period. The belief in the influence of the first male upon the later hatches by another male is simply a superst.i.tion.

The domestic chicken is decidedly polygamous. The common rule is one male to 12 or 15 hens. I have had equally good results, however, with one male to 20 hens. In the Little Compton and South Sh.o.r.e districts, one male is used for thirty or even forty hens.

By infertile eggs is meant eggs in which the sperm cell has never united with the ovum. Such eggs may occur in a flock from the absence of the male, from his disinclination or physical inability to serve the hens, from the weakness or lack of vitality in the sperm cells, from his neglect of a particular hen, from lifelessness, or lack of vitality in the ovule, or from chance misses, by which some eggs fail to be reached by the sperm cells.

In practice, lack of s.e.xual inclination in a vigorous looking rooster is very rare indeed. The more likely explanation is that he neglects some hens, or that the eggs are fertilized, but the germs die before incubation begins, or in the early stages of that process. The former trouble may be avoided by having a relay of roosters and shutting each one up part of the time. The latter difficulty will be diminished by setting the egg as fresh as possible, meanwhile storing them in a cool place. The other factors to be considered in getting fertile eggs, are so nearly synonymous with the problems of health and vitality in laying stock generally, that to discuss it here would be but a repet.i.tion of ideas.

In connection with the discussion of fertile eggs, I want to point out the fact that the whole subject of fertility as distinct from hatchability, is somewhat meaningless. The facts of the case are, that whatever factors in the care of the stock will get a large percentage fertile eggs, will also give hatchable eggs and vice versa. This is to be explained by the fact that most of the unfertile eggs tested out during incubation, are in reality dead germs in which death has occurred before the chick became visible to the naked eye. Such deaths should usually be ascribed to poor parentage, but may be caused by wrong storage or incubation.

Likewise, it would not be just to credit all deaths after chicks became visible to wrong incubation, although the most of the blame probably belongs there.

Likewise, with brooder chicks, we must divide the credit of their livability in an arbitrary fashion between parentage, incubation, and care after hatching.

By the hatchability of eggs, we then mean the percentage of eggs set that hatch chicks able to walk and eat. By the livability of chicks, we mean the percentage of chicks hatched that live to the age of four weeks, after which they are subject to no greater death rate than adult chickens. By the livability of eggs, we mean the product of these two factors, i.e.: the percentage of chicks at four weeks of age based upon the total number of eggs set.

As before mentioned, the fertility of eggs bears fairly definite relation to the hatchability, so likewise the hatchability bears a relation to the livability of chicks. When poor hatches occur because of weak germs, as because of faulty incubation, this same injury to the chick's organism is carried over and causes a larger death among the hatched chicks.

Moreover, the relation between the two is not the same with all cla.s.ses of hatches, but as hatches get poorer the mortality among the chicks increases at an accelerating rate. The following table gives a rough approximation of these ratios:

Per cent. of Per cent. of chick Per cent. of egg Hatchability. Livability. Livability.

100 100 100 90 95 85 80 88 70 70 84 50 60 72 43 50 55 27 40 40 16 30 24 7 20 10 2 10 2 1

These figures are based on incubator data. Eggs set under hens usually give a hatchability of 50 per cent. to 65 per cent., and livability of 70 per cent. to 80 per cent. The reason for the greater livability is that the real hatchability of the eggs is 70 per cent. to 75 per cent., and is reduced by mechanical breakage.

The hatchability of eggs varies with the season. This variation is commonly ascribed to nature, it being stated that springtime is the natural breeding season, and therefore eggs are of greater fertility.

While there may be a little foundation for this idea, the chief cause is to be found in the manner of artificial incubation, as will be discussed in a later section of this chapter. The following table is given as the seasonable hatchability for northern states. This is based on May hatch of 50 per cent:

January 38 July 40 February 42 August 40 March 47 September 42 April 49 October 43 May 50 November 40 June 46 December 35

Most people have an exaggerated idea of the hen's success as a hatcher. I have a number of records of hen hatching with large numbers of eggs set, and they are all between 55 per cent. and 60 per cent. The reasons the hen does not hatch better are as follows:

First: Actual infertile eggs--usually, running about 10 per cent. in the best season of the year.

Second: Mechanical breakage.

Third: Eggs accidentally getting chilled by rolled to one side of the nests, or by the sick, lousy or crazy hens leaving the nests or standing up on the eggs.

Fourth: Eggs getting damp from wet nests, dung or broken eggs; thus causing bacterial infection and decay.

The last three causes are not present in artificial incubation. From my observation they cause a loss of 15 per cent. of the eggs that fail to hatch, when hens are managed in large numbers. This would properly credit our hens with hatches running from 70 per cent. to 75 per cent., which, for reasons later explained, is not equal to hatches under the best known conditions of artificial incubation.

The a.s.sumption that the hen is a perfect hatcher, even barring accidents and the inherited imperfection of the egg, is not, I think, in harmony with our general conception of nature. Not only are eggs under the hens subject to unfavorable weather conditions, but the hen, to satisfy her whims or hunger, frequently remains too long away from the eggs, allowing them to become chilled.

For directions of how to manage setting hens, consult the Chapter on "Poultry on the General Farm."

The Wisdom of the Egyptians.

Up to the present there have been just three types of artificial incubation that have proven successful enough to warrant our attention. These are:

First, the modern wooden-box-kerosene-lamp incubator which is seen at its best development in the United States.

Second, the Egyptian incubator of ancient origin, which is a large clay oven holding thousands of eggs and warmed by smouldering fires of straw.

Third, the Chinese incubator, much on the principle of the Egyptian hatchery, but run in the room of an ordinary house, heated with charcoal braziers and used only for duck eggs.

I have no accurate information on the results of the Chinese method, and as it is not used for hen eggs, we will confine our attention to the first two processes only.

I do not care to go into detail in discussing makes of box incubators, but I will mention briefly the chief points in the development of our present machines.

The first difficulties were in getting lamps, regulators, etc., that would give a uniform temperature. This now has been worked out to a point where, with any good incubator and an experienced operator, the temperature of the egg chamber is readily kept within the desired range.