CUSTOM HATCHING

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 104, 4 May 1935, Page 32

CUSTOM HATCHING

DAY-OLD CHICK SEXING

Next month many thousands of eggs will be set for incubation, as many commercial egg producers believe that July-hatched chicks thrive better than-the later ones. When intensive management is practised this can be expected, but on free range or under ordinary farm conditions the September and October chicks will do better. Of more recent years, particularly with the advent of mammoth electric brooders, custom hatching has become very popular. It is a natural development in an everincreasing industry that specialisation should result. The poultry breeder will always prefer to hatch his own chickens,/but the smallholder who keeps less than 500 layers will quickly appreciate the advantages of using the facilities offered by the larger incubating plants.

Assuming that 250 pullets are wanted, then about 650 chicks will be required to allow for 50 per cent, being cockerels and a few' as culls. One thousand good fertile eggs should yield 650 chicks, and these will be incubated for a charge of about £6 10s. Not only is all the worry of incubation xsaved, but there is a distinct saving in overhead expenses.

All that the farmer has to do is to save his fertile eggs and pack them carefully, leaving the hatchery proprietor to collect the eggs and in due course deliver so many bonny day-old chicks. Since all of the mammoth machines have small trays, there is no possible chance of any eggs or chicks becoming mixed up. Custom hatching is decidedly a service to small egg producers by larger poultrymen, and it is doubtful if New Zealand will ever provide the up-to-date purely hatchery plants available in some thickly poultry populated countries. Those poultrymen who have not sufficient incubater capacity already would be wise to consider making use of custom hatching rather than to increase .then overhead charges by purchasing more of the old-fashioned incubators. Eggs will travel safely almost any distance, but fertile eggs for incubation purposes should be as fresh and clean a? possible. On no account shoula hatching eggs be washed or wiped, as this only blocks up the pores of the shell.