HATCHING SEASON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19719, 19 August 1927, Page 17

HATCHING SEASON.

USES OF INCUBATORS. WHEN THEY ARE PROFITABLE. AVERAGES OF RESULTS. BY G.H. Setting eggs for hatching has begun in earnest. The greater part of this early work is done with incubators. Therefore, we shall consider the subject of artificial incubation. Many poultrymen have serious doubts whether an incubator is worth while. They obtain excellent and certain results from the good old-fashioned way of setting a hen on the eggs. Fhey think twice belore entrusting the duty of hatching to a man-made machine, especially if they intend themselves to rear the chicks natched, because that will mean providing a loster-mother or brooder as well. Incubation is highly profitable when you sol) the chicks as day-olds. If you can work up a demand for a regular quantity of chicks per month you can reckon to make 25 per cent, profit on every one you selk Chicks usually are worth twice the price of eggs. This allows you a margin of 25 per cent, for expenses and losses in hatching, with the extra 25 per cent, as profit. There is rather more profit if you have pedigree hens of your own for breeding. You can sell day-old chicks where you cannot sell eggs for hatching. A good profit on each chick on 300 sold during the months of July, August, September, and May goes a long way toward paying for the cost of the 100-egg machine necessary to produce this number. A good small incubator ought to produce 90 chicks from every 100 fertile eggs. Sometimes you will make mistakes, and lose many through no fault of the incubator. J?rom a large incubator 85 per cent, of chicks would be good. The larger the incubator the lower will bo the hatching percentages. Poultry farmers who use "Mammoth" machines, however, reckon that what they lose in eggs they save in labour, so that they are satisfied with 75 per cent. Durability o! Best Machines. You can afford to get the best incubator. It will last you ten years at least, probably twenty. After the first two seasons you will have paid off the entire cost from your profits, and have only your fuel expenses to pay for the next few years. The best size of incubator to get is one that will hatch 100 eggs at a time. Twenty-five egg incubators are good enough if you hatch only for yourself, but they cannot produce chicks enough to make profits out of selling them. Three hundred egg machines are not usually so satisfactory as the 100 egg incubators, and they bring heavy losses should you neglect to fill the lamp, or commit any other sin of omission. The best place to work an incubator is in the cellar. If you have not a cellar, put your machine on the ground floor, somewhere at the back of the house. A shed will do Good incubators maintain correct hatching temperature, no matter how the temperature of the room varies. The thing that is not good for incubation is vibration, and that is why you should place your machine at the back of the house, away from the rumble of passing traffic. Many hatches are spoiled because beginners start off with thirty eggs in a machine, thinking that they can add more week by week. This is a mistake. It is possible to hatch twenty eggs, or to hatch a hundred, but the number it is intended to hatch must be started from the first. Every time a cold egg is added to a machine containing semi-live eggs, which have been there a week or more, the vitality of the existing embryos is lowered with disastrous results. Test Incubators Before Using. Have a regular time to attend to the machine. Fill, clean, and trim the lamp so *hat the flame burns steadily at the height prescribed in the instructions. Turn the eggs twice a day, and cool them once. There is an important point in this connection not mentioned in any incubator insrtuctions I know of—turn the eggs first and clean the lamp afterwards. Take care that your machine is straight on its table. Test, with a spirit level, and, if necessary, wedge up the legs. Run the machine empty for a few days before trusting your eggs to it. Take the thermometers round to your chemist and get him to make sure that they are perfectly accurate. I "have no patience with the man or woman who is always changing the breed of fowls kept. Such a person never gets anywhere in the end. It is much better to "choose a breed or two breeds, and then turn a deaf ear to the tempter who suggests trying a pen of some new breed. The fancy breeds have their points—l believe many of them are splendid breeds—but the average poultry-keeper should stick to the commoner breeds. ■ White Leghorns still hold the record for egg production, and it is possible to buy them at reasonable figures all over the countrv. Good White Leghorns are so plentiful that there is no excuse for any farmer having mongrels, or a strain that does not lay. I know the reply to the suggestion that the White Leghorn should not be kept, viz., that it is no good for the table. I would not dream of breeding White Leghorns for the table, but I breed them for eggs, and I find the by-product, viz., the cockerels, very useful and very numerous. Birds for the Table. I breed Black Orpingtons for the tabic. They are table birds; fine, heavy fellows with wide, fiat backs, and large legs that are well covered with meat. Sometimes a cross between black hens and an Indian Game cockerel is very good. The chicks are wonderfully sturdy and good to look at. Good quality stock—that is what our farms need. Anyone who intends raising a few fowls had best begin by buying first-class stock of the breed, or at the most, two breeds, he or sho intends to stick to. Fowls which have access to a good grass paddock or to rich arable land will not need as much as if kept upon poor, sandy soil. Then, too, the time of year makes all the difference in the world to the amount to be supplied to the fowls. During (he growing period of the year, when there is an abundance of natural food in the soil, it would be folly to supply the fowls with the same amount as during the cold, wintrv weather. It, hns beer) shown, therefore, how impossible it. is to lay down any hard and fast rule as regards the exact quantity ot food to be supplied to the birds. There is a happv medium to strike, and tins, can only be done by handling the birds every few weeks, and regulating the supply oi food accordingly. Some Useful Hints. ■ If straw or hay is used for litter, be sure that it is dry. clean and bright. Musty or mouldy litter, or damp, filthy jitter, is sure to cause trouble The vices of feather-pulling and eating are always more in over-crowded flocks' than in 'quarters where there is plenty of space for the fowls to exercise. Strain is valuable, but we want the bird as well. The trap-nest is the one reliable guide, and every young poultrykeepei needs to get this fact stiongly impressed on his mind The feeder has no chance to show his ability when handicapped with birds of poor breeding, when his birds are housed in uncomfortable houses, or when his layers were hatched at the wrong time. But whenever a high laying record is made it is a sure mark of the touch of a master hand at feeding, and credit is due to a man who can keep a flock at a high production throughout an entire season.