Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 November 1891 — MOTHERLESS CHICKS. [ARTICLE]

MOTHERLESS CHICKS.

SURPRISES AT A LONG ISLAND POULTRY FARM. <t ' —— Where the Thermometer Rules— Thousands of Birds Within Call, but Few in Sight—ln the Brooding House. Hundreds of little balls of fluffy down, sedate old bens, arrogant roosters, velvety, lily white ducks. They are all within reach of the mildest halloo and yet not a dozen of them in sight at once. That is the first impression one gets of a large, well ordered poultry farm. It is a curious impression, too. The underpinning of your ideas seems utterly out of gear. Where is the traditional cluck-cluck and the feathered bustle of the barnyard you know so well? Then you suddenly remember. Modern science has stepped in with her incubators and her mixed feed and deposed Mother Nature on her own ground. The “settin 7 heu” is good, but the hot air box is more reliable. “The chickens and the ducks are all there '‘behind the scenes” in a long row of frame buildings. The poultry farm of to-day is run on scientific principles. The machinery does not wear itself, it is far too well oiled. But you may feel its motion. “Sandacre,” the country scat of Robers Colgate, on the outskirts of the village of Quogue, L. 1., within sight and sound of the blue Atlantic, is at once one of the most famous and representative of modem poultry farms. It is famous because of its size audits varieties of fancy fowl, representative because every innovation and improvement is brought into play within its boundaries. Once upon a time there was a farm on the New Jersey sands that far exceeded it. But now that Jersey chicken settlement has handed over its glories and “Sandacre” reigns—unique at least. “Sandacre Farm” as it is to-day is the outgrowth of years. Mr. Colgato has long been a fancier of i*ote. But until recently he has always exhibited in the name of his manager and kept, aloof from the turmoil of county ai>d state fairs. It was the organization of the New York Poultry and Pigeon Association that brought him before tire public •as a man of fowl. He was not one of the association’s originators, but summoned to the very first conclave .he made his mark among those who were and was •elected the first president. 'Phis post he has filled ener-sinoe. I visited "Sandacre Farm” on a hot .morning. The sunlight lay warm and glistening on the brown roofs of the long row of chicken houses and the waters of Quogue Bay—ra magnificent duck poud, truly —shimmering in the glare. “Sundacre" is most appropriately named, und, to paraphrase a 'bit, it might well be called “a fowls paradise.” And the! Scriptural injunction has been obeyed. The soil .is -sandy.everywhere, hut it,is not upon the sand .that these houses have been built.

Gay lor, the .manager, awaited me at the incubator house door. And a strangely interesting person I found this Gaylor. He was a man of science, a machinest, an electrician, an.inventor und atfancior all rolled into one. The incubator in use (there were two others in the little house) was of his own make, piece by piece, and lie eould.tinker any part of it should noed'be. August;is betwixt.and between seasons for the mechanical hatching of .chickens and ducks. The greatest .activity is in the early months of the year. Then brood.follows hrood without the lot*.of a day. Seven hundred and fifty eggs are put in.the hatcher at one time, though its actual capacity is double that. “Has.experience proved .the incubator a greater success than .the old-fashioned barnyard.hen?” J asked. “Yes,.and no,” nnswered.the.manager, witli .a reflective .whisker .twirl. “The incubator .chickens ore no stronger.and no better than.those hatched in the natural way. But it, is difficult.to .get setting lions, enough etf tbeml mean. Then .again, the proportion.of loss.is very much-smviler in the hatcher. . Look at this machinery and you will see why. And again it was impressed upon me how modern science is able to give points to nature. The.eggs rest in rows on .wire-bottomed trays, eighty-five to ninety-eggs,to a.tray. These trays-slide in and out of the hatcher like desk .drawers. Along the top run ten iron pipes, five for the flow .of water, five for its return. Several .inches lower extends a .thermostat of peculiar design. It is a bar df hard rubber, oue-sixteenih of an inch thick and .one inch wide. It is held taut by a powerful spring and a bar controlled by it plays between the points of an electric cirouit, completing it by touchingtev.ery point, breaking it by standing midway . The .thermostat is regulated to 102-102 b-2 .degrees, the lamp is lit, .the hot water circulates through the pipes. The temperature rises above 102 1-2, the circuit is.completed uud a clock work is put into inetioua, which shoves a loose slee-v* or snuff er «vcr the .lamp wick aaad opens the ventilators. When the temperature has fallen one degree the thermostatic bar files to the ather point. The clockwork moves again, the sleeve is lifted -off the lamp wick, the light blazes up again and the ventilators are closed.

Seemingly the mechanism is perfect, but there is yet another safeguard. A second thermostat is in the machine. This is regulated between 95 and 105, the danger points of incubation. When the temperature touches either of these the, circuit is completed, and three electric bells ring—one in Sandacre mansion, another in the manager's house, the third in the brooding house. It is a danger signal by night as well as by day, seldom if ever sounded, but a hatch of 750 eggs is too precious to tuke risks with, and some sudden mischance might befall. • Each egg is carefully scrutinized as it goes into the trays and many times thereafter. The examination is an interior one, though made wholly from the outsid°. Hens’ eggs are studied by lamp light, the concentration of rays joeing needed. Ducks’ eggs, however, are more transparent and can be looked over at any time. The period.of incubation is eighteen to twenty-two days for hens, twentysix to twenty-eight for ducks’. The science of the poultry farm is not only not ended, but it is just begun when the chick comes out of his shell. In the barnyard the fledgling is thrown upon the cold, hard world at once, and he must scratch for himself even before he cuts his eye teeth, os it were. With the in-cubator-raised chick it is very different. A silver spoon is truly in his mouth. From the hatching Toom he is carried directly to the brooding house. The brooding house is divided into eight “peas.” each about 4xlo, and with tiny “runs” in the sunlight under glass. In the front are rows of steam pipes, which keep the room at on even temperature of a little over seventy, and the chicks huddle up close to *t night*

fall in default of a mother’s warm wings. The floor is well sanded and the “run” outside is made of sandy soil itself. Here the fledglings learn to scratch in an amateur sort of way. Npt for a livelihood—they are too well provided with food for that—but from a natural instinct. The food for the first three days is pinhead oatmeal. Then there follows a week’s diet of old-fashioned johnny cake, baked hard for two hours in a slow oven, ground fine and fed dry. ltis composed of corn meal, wheat bran and ground beef scrap. After this their rations are those of the older fowl, a mixture of com meal, wheat bran, bone meal scrap and ground charcoal. In the winter chopped cabbage is added to make up for their loss of other greou foods. The chick hospital haugs on the wall near by. It is a big cage divided into four wards, or rather compartments, where the fledglings can roceivo especial care and warmth. Medicine is seldom necessary. The weighing machiue is but a few feet off. This, too, is a cage, the flooring resting immediately on the scale. The chick’s promotion to the sea*alary brooding house depends.mainly upon the weather. It is ordinarily a matter of three or four weeks. The secondary brooding house has twenty rooms, each sxß, and open air “runs” of fifty-two feet, separated from each other and the outside world by screens of wire, netting higher than a man’s head. Fifty chicks are placed in each room instead of one hundred, which is the rule in the other houses. Here the young fowl first feels the responsibilities of life. He is deprived of artificial heat and now has a broad field to run and scratch in. But the poultry village is yet incomplete. There is a feed and cook shop, a buutnin house, a building for “surplus” birds, half a dozen small breeding houses, with large yards attached, and the duck buildings down on the edge of Quogue Bay, with a duck pond that is a veritable Southern Sea close at hand. ’The ducks, however, are omnipresent. They have a large yard all to themsolves in the midst of the poultry's domains, and in the heat of the day it is a pretty picture, a flock -of fifty or more of a glossy, glistening white, huddled in the shade of am upright bough arbor of pale brown, with the sparse green grass of the sandy soil as a frame. They are quite unconscious of their -end, -of coarse. And yet the chopping block stands in that very yard. They .have been driven up from the water's edge especially for decapitation. Tho reason of the markots has now come upon them and from fifty to a hundred are killed .each week. But this is but a ■drop iin the bucket fora duck yard producing two or (three thousand a year.— .[.Ne-w York Telegram.