Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 June 1893 — A “Broiler Factory.” [ARTICLE]

A “Broiler Factory.”

In an article on the big farm of Ex. Vice-President Morton, on the Hudson, the New York Tribune says: Tho poultry departmental'rather the “broiler factory,” for that is really what it is, remains to be notioed. This consists of a group of buildings from which are sent to market each week about 500 artificially incubated chickens, that is, between 20,000 and 25,000 a year. Ten incubators, Prairie State and Pineland, are kept in constant use, and all the desirable eggs that can be bought in the neighborhood are consigned to the developing care of these inventions. About half of the eggs put in hatch out alive. About 20 per cent are found clear and therefore unfertile on candling four days after starting. Three-fourths of the chicks go safely through- the brooders and are sold as broilers at eight to fourteen weeks from hatching, weighing when ready for market about one and a half pounds. The brooding arrangement is very simple. It consists merely of a pen, five by fifteen feet, across which, near one end, run four inch-and-a-half hot-water pipes covered with a board and screened on each side by a flannel curtain. Forty-eight of these pens are arranged in an L-shaped building, 168 feet long one way and 108 feet the other; and, as each pen accommodates 100 voracious little chicks —which pass from pen to pen as they grow, the height of the top board of the brooder varying from four and a half inches for the babies up to a foot for the graduating class—the animation of the scene may be imagined. It is intended to breed poultry largely, as well as to hatch it, keeping white breeds exclusively. It is thought that by crossing white Plymouth Rock cocks on white Minorca hens, whose eggs are particularly large, white and attractive, a select trade in “fancy” eggs may readily be acquired