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Show USE INCUBATORS ONLY Real Function of Hen Usurped by Modern Machine. Artificial Incubation Only Kind in Use by Big Commercial Plants and "Sideline" Man Really Should Employ One. (By C. S. ANDERSON, Colorado Agricultural Agri-cultural College, Fort Collins, Colo.) Modern hatching of eggs is exclusively exclu-sively an incubator proposition. There are no large commercial poultry plants or specialized poultry men conducting businesses of any consequence that are not using artificial incubation. The number of side-line poultry men and farmers buying incubators is rapidly increasing. in-creasing. In fact, it is a question whether even the city poultry man, with a few hens in his back yard, can afford to be without one. To meet his need, there is the small electric-heated, 50-egg 50-egg capacity machine successfully operated op-erated in most any room in the house, or even on the back porch. Going to the other extreme, the mammoth commercial com-mercial hatchery machine of 5,000 to 10.000-egg capacity is not uncommon. Between these two extremes is the 250 to 300-egg machine, the kind best suited to the needs of the farmer-poultry man. The initial cost of a reliable machine of this size will vary between 5 and 10 cents per egg capacity. To operate a 300-egg incubator for three weeks will cost approximately 75 cents for gas, oil, or electricity, and ought not to require more than ten minutes a day for attention. This represents the work of 20 hens for three weeks, and at least half that many hens for a six weeks' brooding period. If these hens were all kept at work during this time they would lay at least 500 eggs. Valued at only 15 cents per dozen, these eggs would amount to between SO and ?T, and if sold for hatching could easily bring $50. j |