The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1880-12-18
THE PACIFIC
G0mmert1alA bbert1sfr
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1880.
The Chicken King.

dale"
Mr.. Baker endeavors to raise a good many
eggs. He has 1000 laying hens Of various
breeds. selected for superior laying qualities.
They are both thorougbreds and grades, and
principally Asiatics, Houdsns, Leghorns, colored
Dorkings, and Spanish. Sitting fowls are not
desired. These hens are kept in an immense
laying-house, which is the largest building on
the place. This vast structure is AGO feet long,
divided into IS pens, each pen divided into three
rooms or divisions. The pens extend clear
through from the front to the back, being 6 feet
wide by 20 feet in depth. The front of the lay
i~ng-house is glazed. The floors are gravelled.
and kept dry by understanding. The front
division of each pen is covered on top and outside
with open mesh-wire, which in fine weather in
the winter allows open air and a small run for
the owls The middle section of each pen has a
sash that raises or lowers at pleasure, and thus
can cut of and enclose the rear sections of the
open. In each pen is kept an average of Is
fowls laying eggs.
The feeding Of the laying hens is done from the
rear of the pens. There is a narrow tramway
running the full length Of The entire building,
and on this tramway two small truck-waggons
are rolled, starting from each end and meeting in
the middle. The passage for these trucks is four
feet wide. Each truck is tended by a keeper,
who deposits the feed in little hoppers in each
pen for the chickens. Small pipes convey
fresh water along the pens. and the drinking yes
sells have loose gravel packed under them to drain
off any dampness. The house is heated in win
ter by hot-water pipes, and kept at q continuous
summer-heat. Warmth and stimulating food
keep the hens laying vigorously during the cold
weather. The feed used is varied. 1t has been
found that the fowls do best upon q changing
and nutritious diet. Meats Of every kind, scraps,
grains, bran, imperial eggfood, ground bone,
shells, shorts, fresh meat, and green food Of all
sorts are given to them in plenteous abundance.
But this army of hens cannot begin to produce
the vast number of eggs required by Mr.. Baker,
and as the most brilliant invention has not yet
been able to artifcially produce these snowy lit
tie germs of the luscious spring chicken, he has
to buy thousands of eggs. he pays SIS a hundred
for fresh fertile eggs, and will take them away in
any quantity and at any time.
One of the vast buildings on this farm is the
incubating and brooding house. 1t consists of a
large two-and-a-half story structure, attached to
an immense glass house, 158 feet long, 80 feet
wide, and 16 feet high, the glass building being
the . brooding house " which is divided into SO
apartments, Is on each side. The two-and-a-
half-story building is a dwelling for the attend
ants, besides containing Mr.. Bakers Office, DIN
ing-hall, and incubatlng rooms above, and below
in the basement heating apparatus, store-rooms,
electric battery apartment, and boiler room. The
incubating rooms are two in number, next to the
battery chamber. These incubating chamber
are 90 feet square, with double windows, having
three ranges OF large oblong incubators through
the center, and a smaller running round the en-
tire length OF the four sides of the room. These
| incubators have each eight tiers of shallow draw
ers, one above for the eggs. We thus have in
each room 1l2O feet of these shallow egg drawers,
capable of holding 5000 eggs at one time, and
turning out lac, 900 chickens a year.
The incubators are heated by gas manufactur-
ed on the place. Under each machine q single
gas-iet is kept burning, which heats the water
that Is carried through pipes to the open and mar
row vacant places over the surface of the eggs
resting in the trays for Matching. The simple
but ingenious process substitutes the natural
warmth of the mother hens body upon the eggs,
producing the uniform steady heat that matches
the eggs. There is in the adjoining room an
electric battery that is kept in constant commu-
milton with the hot-water chambers above the
eggs, as well as with the ga%s,jets and when the
temperature becomes wrong-either too cold or
too hot for the regular process of a natural incu-
baton of the egg-automatic indicators tell the
variation through the electric current, and the
heat is controlled by unerring apparatus made
for the purpose.
Several women are placed in charge of the in
cubatIng room, among whose duties are to turn
everv egg daily. 10 this room there is kept con-
stantly a warm moist atmosphere, like soft spring
air, through another very simple and clever ar
rangement of having shallow open pans of water
around the room, upon which the heated air
plays continuously, producing a uniform gentle
evaporation. The eggs are tested before they are
put in the drawers to see whether they are fer
Il lllCn anu dAOO NColCu a Y DlC ol0 lOh " z IL
they continue live and fertile.
Daily the wonderful and animated sight is
seen of the bursting Of the shells and birth of the
cunning ~sprightly little chicks. Hundreds are
hatchsd every day.
The next step in this interesting wholesale
usurpation of natures powers in the breeding of
feathered daintIes is the transfer of the newborn
chicks to the great /" brooding-house F" before re-
ferred to as being attached to the main building.
The infant birds stay IN the trays where they are
Matched several hours. until they become dry and
full of life, and they are removed at the rate of
100 chicks to each one Of the so apartments in
the brooding-house. This house will hold 5000
chicks at a time, and here they are kept until
about three weeks old. Each of the SO pens has
a patent brooder or hen-mother made Of zinc hol-
low, and filled with hot water, lined underneath
with blanketing, and place close to the ground
for the little birds to creep under, as they would
under a hen, when they wish to sleep or rest.
The chickens in the brood-house present q lively
spectacle. Varying in size from a day to three
weeks old, of all colors and breeds, lively as
crickets, chirping, and hearty and thriving, they
grow apace, undisturbed by the vermin that 80
often annoy the natural mother hen.
At the age of three weeks the lusty chick, no
longer needing to brood under q mother, is either
transferred to the great laying-house with the lay
ing hens or carried to the ''cramming house ="
near by, another large building thas is used for
the funniest process Of all in this novel method
Oh successfully cOuuttEIeltlnS DdtuTe I'D Inc pro-
creation of her living creatures. This examining
house is 125 feet long by Is feet wide. 1t has
within eight round feeding machines of upright
wood, each one with five tiers of little boxes
fashioned like pigeon-holes and accommodating a
single fowl in the box. Each machine holds $50
fowls at a time in the five tiers of boxes encir-
cling the upright drum.
The time needed to fatten a chicken by the
forcing process is about eighteen days, or two
weeks and a half, and they can be brought from
an ordinary state to the very finest condition in
this time. Nor is the meat put on them soft
fat, but good sound, solid meat, rich, nutritious,
and palatable. In this building MIR. Baker
forces 80 1000 chickens a year, keeping the room
dark and cool. The French method of forcing is
used. A single bird is confined in each box, his
legs being strapped to the sides, his head and
neck sticking out from the hole. The feeder
has his mess tub of boiled food well mashed,
from which be runs a flexible tube to the chick
ems month. He seizes the chicken by the head,
puts the pipe in his gullet, and forces the soft
food into the crop, which is filled by the single
movement. Each bird is served in turn. The
chickens are never released until taken out to be
| .I..-k.oro1 aod cold Tbo- ILL 49,, -.