The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-03-17

You've seen broods of chicks-l0, 20, maybe 30, but when you come to looking at thousands of them, why it's differ ent matter altogether
 i It's just as if you were trying to vis- ualize the hundred million dollars that my friend John D. Rockefeller gave away last year. you can't do it. you've. got to l see it to be convinced.
 MT. Trucks has an interesting story to tels He started his chicken farm some nine years ago with a capital of 250 chickens and a few small incubators.
 Today on MT. Trucks farm there ar~ more than 1000 full grown chickens, and something like 2,500 half-grown chicks, while the incubators are turning out thou sards daily.
 Mir Trucks uses one incubator holding 240o0 eggs others with a 12,5O0 capacity; still others of various capacities, making 1 the total something like 5000. I It is a remarkable sight to see the men coming from the hen houses with 1 buckets of the most beautiful snow white eggs, not dozens you understand, but :. by the bucket full.
 l Last Tuesday afternoon when I was out at the Alabama Leghorn Farms, saw more than 1S00 eggs brought in, ready for incubation and as symmetrical, as near the same color, as clean and as healthy looking as though they had all been modelled after the same pattern.
 It takes precisely 21 days for the fluffy l little chicks to hatch out in the in cubators; these incubators are of course, l of even temperature, and are never l touched after the eggs have been placed l in them When the little chicks hatch, IL is a curious arrangement; they live Tn sort of duplex apartment'-I mean an upstairs" and a 'downstairs" and as they drop out of the eggs they drop l downstairs, just as neatly and as cleveriy as if some one had lifted them.
 MT Trucks feeds his Leghorns on Full o-Pep'' and MT Cosby's Jazz Masn' which would indicate that not all the 1 chickens who are accused of Jazzing belong to the unfeathered tribe. Indeed the chickens enjoy the Jazz food quite as much as if they were real human beings: and they are tremendous ly temperamental just like mere nor tals."
 "Tread softly MT. Trucks will ad- monish as he opens the door of one or the cleanly. sanitary chicken roosts. IT you go in suddenly the chickens become excited.''
 1 Imagine treating these little snowy white feathered things with such consid- era ton!
 Any way, let me tell you that no apart ! ment in the finest city apartment house 1 is kept any more beautifully than the l housekeeping which is done at the Ala l bama Leghorn Farms.
 The roosts are cleansed daily; lime IS sprinkled all over them: great bundles Of ] fresh straw await to be placed clean and crisp every day for 9'Monsieur'' and I Madame" Leghorn to walk on; in other words, sanitation is the slogan ''We sell the little chicks when they | Mr. oLS fo1 ne a MT Monnell showed us litter Chat s i not the word because that's what you say about puppies; but whatever it IS, we saw) and these are all to be shipped 1 tomorrow"
 They had just been matched out" the most beautiful yellow-tinted. fluffy, little l pcwder-puff things you ever beheld l Mature takes care of them, just as it does of babies" Mir Trucks further in formed us. ''and for three days after they see the light of day they require no food. consequently they can be shipped to any destination with safety. After that time they are too old and are not satisfac- tory"
 Asked if many were lost in transpor- tation. MT. Trucks humorously replied: l q shipped POO 'day-old' chicks to a man lin Louisiana, and seven weeks later ne wrote and told me he had 2D2 chicks. That seems remarkable. but we always put in a few extra chicks Tor Soou iHeaSuIe, anu we had sent two extras to this man who l didn't lose one single chick of the mum i ber"
 | Step by step you see the modern. we'll I regulated chicken farm at MT. Trucks 1 place; first the healthy. snow white lay | ing hens, the half-grown chicks getting ready to replace the laying hens which are sold usually when they are ? years old, either for food or for laying, the third year being the last laying year and not their best year; then the tnou- | sands of dozens of eggs ready for incu- bation and finally the incubators hatch 1 ing out the little chicks at the rate of l 6,0OJ day.