![]() Each kind and each make has its friends and nearly all are fairly successful.” “While the names and makers of these machines are numerous, they are divided into two general classes, those warmed by hot air, and those warmed by radiation from a tank of hot water, the heat being supplied in both cases by a lamp flame or a gas jet, a very few are still made that are heated by drawing off the coolest water from a tank and pouring in hot water as required. (See Historical Henhouse in the January/February 2018 issue for more about Biggle and his farming books.) “The modern man-made hatcher, the incubator, is largely used for winter hatching when hens rarely become broody, and also for hatching on a larger scale than is convenient with the natural mother,” he wrote. Jacob Biggle espoused mechanical and natural incubation in The Biggle Poultry Book (1919). Finally, Wilcoxson believed that chicks might be reared quicker and better developed when there is no hen to interfere. ![]() Incubator chicks, according to Wilcoxson, are more tame and tractable than chicks hatched by hens.An incubator will hatch a large number of chicks, which can be brooded together in large lots, easing the overall cost to the small farmer.“It is absolute proof against cannibalism.” It never leaves the eggs, tramples them, refuses to sit where you place it, throws any eggs out or kills any chicks when they are hatched.“You do not have to wait for it to become broody, nor to waste time and eggs in finding out whether it is broody enough.” She laid out several reasons why they were appropriate, many of which still ring true today: “Anyone who has had much experience with sitting hens will readily appreciate the advantage of incubators in place of hens,” she wrote. Others, such as Myrtle Wilcoxson, author of Common Sense on Poultry Raising (1906), liked incubators very much. Norys didn’t have an issue with incubators used in the commercial poultry industry but believed they had no use on a family farm at the time. ![]() “When incubator makers, and the itching for experiment, together tempt the child of tender years, and the woman of 75, into raising machine-made chicks, it is time for someone to call a halt,” she wrote. Myra Norys wrote in Pocket-money Poultry (1901) that the rage for artificial incubation was getting to be almost equal to the rage for bicycles and worse among women. However, not all poultry keepers liked these artificial hens. ![]() Cyphers marketed smaller, farm-size incubators, too. In Buffalo, New York, in 1896, Charles Cyphers invented a large-capacity, room-type commercial incubator capable of hatching 20,000 duck eggs he also patented a lamp-heated, multilevel brooder that could brood 300 ducklings or chicks. The first American incubator was invented in 1844 it and competitors that soon followed hatched up to 360 chicks per batch. The Chinese were artificially hatching eggs around 250 B.C. The ancient Egyptians hatched eggs in mud-brick huts at least 3,000 years ago. Artificial incubation of eggs is nothing new. ![]()
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