The cold brooder, or Philo box, as it has been popularly called, is the chief item in a system of poultry keeping that has been widely advertised.  The principle of the Philo box is that of holding the air warmed by the chick down close to them by a sagging piece of cloth.  The cloth checks most of the radiating heat, but is not so tight as to smother the chick.  This limits the space of air to be warmed by the chicks to such a degree that the body warmth is used to the greatest advantage.  That chickens can be raised in these fire-less brooders, is not in question, for that has been abundantly proven, but most poultrymen believe that it will pay better, especially in the North, to give the little fellows a few weeks’ warmth.

Curtis Bros. at Ransomville, N.Y., who raise some twenty thousand chicks per year, have adopted the following system:  The chicks are kept under hovers heated by hot water pipes for one week, or until they learn to hover.  Then they are put in Philo boxes for a week in the same building but away from the pipes.  The third week the Philo boxes are placed in a large, unheated room.  After that they go to a large Philo box in a colony house.

To make a Philo house of the Curtis pattern, take a box 5 in. deep and 18 in. to 24 in. square.  Cut a hole in one side for a chick door, run a strip of screen around the inside of the box to round the corners.  Now take a second similar box.  Tack a piece of cloth rather loosely across its open face.  Bore a few augur holes in the sides of either box.  Invert box No. 2 upon box No. 1.  This we will call a Curtis box.  It costs about fifteen cents and should accommodate fifty to seventy-five chicks.

A universal hover in a colony coop or colony house, for which a Curtis box is substituted, as early in the game as the weather permits, is the method I advise for rearing young chicks.  The lamp problem we still have with us, but it is one that cannot be easily solved.  Large vessels or tanks of water which are regularly warmed by injection of steam from a movable boiler, offers a possible way out of the difficulty.  On a plant large enough to keep one man continually at this work, this plan might be an improvement over filling lamps, but for the smaller plant it is lamps, or go south.

Rearing young chicks is the hardest part of the poultry business.  There is a lot of work about it that cannot be gotten rid of.  Little chicks must be kept comfortable and their water and feed for the first few days must needs be given largely by hand.  They are to be early led to drink from the regular water vessels and eat from the hoppers, but this takes time and patience.

The feeding of chicks I will discuss in the chapter on “Poultry on the General Farm,” and as the same methods apply in both cases, I will refer the reader to that section.

After chicks get three or four weeks old their care is the simplest part of the poultry farm work and consists chiefly of filling feed hoppers and protecting them from vermin and thieves.