1907.] DISCUSSION. 71 



has always been regarded as a great deal of an evil heretofore, 

 and that they got considerably better hatches under the hens, 

 presumably because of the presence of this impure air. That 

 sounds funny to many of us, but that was the conclusion. 

 Many of the workers have not been able to explain it satis- 

 factorily, and possibly in another locality it would not have 

 been found the same, but it was explained in this instance by 

 following this line of experiment, that the carbon dioxide, or 

 the vapor gases that are given off by the body, and which have 

 been regarded as deleterious when coming in contact with 

 chicks or with eggs really combined with the water and 

 moisture in the air under the hen decomposed and took out 

 certain elements of the shell, so that when the chicks came 

 to hatch, the shell was much thinner and lighter and more 

 crumbly, to state it practically, so that the chick could break 

 through more easily, and they thereby secured a greater per- 

 centage of chicks from eggs which had been subjected to that 

 vapor for twenty-one days. 



Another experiment which may be of interest to the 

 audience is one that was carried on by the West Virginia 

 station some years ago to test the value of eggs coming from 

 hens that had a free range as compared with those that were 

 confined, and they found that while there was no appreciable 

 difference in the egg production between hens that had a free 

 range and those that had not, yet the fertility of the eggs from 

 hens having a free range, and the hatchability of the eggs was 

 far better than from hens confined. 



The matter of exercise for fowls has been mentioned by 

 one of the previous speakers. A series of experiments was 

 carried out at the Utah station a number of years ago, and 

 continued for three years. The final results went to show 

 that this idea of giving chickens exercise in deep litter did 

 not have any benefit, so far as observation went. They had 

 three pens, one of Leghorns, one of Plymouth Rocks, and the 

 other of Wyandottes, each having been hatched, and treated 

 just exactly the same, up to the time that they were put into 



