CHAPTER III. 



Hatching House. 



Size akd Make. — If only a few eggs are to be hatched 

 (say eight or ten thousand) no hatching house is necessary. 

 The troughs may be placed in the open air, in any conven- 

 ient place, and covered with a wire screen to keep out rats, 

 mice and ducks. A light board cover must then be laid 

 over them to shed the rain and snow and keep the eggs 

 from exposure to the sunlight. A hatching house is much 

 more comfortable to work in. A stove may be put in it 

 and a fire started occasionally for warming one's fingers, 

 &c., but it is not needed for hatching purposes, as spring 

 water in these latitudes is warm enough. In our hatching 

 house at Caledonia we run all the waste water into a large 

 tank under the house, and as our water stands between 

 forty-five and fifty degrees, even in the coldest weather, we 

 find that the hatching house is a very comfortable place 

 to work in without fire, though the thermometer outside 

 points to zero. The house may be constructed of rough 

 boards, or as expensive as you choose, but care should be 

 taken to have a water-tight roof, as drops of water leaking 

 through and falling into the troughs wdll kill the eggs un- 

 derneath. Its size must be regulated by the number and 

 extent of the troughs. 



The windows in a hatching house should be few in num- 

 ber and provided with curtains or shutters, as the sun 

 shining upon the spawn will kill it. We do not mean that 

 a few minutes exposure to the rays of the sun will hurt the 



