568 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



Night after night the heat would fall to 95, and in one instance it went to 89. It was 

 impossible to keep the heat up, although the incubator was covered and completely enclosed 

 with heavy woolen blankets. Only four times did the heat get to 104, usually reaching 102 

 by sixr or seven P.M., and then falling to 96 or lower during the night. The incubator 

 was left at ten P.M., and not visited again until seven A.M. (This would be always my 

 custom with any good self-regulating machine.) The eggs in this case were kept in my 

 incubator at home until the twelfth day, and then taken to New York to the fair, a distance 

 of twenty-five miles by rail. I averaged about fifty per cent, in hatching on that occasion, 

 and taking into consideration the constant fluctuation of temperature, this was unusually 

 good success. For moving the eggs from one incubator to the other, I constructed a box, 

 lining it with felt, and placing in the bottom a tank of hot water; then placing the eggs 

 between several thicknesses of woolen blankets and closing the box tight. In one case, 

 where a few eggs had been overlooked and left in the home machine until the twentieth day, 

 I started from home with two of the eggs pipped; on my arrival at the rink, I found one of 

 the chicks out and entirely free from the shell. 



I have been led by slow degrees to adopt the opinion that the great drawback to artificial 

 incubation was the difficulty in getting through the first ten days. I noticed some years since 

 that when a hen left her nest, and the eggs were fairly chilled, during the early stages of 

 incubation, she rarely brought out any chicks, and usually those that did come forth were 

 weakly, and pined away a few days or weeks of existence, and then dropped off; also, that 

 even when eggs had been left for fully twenty-four hours during the latter days, they often 

 hatched out well and strong. In support of this view, one of my neighbors, a perfectly 

 reliable gentleman, gave me a remarkable instance. He had a large number of turkey eggs 

 set under common hens; under one of the hens were some of her own kinds probably laid to 

 her by one of the fowls roaming over the place (they not being confined in a sitting-room). 

 These hen s eggs hatched, and the mother left the nest with two chicks, leaving ten turkey 

 eggs about twenty-three or twenty-four days incubated. 



When found the eggs were cold and supposed spoiled; no further notice was therefore 

 taken of them until two or three days after, when a hen was found to have taken possession 

 of the nest and assumed the duties of incubation. Some days after, to the surprise of all, 

 she came off with seven turkey chicks, all strong and &quot; T ell. This was in June, warm weather. 

 Since then I have experimented with eggs, and have demonstrated to my own satisfaction 

 that eggs can be, at certain stages of incubation, deprived of heat for twenty-four to seventy- 

 two hours, and yet be hatched ! In fowls this period would seem to be between the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth days; in turkeys, the twenty-first to twenty-third days, perhaps even later. 

 The exact time I have been as yet unable to determine. 



My experience with this led me to try placing the eggs under hens during the first few 

 days of incubation. I have found even three days under hens before placing in the incubator 

 a great benefit, but seven to ten days is much better, and one reason I believe to be the 

 following: If my reader will notice an egg after having been under the hen for a few days, 

 he will observe it to have a polished appearance, as if oiled and rubbed. There seems to be 

 some oily secretion on the feathers or on the body of the hen, which, with her action in 

 moving the eggs, produces this appearance. Eggs thus treated seem to retain the moisture 

 or watery portion of the contents much longer than perfectly fresh ones; hence it would 

 seem that the greased appearance prevented or rather retarded evaporation. An egg placed 

 at first in the incubator and left there the same length has not this appearance, being as fresh 

 to all outward seeming as if just laid. To establish this fact of evaporation, I took eggs of 

 equal weight and placed some under hens and the rest in the incubator, subjecting the latter 

 to a dry heat. At the end of three days there was a discernible difference, and at seven days 

 a very marked difference in weight; at ten days there was over half an ounce difference in 



