58 MRS. BASLEY'S WESTERN POULTRY BOOK 



and then looked at each egg through the tester. Eggs were rejected 

 that were chalky to the touch, or those that had light spots in them 

 or freckled all over with clear places, or thin on the little end, or 

 cracked, or crooked, or in any way misshaped. A few doubtful I 

 left in, marking them "d" (these I subsequently heard did not 

 hatch). It is much easier to detect the imperfect or unhatchable 

 eggs by looking at them with the tester than by merely feeling 

 them. It may be a little more trouble at the commencement, but is 

 a saving in labor all through the period of incubation and a lessen- 

 ing in the expense of oil ; besides giving more room for fertile eggs 

 and more chance of a good hatch, as the infertile eggs chill their 

 fertile neighbors and draw from their vitality. Therefore do not 

 put eggs into the incubator, or under hens, without carefully select- 

 ing them. Poultry keeping is made up of little things, and can so 

 easily be ruined by little things that I will add a word of warning. 

 Do not hold the egg when testing it so close to the lamp that it 

 will heat it. The tiny germ of life in the egg is very tender and 

 may easily be killed. For this reason I made a home-made tester 

 out of a cracker box. I cut a hole the size of half a dollar just op- 

 posite the place where the flame of the lamp came when I set it 

 inside the box. In this way I did not overheat the egg. I also 

 found this box very handy for testing eggs under setting hens. 

 Eggs, whether under hens or in incubators, should always be tested 

 out. There are thousands of eggs lost or wasted every year from 

 carelessness in this matter. An egg which is infertile and is for a 

 week either in an incubator or under a hen is perfectly good for 

 food. It is simply an egg that has been in a warm place for a week. 

 There is no germ in it ; there never has been life in it, so there is no 

 dead germ to decay. Infertile eggs keep fresh and sweet much 

 longer than fertile eggs, and those who are raising only eggs for 

 market should keep no male birds in their flock and never have 

 fertile eggs. 



Do not put eggs from different classes of fowls into the same 

 incubator. Hens' eggs take twenty-one days to incubate, but if 

 eggs from Leghorns (Mediterranean class) are placed in the same 

 tray with Brahmas (Asiatic class) or with Plymouth Rocks (Ameri- 

 can class), the Leghorns will be the first to hatch, sometimes as 

 much as two days earlier, to the great detriment of the larger 

 breed, which is slower in hatching. This comes not only from the 

 earlier hatched chicks walking over the eggs, but also from the 

 change in the atmosphere and temperature in the incubator at the 

 time^of hatching. At that time the air in the incubator is always 

 heavily charged with moisture and the temperature rises from the 

 activity of the chicks, and these two conditions will ruin the hatch 

 of the slower breed. Experiments along these lines that I have 

 made have always given the same results. 



