CHAPTER XI 



WHY CHICKS DIE IN THE SHELL 



This is a very vital question to every poultryman, every hatcher 

 and anyone who hatches several hundred chicks in a season. More- 

 over, it is a question that is so many sided that one must have had 

 many different experiences before he can answer it at all. And I 

 believe that in more than forty years work with poultry I have had 

 experience along most of these lines and found out some few reasons 

 "why chicks die in the shell." 



One reason, and I may say the most frequent cause of chicks 

 dying in the shell is poor management of the incubator. Poor man- 

 agement includes irregular heat, incubator run at high temperature 

 for a few hours, then run low, and in the efforts to maintain a 

 regular temperature the eggs get a good many variations. While 

 they will stand a certain amount of abuse of this kind at some stages 

 of incubation, at others the eggs are very easily affected and it is at 

 these critical stages of incubation that the embryo is weakened and 

 robbed of that vigor that should be in reserve for the final break into 

 the outside world. 



Another cause is lack of exercise of the eggs, here we should take 

 a lesson from a good setting hen, not a lazy hen but one with the 

 natural motherly instinct strong. After the first three or four days 

 she rolls and rolls her eggs every day and perhaps several times a 

 day, and if you notice nearly every -egg will hatch from a hen of 

 that type. A lazy hen, and there are lots of them, may be given a nest 

 exactly like the other hen, with exactly the same kind of eggs and 

 she will have chicks dead in the shell, chicks that are crippled and all 

 kinds of trouble, just as some people do with incubator eggs. The 

 reason is she did not exercise them, did not roll them and the muscles 

 did not develop. "Muscle!" you say. Yes, muscle and energy to use 

 the muscle; it takes both for a chick to dig it's road out of it's prison 

 into daylight. After the seventh day roll the eggs around every time 

 you air them and turn them, never mind marking eggs so as to tell 

 which side they were up or which side down, but roll them around like 

 the old hen and let them take pot luck as to which side they happen to 

 go to bed on. 



And yet another cause in the incubating is lack of knowledge in 

 adjusting the moisture. A great many chicks are actually drowned 

 in the shell. You may know when this happens because there will be 



