Hatching the Egg. 35 



help, and at considerable fluctuation in outside atmosphere. The need 

 therefore for bobbing up and down nights to watch refractory hatches is 

 practically past. If- — through any accident — the heat runs up too high, 

 when regulating it back to normal figures, it helps the eggs to cool with 

 least injury, if they are well sprinkled with tepid water. The incubator 

 doors can be left open till the thermometer registers 90 degrees. In all 

 cases and at all times of handling them drafts should be avoided over the 

 eggs, and sudden jars. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHICK.— We have seen tnat a ferule 

 egg is not a shell packed with a loose and unorganized fluid. It contains 

 definite organs and the material required to feed and develop them into 

 a living chick. When the proper heat is applied in the incubator or under 

 the hen life begins and develops rapidly until the last of the yolk in the 

 egg is passed into the body of the well-formed chick before it leaves the 

 shell. Before 12 hours of incubation the germ begins to increase in size, 

 and so rapidly does the development go on that by the end of the first 

 day what is to be the head of the chick can be quite plainly seen. A few 

 hours later the tail of the chick is apparent, to be immediately followed b) 

 a tube which later forms the heart. About 40 hours after the incubation 

 begins the heart begins to pulsate. The knowledge of this rapid develop- 

 ment may not be cheerful reading to those who let the eggs in the nest 

 remain for a day or two under a sitting hen, but by the fiftieth hour the 

 heart is usually so well developed that the different parts may be seen, and 

 10 hours later a vigorous circulation of blood has begun. Before the third 

 day has ended the rapidly forming chick is able to turn itself around and 

 curve into definite shape. During the fourth day the limbs begin to show. 

 They grow so rapidly that by the thirteenth day scales appear upon the legs 

 and nails upon the toes, and by the sixteenth day these, as well as the 

 beak become firm and hard and the chick can move its limbs. By the 

 ninth day the formation of bone begins and goes on rapidly until the 

 skeleton is well formed by the thirteenth day. The feathers begin as 

 little sacs by the tenth day and develop so that when the chick makes its 

 way through the shell it is well feathered. Thus this wonderful and 

 rapid development goes on inside the egg. We must remember that the 

 power of the delicate machinery which produces the chicks comes from 

 its parents. They must be vigorous, well fed, not closely related, and 

 able to exercise freely if we expect vigorous chicks. It may seem to the 

 novice that the egg hatches itself since the hen is usually successful. He 

 will change his views after trying to imitate her with an incubator, and 

 also find that he must learn the hen business by experience. 



