obliged to keep them in yards, should either 

 enlarge their yards beyond (apparently) all reason, 

 or at least beyond any size you ever saw before, 

 and allow plenty of range for exercise and cleanli- 

 ness, or reduce the number of varieties, and give 

 each yard of fowls an extra grassy yard to pasture 

 in for two hours each day; or, better still, keep 

 but one variety and make kindling wood of your 

 fences. Colonize your flocks on the Stoddard 

 "no fence" plan, and you will have eggs that, 

 with proper assignment and division of males and 

 females (fowls), will show up ninety per cent, of 

 fertility, and, in good incubators, produce from 

 eighty to ninety- eight per cent, of strong, healthy 

 chicks. 



How do we know ? 



We have done it. The proof of the pudding is 

 in eating it. 



Now let us look at a few other causes of chickens 

 dying in the shell ; for you know it is quite possible 

 to kill a vigorous germ or even a full grown chick 

 by improper treatment. A poorly contrived incu- 

 bator or a bad hen can easily destroy the life in the 

 shell at any stage of incubation ; or a careless or 

 headstrong operator of a good incubator can spoil 

 the hatch by what may seem to him a very insig- 

 nificant deviation from the instructions of the 

 maker of the machine. 



Too much or too little moisture, heat or ventila- 

 tion may ruin a hatch. Lack of moisture at the 

 time it is needed, or excess of moisture when none 

 is needed will injure or destroy life in the hatcher. 

 59 



