POULTRY-CRAFT. 201 
while there is danger of their being chilled in transit, but intending buyers 
begin making inquiries early, and many orders are placed in January and 
February for March and April delivery. 
As with fowls, the price should not be put too low. If the stock is of 
quality to justify the price, a breeder is quite likely to sell as many eggs at 
$2 as at a lower price, and sell to a better class of customers, better informed 
of the ups and downs of buying eggs for hatching, and consequently more 
reasonable and more agreeable to deal with. Nearly all breeders make reduc- 
tions in prices for several sittings ordered at one time. This one can well 
afford to do, for the work of selling and handling one sitting costs quite as 
much as for two or three. 
It is quite a common practice to reduce the price of eggs for hatching late 
in the season. Those who do this think the eggs, while worth less than 
earlier in the season, are still well worth the price asked for them, and that 
the reduction extends their trade and the general interest in pure bred poultry’ 
by giving an opportunity to those least able to buy to start with good stock. 
Those who hold to one uniform price throughout the season, think ‘it, in the 
long run, to their own best interest, and for the good of the varieties they 
breed, zo¢ to encourage people to hatch late chicks from stock more or less 
debilitated by a season’s producing. 
The practice in regard to guaranteeing hatches, is divided. The breeder’s 
usual guaranty is that the eggs shipped are true to name, from the stock 
described in his advertisements and circular, fresh, and running high in 
fertility ; — just such eggs as he sets to hatch his own stock; carefully packed 
and delivered to the express company in good condition. Not many breeders 
guarantee more than this. All honest breeders, however, replace eggs if their 
own hatches and general reports of customers indicate that their stock is not 
breeding right. Some guarantee six, seven, nine, or ten chicks from each 
sitting of eggs; some replace eggs that gave poor hatches at half-price, and 
duplicate very poor hatches and total failures free. If a breeder has fulfilled 
the conditions of such a guaranty as is outlined above, he is under no obliga- 
tion to do more, for a good hatch depends on too many contingencies altogether 
beyond his control 
. 
296. Packing and Shipping Eggs for Hatching. — Eggs are shipped 
by express, always. Small lots of one, two, or three sittings, are packed in 
baskets specially made in various sizes for this purpose, or in common splint 
baskets, or in fruit (grape) baskets. Often a shipper can get other baskets 
more conveniently and at less cost than the special egg baskets, and many 
prefer them, irrespective of cost. With the regular egg baskets, pasteboard 
boxes having compartments for each egg are used. In packing, a little chaff, 
or fine excelsior is first put in the bottom of each compartment, then the eggs 
are put in, small end down; the spaces around them filled up with chaff, and 
the cover of the box securely tied. Excelsior is packed under, around, and 
