170 MAKING POULTRY PAY 



increase the time each day, until you have cooled them 

 fifteen to twenty minutes, and even thirty minutes the 

 last week of the hatch if the temperature of the room 

 be up to seventy or eighty degrees. 



Quit turning and cooling the eggs on the evening 

 of tlie eighteenth day, as with fresh, fertile eggs, 

 some of the chicks hutch on the nineteenth or twen- 

 tieth day. If the eggs are strictly fresh and fertile, 

 the hatch will all come of? as under the hen. I have 

 had hatches all through within ten hours after the 

 first chick pipped the shell. Again, I have had 

 hatches drag along until the twenty-third day, when 

 the eggs were of doubtful age. If you have your 

 own hens in sufficient number to give the required 

 number quickly, or if you can gather perfectly fresh 

 eggs from your neighbors, the hatch will come off 

 uniform and inside of twelve hours. Remember, then, 

 that fresh, fertile eggs are the chief requisites for a 

 good, quick hatch. The hen will sometimes be twenty- 

 four hours hatching. A good incubator, with good 

 eggs, managed rightly, will hatch just as well and 

 quick as the hen. 



The Proper Heat — The first week try to keep 

 the mercury between loi and 103, preferably at 102. 

 After the first week the lamp does not burn so much 

 oil, nor does it require so large a blaze as during the 

 first week. And during the third week, if the weather 

 be warm or hot, there will be afternoons where the 

 lamp may be turned nearly out, or extinguished for 

 from one to three hours. It is best, however, not to 

 turn the lamp out, but to raise the cap over the 

 lamp flue, so that the heat will pass out. 



After the ninth or tenth day, when the chick 

 begins to show signs of real life, heat develops, and 

 this heat increases up to the time of the bursting of 

 the shell. From this time on the lamp must be 



