290 MY POULTRY DAY BY DAY 
any such thing. Many of the mishaps are due to the lack of good 
management, 
Unsuitable or misshapen eggs, chills, jars, long-distance travel- 
ling may all tend to increase the number of dead in shell, and so 
far as these are due to our mistakes we can provide against them. 
But the root of the matter is obviously much deeper than that. 
Bad weather, in so far as it is a contributory cause, is of course 
out of our reckoning. It is also suggested that dead in shell may 
be due to the birds being penned up, but while the penned-up 
bird may produce more dead in shell than the bird that is at 
liberty, the latter gives us far too high a proportion of death before 
birth, if one may be allowed an Irishism. Bad feeding may also 
swell the volume of pre-natal fatalities, but bad feeding was always 
more or less prevalent, and is not accountable for the alarming 
increase of dead in shell. 
It is sometimes said that the free bird that builds its nest away 
from the flock and the eye of the farmer is frequently the most 
successful with her brood. If this could be proved one would 
have to seriously consider the question, but no statistics are 
available on the subject. One thing, however, may be said about 
the free bird with the wild nest. She is hatching her young under 
perfectly natural conditions out in the open, when the eggs get 
plenty of moisture from the atmosphere, and probably more 
cooling than they are likely to get in an incubator. They are 
never subjected to the intense dry heat of an incubator kept in a 
warm room, and they have much more chance of pure air than if 
kept under a hen in a shed. 
I had an experience lately that seems to prove the necessity of 
fresh air. All my houses and sheds were full of broodies sitting 
on eggs, and I put a couple of them in a wash-house with a cement 
floor. Thirteen eggs were under each hen. The weather was 
particularly cold, and I kept the door shut most of the day and all 
night. In one case I got four live chickens and in the other three 
live birds—seven out of twenty-six. A large majority of the eggs 
contained dead chicks. Even on this one little experience I came 
to the conclusion that dead in shell must partly be caused by lack 
