HOW SOON AFTER MATING WILL FERTILITY BECOME ESTABLISHED V l'i;> 



This spring- he bought a -220-egg incubator. At'one hatch lie took oft 

 192 chicks and at the next 190 chicks; the best Hatches ever obtained 

 in this vicinity. His wife operated the machine. 



The breeding season is probably the only time when so-called natural 

 conditions will be found better than the best artificial conditions. Suf- 

 ficient out-door freedom to range certainly awakens the mating instinct. 



HOW SOON AFTER MATING WILL FERTILITY 

 BECOME ESTABLISHED, 



AND HOW LONG WILL FERTILITY CONTINUE AFTER 



MATING HAS CEASED ? 



THE QUESTION ANSWERED. 



In the spring of 1898 the writer purchased ten pullets from a fellow- 

 townsman. These pullets had been maintained during the winter in a 

 flock of some fifty or sixty females headed by one male in a house so 

 loosely built that the evening that I got the pullets I could see the moon- 

 light through the sides of the pen. 



The pullets were placed in meal sacks and trundled up hill and down 

 dale to my home, in a wheelbarrow that is nearly as old as the writer. 

 These birds were placed by thenselves in a pen in my barn chamber en- 

 tirely isolated from other fowls. The next day I received seven eggs 

 from this flock, the next day ten. They-laid freely the entire spring. 

 All of the eggs that they laid for two weeks were dated and placed un- 

 der sitting hens. The fertility was very high for one week rapidly 

 decreasing, after this time, until the tenth day which gave the last egg 

 in which a germ developed. AH of the eggs that, were laid after the 

 tenth day tested out clear. 



Experiments have shown that if a laying female voluntarily mates 

 with a male shortly after laying, the next egg laid 'may be fertile; the 

 second egg laid after mating is more likely to be fertile than the first. 



It is reasonably safe to use eggs for hatching one week after the male 

 has been introduced to the flock, other conditions being equally favor- 

 able. The longer he is with the flock the better acquainted he will be- 

 come with the different individuals in the flock. As the presence of the 

 male has no effect upon the eggs laid by females with which he does not 

 mate, some experiments that have been reported yield no satisfactory 

 evidence; as it does not appear that it was known that the infertile eggs 

 were from individuals that had mated with the male. 



Other things being equally favorable, females will lay more eggs 

 without a male than with one. and the eggs will be of better quality 

 and keep better, as an infertile egg will not rot. Without life there can 

 be no death and there is no life in an unvitalized egg. 



