68 CHICKS 



find an unusually satisfactory nest of her own choosing. 

 Often she will make a nest in long grass just before a bad 

 wet spell that lasts for many days. It is pure folly to 

 trust hens' instincts for anything just because one of them 

 is known to be very smart or very lucky. 

 Set Only WeU=Shaped Eggs. 



Never give a hen misshapen eggs unless you have no 

 others. They are quite apt not to hatch good chicks even 

 if strongly fertile. It is well to test eggs under hens, for 

 fertility, after about five or seven dajrs incubation, earUer 

 for white shelled eggs, especially if you have several hens 

 sitting at one time. You can then give all fertile eggs 

 to some of the hens and provide the others with fresh batches. 



As to artificial incubation, it is usually best to follow 

 with intelligence the instructions sent out with incubators. 

 But many people seem to think that an incubator can give 

 pure air to eggs when the air of the room is impure, and 

 that is a futile expectation. The incubator shoiold be 

 where the air is pure, where the air is rather moist than 

 very dry, where the temperature varies as httle as possible 

 day and night throughout incubation. No incubator always 

 has absolutely even heat in all parts of the egg chamber. 

 To offset that have every egg in every part of the chamber 

 at some time or other, by moving them from center to 

 sides and to ends on a system made certain by marking 

 every egg. Thin-shelled eggs among thick-shelled eggs are 

 likely to dry out too quickly so that they don't hatch. Eggs 

 that show spots all over when held before a light frofti 

 uneven thickness of shells are subject to the same trouble 

 as thin-shelled eggs. The incubator door should never be 

 opened while hatching is going on. The reason is that 

 when chicks hatch they give off much moisture in drying 

 out and this moisture helps the eggs that have not hatched. 

 When the door is opened this moisture escapes and very 

 frequently the later hatching is totally spoiled by this. 

 Chicks are thus dead in shells for no other reason than 

 that the egg membranes were too dry when the chicks 

 needed to break the shell in order to breathe f reel}', and 

 the chicks could not break the tough membranes. Con- 

 sequently the chicks speedily suffocated. 



