34 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



may vary, and would vary with the temperatures, and 

 perhaps with other variations in handling, but these 

 figures may be taken as fairly showing the average facts 

 when eggs are well kept in favorable temperatures. 

 The Cornell Station found that, after three weeks' hold- 

 ing, the hatch was 12 per cent; after five weeks, 6 per 

 cent. The chart gives other percentages found. 



Of all the fearsome lions in the way of the genuine 

 Beginner with poultry, none, I think, is so fierce and 

 forbidding as the sitting hen. Forbidding, in fact, as 

 you feel certain when she warns you, with frequent and 

 shrill threatenings, to keep a safe distance. Fierce, 

 according to breed and individual disposition, as she 

 attacks, with wing and beak, the thief who would touch 

 her precious chicks ; actualities, or possibilities only, 

 though they be. The question as to how to handle the 

 sitting hens is possibly the commonest of all. It comes 

 from nearly every Beginner whose previous life has not 

 been brought into touch with poultry except at the table 

 end. And, strangely enough, it is one most frequently 

 neglected by writers. It is difficult, as I have found by 

 trying, for one who has always known about fowls and 

 their handling, to imagine the state of mind of one 

 who knows nothing at all about their ways and needs. 



Poultry workers are a unit on one point, at least, viz. 

 that failure will be almost assured if the sitter is left to 

 her duties in the company of the other birds. Good 

 practice universally favors moving the sitter to a quiet, 

 secluded place, comfortably warm during February and 

 March, and comfortably cool during the heated term. 

 Though I have never seen this statement made, my 

 repeated experiences convince me that a good hatch 



