138 The Hen at Work 



hatch. This idea originated, no doubt, from the 

 fact that the hen leaves her nest ahnost daily 

 to feed and dust, during the first eighteen days. 

 Hens average from twenty minutes to a half -hour 

 away from the nest, even during the cold spring 

 months. 



Careful tests have lately been made to see if this 

 cooling process helped in incubation. 



At Storrs, Connecticut, about four thousand 

 White Leghorn eggs were incubated. Every care 

 was taken to see that the eggs cooled daily should 

 be, half and half, from the same hens, laid tinder 

 the same conditions, as those which were not 

 cooled. Half of the eggs were cooled on the third 

 day, and after that were cooled night and morning 

 till the eighteenth day. The cooling periods were 

 five minutes long on the third day, and increased 

 one minute each day to twenty minutes on the 

 eighteenth. The other half, nearly two thousand 

 eggs, were not cooled at all, but were left in the 

 incubator, run at about 102-103°, except for the 

 brief periods necessary for testing and examina- 

 tion. 



The result was interesting. Sixty-seven per 

 cent, of the fertile eggs hatched in the incubators 



