March, 
191 
HOUSE 
AND GARDEN 
insertion of a match, which will at all times afford sufficient air. 
If the incubator stands in a light spot, it is well to cover the 
glass with a dark cloth at hatching time. Otherwise the young¬ 
sters will crowd to the front and fall down into the nursery be¬ 
fore they are fully dry. The 
temperature in the nursery 
may be just right for a 
chicken that is perfectly dry 
and moving around, but un¬ 
comfortably cool for a wet 
chick that has scarcely found 
its feet. 
Twenty-four hours is none 
too long to leave the chickens 
in the incubator after they are 
out of their shells, but many 
poultry keepers open the door 
a little without changing the 
lamp, by which means the lit¬ 
tle fellows are gradually pre¬ 
pared for the shift from in¬ 
cubator to brooder. It is a 
good plan, in any case, to take 
out the egg tray with its ac¬ 
cumulation of shells, leaving 
the chicks in the nursery. If 
there is no nursery, the shells 
may be removed and the tray 
left. 
With a successful hatch, almost every egg in the machine on 
the eighteenth day should produce a chicken. There will be 
fewer eggs on that date, however, than when the incubator was 
filled, for some, and perhaps many, of them will have been tested 
out. This testing 
of the eggs is 
found b y the 
amateur to be one 
of the most in¬ 
teresting features 
connected w i t h 
hatching chickens 
with a wooden 
hen. It offers a 
peep into some of 
N a t u r e’s mys¬ 
teries and helps 
the operator to 
realize the won¬ 
derful transition 
going on quietly 
within each little 
shell. If the eggs 
have white shells 
the first test may 
be made on the 
fifth day, but 
with hr o-w in- 
shelled eggs it is 
better to wait un¬ 
til the seventh 
day, as they are 
less transparent. 
Testing is done 
by placing eggs between the eye and a strong light and excluding 
all other light. The kind of tester which comes with the average 
incubator is an elongated tube large enough at one end to cover 
both eyes and narrowing at the other end to an opening slightly 
smaller than an egg. The eggs are placed one by one in front 
of the tube and close to a fairly strong light. An infertile egg 
will appear perfectly clear, like any fresh egg. If the egg con¬ 
tains a living chick there will be a small, dark spot and little red 
blood vessels or veins radiat¬ 
ing from it. A black spot 
without the veins indicates 
that the egg was fertile, but 
that the germ has died. An 
egg in which the contents are 
loose and mixed together is 
addled. An egg like the latter 
is more likely to be found 
when hatching duck eggs than 
when eggs from hens are be¬ 
ing incubated. 
It is customary to make a 
second test a week after the 
first, as there may be more 
eggs with dead germs in them. 
All the clear eggs tested out 
on the fifth or seventh day 
may be saved and boiled for 
the young chickens. They 
are often used by bakers and 
sometimes are sold in the pub¬ 
lic markets. Of course, they 
cannot be considered fresh, 
but neither can they be classed 
as bad. An infertile egg never becomes really rotten. 
The amateur sometimes finds it an excellent plan to set several 
hens at the time he starts his incubator. Then, when the infer¬ 
tile eggs have been tested out of the machine, they are replaced 
with those from 
under the hens, 
after the latter 
eggs have also 
been tested. In 
this manner it is 
possible to bring 
out a much larger 
number of chicks. 
And it mav be 
said in passing 
that it always 
pays to test the 
eggs when hens 
are b e i n g de¬ 
pended upon, as 
well as when an 
incubator is in 
use. The h e n 
doesn't mind, and 
the risk of hav¬ 
ing a bad egg 
broken in the 
nest is avoided. 
Also, if several 
hens are set at 
the same time, 
some of them can 
be liberated when 
the infertile eggs 
are tested out, as fewer birds will be required to cover the eggs 
that remain, unless, indeed, they are exceptionally fertile eggs. 
When a considerable number of eggs is to be incubated a more 
(Continued on page 197) 
Cn a large place an incubator cellar will be found more practical, centering the work 
in one place and avoiding the possibility of a fire in the house 
Care should be taken that the incubator be placed away from a stone wall and on a level, otherwise the heat will 
be unevenly distributed and the growth of the chicks retarded 
