This, of course, could be easily overcome with a little care, yet it is
just as well to avoid all unnecessary care and trouble in the beginning;
there will be still enough left to keep you thinking. In a common
building above ground during the winter months it will often freeze
around your machine, and in turning eggs in a freezing atmosphere do it
as quickly as you can, as it will always cool your eggs perceptibly,
and more or less derange the temperature of your machine. This is of
course decidedly injurious and will more or less impair the hatch. Now,
this is a very important matter, and people do not give it sufficient
consideration.
It is even advocated by some incubator manufacturers, that eggs should
be cooled every day to 70 degrees, for the simple reason that the old
hen does. They do not take into consideration that it is a necessity for
the old hen, but may not be for the embryo chick. When the hen leaves
her eggs to feed, and they become partially cold, when she recovers them
and brings those eggs in immediate contact with the rapidly-pulsating
arteries of her body, in fifteen minutes they have acquired their normal
heat. With the machine it will require an hour or two.
To meet this difficulty, suitable instructions should be given with and
to suit different machines. Where the eggs are turned automatically
inside the machine, it is necessary that they should be cooled at least
once a day during the last two weeks of the hatch. Taking the eggs out
to turn twice each day, as in the Monarch, cools them sufficiently
during the winter months; in warm weather, leaving the outside and
inside doors open while turning cools them sufficiently.
Some incubator manufacturers will tell you that thermal changes, however
great, will not affect their machines. Their patrons tell a different
story. No machine was ever made, or ever will be, that will run as well
or give as good results amid constant thermal changes as in an even
temperature. It is true that they reduce the heat, but it is by
admitting large draughts of air, running off the moisture and completely
destroying the humidity of atmosphere in their machines. Then, how about
those little ducklings which have been pipped forty-eight hours? They
can never get out unless you help them.
Suitable Buildings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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