In filling orders for eggs at a distance I make it a point never to send
eggs more than four days old, or with less than seventy-five per cent of
fertility. Transportation, even over rough roads, does not affect their
hatching, except in extreme warm weather, when the contents, becoming
thin and slightly evaporated through the heat, are apt to mix, when they
will surely cloud and rot. I have often sent eggs 2,000 miles, with the
report that every egg produced a duckling. With machine ready and
running steadily the eggs may be introduced at once. They need no
moisture now, and it is not necessary to disturb them for the first
forty-eight hours.
How to Choose and Use Thermometers.
Place your thermometer on the eggs in middle of egg-tray. Be sure, in
the first place, that you get a good glass, as all depends upon its
accuracy. Do not use one with the mercury bulb lying upon a solid metal
plate, as the refraction of heat upon the plate from the tank above will
always run that glass one or two degrees higher than the heat in the
egg-chamber, but get one, if possible, with a hole in the plate opposite
the bulb, so that the heat can play around the bulb and through the
plate, giving the correct heat of eggs and chamber. Do not hang your
glass up over the eggs, or put it down between the eggs, but lay it on
them, for the reason that, though either of these positions may be all
right during the first twelve days of the hatch (if your eggs are
fertile), they will surely be all wrong during the last part.
I will endeavor to explain this thing, so that the novice will
understand how important it is. Before circulation begins in the embryo
chick or duck, and there is no animal heat in the egg, the temperature
of the egg chamber regulates that of the eggs. But after circulation
begins, and especially during the latter part of the hatch, when the
rapidly-developing young bird throws out a great deal of heat, the thing
is often completely reversed. For instance, a glass may be hung one inch
above the eggs and another placed immediately on the eggs beneath. The
one above may register 102 degrees; the one below, on the eggs, will
register 105 degrees,--conclusively showing that the eggs are now, by
their own caloric, heating the egg-chamber.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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