As was indicated in the previous section greater care in temperature of the egg is necessary in the first half of the hatch.  The temperature of 102 degrees F. as above given is, in the writer’s opinion, too low for this portion of the hatch.  An actual temperature of 104 degrees at the top of the eggs will, as has been shown by careful experimental work, give better hatches than the lower temperature.

Moisture and Evaporation.

The subject of the water content of the egg and its relation to life, is the least understood of poultry problems.

The whole study of the water content of the egg during incubation hangs on the amount of evaporation.  Now, the rates of evaporation from any moist object is determined by two factors:  vapor pressure and the rate of movement of the air past the object.  As incubation is always carried on at the same temperature, the evaporating power of the air is directly proportioned to the difference in the vapor pressure of water at that temperature, and the vapor pressure of the air as it enters the machine.  Thus, in order to know the evaporative power of the air, we have only to determine the vapor pressure of the air and to remember that the rate of evaporation is in proportion to this pressure, i.e.:  when the vapor pressure is high the evaporation will be slow and the eggs remain too wet, and when the vapor pressure is low the eggs will be excessively dried out.

The reader is probably more familiar with the term relative humidity than the term vapor pressure, but as the actual significance of relative humidity is changed at every change in outside temperature, the use of this term for expressing the evaporating power of the air has led to no end of confusion.

The influence of air currents on evaporation is to increase it directly proportional with the rate of air movement.  Thus, 10 cubic feet of air per hour passing through an egg chamber would remove twice as much moisture as would 5 cubic feet.

If the percentage of water in any living body be changed a relatively small amount, serious disturbances of the physiological processes and ultimately death will result.  The mature animal can, by drinking, take considerable excess of water without danger, for the surplus will be speedily removed by perspiration and by the secretion from the kidneys.  But the percentage of water in the actual tissues of the body can vary only within a narrow range of not more than three or four per cent.  The chick in the shell is not provided with means of increasing its water content by drinking or diminishing it by excretion, but the fresh egg is provided with more moisture than the hatched chick will require, and the surplus is gradually lost by evaporation.  This places the water content of the chick’s body at the mercies of the evaporating power of the air that surrounds the egg during incubation.