After a basket of hens’ eggs has been incubated four days it is removed and the eggs examined by lighting, to remove those which are infertile before they have been rendered unsalable.  The infertile eggs go to the store and the basket is returned to the incubator.  Ducks’ eggs are similarly examined after two days and again after five days incubation; and geese’ eggs after six days and again after fourteen days.  Through these precautions practically all loss from infertile eggs is avoided and from 95 to 98 per cent of the fertile eggs are hatched, the infertile eggs ranging from 5 to 25 per cent.

After the fourth day in the incubator all eggs are turned five times in twenty-four hours.  Hens’ eggs are kept in the lower incubator eleven days; ducks’ eggs thirteen days, and geese’ eggs sixteen days, after which they are transferred to the trays.  Throughout the incubation period the most careful watch and control is kept over the temperature.  No thermometer is used but the operator raises the lid or quilt, removes an egg, pressing the large end into the eye socket.  In this way a large contact is made where the skin is sensitive, nearly constant in temperature, but little below blood heat and from which the air is excluded for the time.  Long practice permits them thus to judge small differences of temperature expeditiously and with great accuracy; and they maintain different temperatures during different stages of the incubation.  The men sleep in the room and some one is on duty continuously, making the rounds of the incubators and brooders, examining and regulating each according to its individual needs, through the management of the doors or the shifting of the quilts over the eggs in the brooder trays where the chicks leave the eggs and remain until they go to the store.  In the finishing trays the eggs form rather more than one continuous layer but the second layer does not cover more than a fifth or a quarter of the area.  Hens’ eggs are in these trays ten days, ducks’ and geese’ eggs, fourteen days.

After the chickens have been hatched sufficiently long to require feeding they are ready for market and are then sorted according to sex and placed in separate shallow woven trays thirty inches in diameter.  The sorting is done rapidly and accurately through the sense of touch, the operator recognizing the sex by gently pinching the anus.  Four trays of young chickens were in the store fronting on the street as we entered and several women were making purchases, taking five to a dozen each.  Dr. Haden informed me that nearly every family in the cities, and in the country villages raise a few, but only a few, chickens and it is a common sight to see grown chickens walking about the narrow streets, in and out of the open stores, dodging the feet of the occupants and passers-by.  At the time of our visit this family was paying at the rate of ten cents, Mexican, for nine hens’ and eight ducks’ eggs, and were selling their largest strong chickens at three cents each.  These figures, translated into our currency, make the purchase price for eggs nearly 48 cents, and the selling price for the young chicks $1.29, per hundred, or thirteen eggs for six cents and seven chickens for nine cents.