ggs laid before or after this season, or the first eggs laid
by a pullet, should never be set. Hens used for setting should be
old rather than young, without sharp beaks and claws, for those so
equipped are better employed in laying than in setting. Hens a year or
two years old are better fitted for laying.

"If you set pea-cock eggs under a hen, you should wait ten days before
adding hen eggs to the nest, to insure them all hatching together, for
the period of incubation of chicken eggs is thrice seven days and that
of the eggs of pea-fowl is thrice nine. Sitting hens should be shut up
day and night, except for a time in the morning and evening, when they
are let out to eat and drink.

"The keeper should make the rounds every few days and turn the eggs,
so that they may be kept warm all over. It is said that you can tell
whether an egg is fertile or sterile by putting it in water: for if it
is sterile it will float, while if it is fertile it will sink. Those
who shake their eggs to ascertain this fact make a mistake for thereby
they destroy the germ in them. It is also said that you can tell a
sterile egg by the fact that it is transparent when held against the
light.

"To preserve eggs they should be rubbed with fine salt or soaked for
three or four hours in brine, and then cleaned off or packed in chaff
or straw. Care should be taken to set eggs only in uneven numbers. The
keeper can tell whether an egg is fertile or not four days after it is
set, by holding it to the light, when he should throw it out if it is
found to be empty and substitute another for it.

"The new hatched chickens should be taken from every nest and given to
a hen who has only a few to care for. When in this way a setting hen
has less than half her eggs left unhatched, they should be taken from
her and put under another hen which has eggs still unhatched. It is
not well to give more than thirty chicks to a hen. Chicks should
be fed for the first fifteen days in the dust to protect them from
injuring their tender beaks on the hard ground: their diet being
crushed barley mixed with cress seed and soaked in wine, for prepared
in this way the grain is digestible. They should be kept away from
water in the beginning. When they begin to have feathers on their legs
the mites should be carefully picked off their heads and necks, for
these banes often destroy them. Deer's horn should be burnt around
their coops to keep snakes away, for the very smell