QUICK HATCHING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17609, 27 October 1931, Page 9

QUICK HATCHING

LIVE CHIOKS IN 24 HOURS LONDON, Sept. 2. Speed is science’s middle name these days. High pressure “bombs” to hatch out chickens in. 24 hours instead' cl nature’s 21 days, are the newest marvel to emerge from the research workers laboratories in the Imperial College of Science, South Kensington. So tremendous are the possibilities of the new method of hurrying up the process of getting born that scientists smile nervously when questioned and say, “We do not know what it will mean in. the future, but it may mean chickens in a single day now,” . ' . Experiments which have brought about such a revolution in farm-yard production are based on the- idea that if fertilised eggs are subjected to high air pressure and kept at the incubation temperature tho embroy will go through all its life stages in a fraction of the normal time. Tadpoles were first enclosed in an apparatus like the “bomb, ’ subjected to many hundredweights pressure to the square inch, and emerged alive in half the usual time. It . was necessary, however, to allow the air to bubble out of them after they were placed in’ water. The same experiment was made with chickens under the pressure of a ton to the square inch, biit so far, live chicks have not been produced as the experiments check that process at all its intermediate stages so that they can see what is happening. But they have no doubt of the result, and have already devised a meins of “deflating” nowly-bom chickens after their emergence from tho high pressure .bomb, just as a diver is deflated after h» comes out of an air lock in an underwater &UV&LII