She also showed her the incubators.
"They're empty now, but you should have seen them in the early spring, when they were full of eggs," she explained.

"It was a tremendous anxiety to keep the lamps properly regulated.

Miss Nelson and I sat up all night once when some prize ducklings were hatching.

It was cold weather, and they weren't very strong, so they needed a little help.
It's the most frightfully delicate work to help a chick out of its shell! It makes a little chip with its beak, and then sometimes it can't get any further, and you have gently to crack the hole bigger.

Unless you're very careful you may kill it, but on the other hand, if it can't burst its shell when it's ready to hatch, it may suffocate, so it's a choice of evils.