Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

been recorded to go through the pantomimic actions of feeding its brood in the spring (Gard. Mag.) A Bantam Hen was barren, but always entered the nest daily, never laying; but at last became broody, was supplied with eggs, and proved an excellent sitter and mother.

When the determination to sit becomes fixed,—there is no need to indulge the first faint indications immediately let her have the nest she has selected well cleaned and filled with fresh straw. The number of eggs to be given to her will depend upon the season, and upon their and her own size. The wisest plan is not to be too greedy. The number of chickens hatched is often in inverse proportion to the number of eggs set; I have known only five to be obtained from sixteen. Hens will in general well cover from eleven to thirteen eggs laid by themselves. A Bantam may be trusted with about half-a-dozen eggs of a large breed, such as the Spanish. A Hen of the largest size, as a Dorking, will successfully hatch at the most five Goose's eggs. But if a Hen is really determined to sit, it is useless as well as cruel to attempt to divert her from her object. The means usually prescribed are such as no humane person would willingly put in practice. If the season is too late or too early to give a hope of rearing gallinaceous birds, the eggs of Ducks or Geese may always be had; and the young may be brought up, with a little pains-taking, at any time of the year. And if it be required to retain the services of a Hen for expected valuable eggs, she may be beguiled for a week or ten days with four or five old addled ones till the choicer sort arrive.

Three weeks is the period of incubation of the common Hen. Sometimes when she does not sit close for the first day or two, or in early spring, it will be some hours longer; more rarely in this climate, when the Hen is assiduous and the weather is hot, the time will be a trifle shorter. The growth of the chick in the egg has been so fully and so well described by many writers, from Aristotle down to Reaumur, that I need merely refer the

reader to them. The observations of the latter particularly have appeared in almost every compilation that has been published on the subject; and I must think it better taste for common inquirers to betake themselves to such sources of information, illustrated as they are by good engravings, than to desire that a set of half-hatched eggs should be broken to gratify their curiosity. A shattered and imperfectly formed chick, struggling in vain in the fluid that ought to perfect its frame, till it sinks in a gradual and convulsive death, is a horrible spectacle, though on a small scale.

Shortly before the time of hatching arrives, the chickens may be heard to chirp and tap against the walls of their shell. Soon a slight fracture is perceived towards the upper end, caused by force from within. The fracture is

continued around the top of the egg, which then opens like a lid, and the little bird struggles into daylight. The tapping which is heard, and which opens the prison doors, is caused by the bill of the included chick: the mother has nothing to do with its liberation, beyond casting the empty shells out of the nest. At the tip of the bill of every new-hatched chick, on the upper surface, a whitish scale will be observed, about the size of a pin's head, but much harder than the bill itself. Had the beak been tipped with iron to force the shell open, it would not have been a stronger proof of creative design than is this minute speck, which acts as so necessary an instrument. In a few days after birth, when it is no longer wanted, it has disappeared; not by falling off, I believe, which would be a waste of valuable material, but by being absorbed and becoming serviceable in strengthening the bony structure, minute as the portion of earthy substance is. And yet some people direct, that as soon as the chick is hatched, this scale should be forced off with the finger nail, because it is injurious!

All chicks do not get out so easily, but may require a little assistance. The difficulty is, to know when to give it. They often succeed in making the first breach, but

appear unable to batter down their dungeon walls any further. A rash attempt to help them by breaking the shell, particularly in a downward direction towards the smaller end, is often followed by a loss of blood, which can ill be spared. It is better to wait awhile and not interfere with any of them, till it is apparent that a part of the brood have been hatched some time, say twelve hours, and that the rest cannot succeed in making their appearance. After such wise delay, it will generally be found that the whole fluid contents of the egg, yolk and all, are taken up into the body of the chick, and that weakness alone has prevented its forcing itself out. The causes of such weakness are various; sometimes insufficient warmth, from the Hen having sat on too many eggs; sometimes the original feebleness of the vital spark included in the egg, but most frequently staleness of the eggs employed for incubation. The chances of rearing such chicks are small, but if they get over the first twentyfour hours they may be considered as safe. But all the old wives' nostrums to recover them are to be discarded: the merest drop of ale may be a useful stimulant, but an intoxicated chick is as liable to sprawl about and have the breath trodden out of its body as a fainting one. Pepper-corns, gin, rue, and fifty other ways of doctoring, are to be banished afar, together with their subjects, namely,

"All the unaccomplished works of Nature's hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed,
Embryos, and idiots, eremites, and friars,
Into a Limbo large and broad, since called
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.”

The only thing to be done, is to take them from the Hen till she is settled at night, keeping them in the meanwhile as snug and warm as possible. If a clever, kind, gentlehanded little girl could get a crumb of bread down their throats, it would do no harm; but all rough, violent, clumsy manipulation is as bad as the throat

tickling of the hard-fingered hangman. Animal heat will be their greatest restorative. At night let them be quietly slipped under their mother; the next morning they will be either as brisk as the rest, or as flat as pancakes and dried biffins.

Those who have ever undertaken the amusing task of tending a brood of chickens from the shell, must have observed the great change of apparent size which the first few hours produce. At the time when I had an affectionate assistant in such matters, we used often to remark, how impossible it would be to re-pack again in the same shell the creature which was contained in it only a little while ago. We certainly never tried the experiment, but the eye could measure with some degree of accuracy, besides allowing for the elastic coat of down which before had been flattened by moisture. How could the vivacious little wretch have made such a sudden start? Not from what it had eaten or drunk, certainly. The solution appears to lie in the fact which the best comparative anatomists have recorded, that the bodies of most birds are injected with air to a considerable extent. While the embryo remains in the shell, its vascular parts are compressed, or contain merely fluid for future nourishment, but as soon as the lungs come fairly into play, air is made to inflate many an unsuspected cavity, even, perhaps, to the tip of every filament of down. Chamælion-like, the chick makes a good meal on the atmosphere. A case in point may be seen when the shell of a chrysalis is disrupted by the emerging butterfly; and the process is so absolutely magical, that those who have never witnessed it will be amply repaid for their trouble, if they collect a few chrysalids (those of the gooseberry-moth, for instance) out of their garden, and keep them under a tumbler in their dressing-room, or on their side-board or writing-table, or wherever they are most likely to secure the chance of being in at the birth. The black, hairy, quick-running caterpillar, which is so common, may be secured, fed upon common groundsel, and will speedily

be metamorphosed into a handsome tiger-moth. Ten minutes after it has burst its shelly covering,

"Not all the Queen's horses, and all the Queen's men
Could get tiger-moth into his shell again."

It creeps out with a little moisture adhering to it, the wings appear merely rudimental, soon it is seized with a shivering fit, it grows larger with every successive attack of tremulousness, the wings may be seen to extend as a curtain is let down, the moisture is absorbed or evaporated, its breathing-places in its sides are at work, it is thoroughly injected with air, and none but those who know the whole truth would believe, on seeing the narrow case by the side of the expanded insect, that Euclid had been practically contradicted, and that the greater had been contained within the less. The chicks of Turkeys and Guinea Fowls exhibit this sudden expansion even more strikingly than those of Cocks and Hens.

But what are we to do with the new-come chickens? Let us leave them quiet with their mother six or eight hours, or till the next morning. Now is the time to listen to quackeries, and fooleries, and heaps of babble and rubbish, if we do not choose the better part of being as deaf as stones. How wonderful must be the productive energy which is at work in the universe, to replace the myriads of chickens and children that have been laid low by sage nursing! Whole pepper-corns, gin, laudanum, tight-swaddling, cramming, dips into cold water, suffocation with foul air, make us wonder that either biped, plumed or unplumed, is to be found in any other than a fossil state.

A roomy, boarded coop, in a dry sunny spot, is the best position for them during the first month; after which it may be left open during the day for the Hen to retire to when she pleases. In quiet grassy places, such as one sees on the skirts of green commons and by the sides of country churchyards, the Hen need scarcely be cooped at all.

As to food, let them have everything which is not

« FöregåendeFortsätt »