THE HEN AND ITS BROOD
The city, we know, is a hotbed of noises, sounds of all sorts troubling our ears by day and night. We try at times to get rid of them, but find that not easy to do. The best thing for us is to get used to them and learn to sleep in spite of them. We need to become like Jock the miller, who got so used to the roar and clang of his mill that he could not sleep when it was still.
Some city people find it so hard to get used to the noises of the night that they go to the country for a quiet sleep. Do they find it? They may in still winter nights, but in the summer season the country has noises of its own. As soon as night falls a host of wood insects begin their endless drone. Then there is the locust and the katydid, with their shrill calls, and perhaps the whip-poor-will, with its mournful cry.
Falling to sleep at last, after these sounds have lost their force, no sooner are the first faint rays of light sent from the east, at three or four o'clock in the morning, than a new sound invades the ear and wakens the sleeper with a sudden start.
This is the early waking cock, with his loud "cock-a-doodle-doo." Standing on his own fortress he sounds his shrill alarm. A dozen more, near and far, from all points of the compass, take up the tune. The air is soon full of this strident cock-crow, the signal of the coming of the sun, until all hope of sleep is at an end, and the pilgrim wishes himself well back in his city bed. He finds the country not such a sweet sleep-producer as he hoped.
Feeding the Chickens in the Farm-yard
In old times people held the cock to be a sacred animal, the herald of the dawn, the symbol of light and the sun. In later times it was held to be the wide-awake sentry of the coming day. There are places where its image is mounted on church steeples on guard over the winds. Everywhere it is the emblem of vigilance, and this is what the city sleeper in country beds finds it.
With its stately attitude, its erect head crowned with feathers like an Indian chief, its showy spread of tail, and its air of pride and dignity, our cock strides about as the lord of the farm-yard and peals out his loud "cock-a-doodle-doo" like a challenge to battle. And he is usually quite ready for battle if any rival cock takes up his challenge.
While the cock thus blows his trumpet blast, the hen finds other work to do. Her business is to lay eggs, hatch out her brood of funny little chicks, lead them about the poultry yard in search of worms and other food, and gather them fussily under her wings when a hawk is seen in the sky or any danger appears.
Mrs. Hen does not have the ear-splitting voice of Mr. Cock, but she has a language of her own. There are only a few words in it but each of them has a meaning. There is the proud cackle with which she tells the world that she has laid an egg, the lively chuckle with which she brings her brood to a feast of worms, and the quick cry of danger which sets them running to the fortress of her wings. Her brood know what all these chickenwords mean, and it is for their ears they are spoken.
The hen is not as handsome a bird as some other inmates of the poultry yard, but if we look over all our stock of these birds we will find some very good-looking ones, these for their showy colors, those for their fine shape.
Among those that are kept more for ornament than use are the great Cochin China fowls, stately birds, giants of their kind, of lordly bearing and fine coloring. They do not lay many eggs and those they do lay are small. Also they are not very good to eat. But they win respect through their size and beauty and thus are kept by many as birds of show.
Another family of giant fowls are the Brahmas. They are smaller than the Cochin Chinas, but are as handsome, and along with this they lay many and large eggs and their flesh is very good. So these are kept not only as birds of show but birds of use.
When we come down to hens of smaller size we find a number of breeds, not less than forty in all, dwelling in various parts of the world and many of than good in various ways. Like nearly all our home animals, America is not the native place of the hen. Neither is Europe, for it came from Asia, that great continent in which so many animals were first born. But the hen tribe has spread all over the earth, the chicken is a household treasure almost from the north pole to the south, and we can hardly find a country home in any land without its crowing cock and its clucking hen.
While not native to America, it makes itself very much at home there and the United States has some excellent breeds of its own, of which we may be proud. These are the Plymouth Rocks and the Wyandottes, which have been called the national fowls of America and which can hold their own with the best breeds of Europe. While we have brought a number of fine breeds from foreign lands, we have sent these two abroad, and they have won high praise both for beauty and usefulness.
The Wyandottes are of various colors, the white being best liked; others are of silver, golden, speckled, black, and partridge-color. They are splendid egg layers, filling the yearly basket with from a hundred and fifty to two hundred eggs.
The Plymouth Rock may be speckled, light yellow, or white, and it bears a strong resemblance to the Wyandotte, except that the latter has a double comb on its head while the former has a single one.
As the cow is kept for its meat and its milk, and the sheep for its meat and its wool, so is the hen kept for two purposes, its flesh and its eggs. Some kinds are bred for the table and they are of great value in our food-supply. Everybody likes a dish of chicken meat, which is fine in flavor, easy of digestion, and very good for the weak or sick.
Other kinds are kept for egg-laying and the egg-harvest of the world is vast in size. It is the nature of the hen to lay eggs enough for a brood of chicks, sit on them to keep them warm, and take care of the brood when it appears until the chicks are old enough to scratch for their own living.
English Dorking Cock and Hen
But these duties take up much time in which no eggs are laid, and the farmers who deal in eggs try to prevent the hens from nest-making and egg-hatching. In this way many hens have been forced to forget what they were made for and have gone out of the hatching business. These give all their spare time to egg-laying. Some of them lay more than two hundred eggs a year. Breeds of this kind are found mostly in the countries along the Mediterranean.
The number of chickens kept and of eggs laid in the world is far out of sight. In the United States alone in 1900 there were nearly 250,000,000 chickens, and nearly 1,300,000,000 dozen of eggs were laid. This made three chickens for each man, woman and child in the country and seventeen dozen of eggs for each. Since then the number has grown much larger and the annual egg crop of the world, if it could be heaped up together, would make a pyramid far larger than the largest in Egypt.