INCUBATION.
The hen manifests the desire of incubation in a manner different from that of any other known bird. Nature having been sufficiently tasked in one direction, she becomes feverish, and loses flesh; her comb is livid; her eyes are dull; she bristles her feathers to intimidate an imaginary enemy; and, as if her chickens were already around her, utters the maternal “cluck.”
When the determination to sit becomes fixed—it is not necessary to immediately gratify the first faint inclinations—the nest which she has selected should be well cleaned, and filled with fresh straw. The number of eggs to be allowed will depend upon the season, and upon the size of egg and hen. 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—five have only been obtained from sixteen. An odd number is, however, to be preferred, as being better adapted to covering in the nest. 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-eggs.
When hens are determined to sit at seasons of the year at which there is little chance of bringing up chickens, the eggs of ducks or geese may be furnished her; the young may be reared, with a little painstaking, at any time of the year. The autumnal laying of the China and of the common goose is very valuable for this purpose. Turkey-hens frequently have this fit of unseasonable incubation.
Where, however, it is inconvenient to gratify the desire, one or two doses of jalap will often entirely remove it; and fowls often lay in three weeks afterward. Some place the would-be sitter in an aviary, for four or five days at most, and feed her but sparingly; from the commencement of her confinement, she will gradually leave off clucking, and when this has ceased, she may be again set free, without manifesting the least desire to take to the nest again, and in a short time the hen will commence laying with renewed vigor. The barbarous measures sometimes resorted to should be frowned upon by every person with humane feelings.
Three weeks is the period of incubation; though chickens are sometimes excluded on the eighteenth day. When the hen does not sit close for the first day or two, or in early spring, it will occasionally be some hours longer; when the hen is assiduous, and the weather hot, the time will be a trifle shorter. Chickens have been known to come out as late as the twenty-seventh day.
It may not be uninteresting to note the changes which the egg passes through in hatching. In twelve hours, traces of the head and body of the chicken may be discerned; at the end of the second day, it assumes the form of a horse-shoe, but no red blood as yet is seen; at the fiftieth hour, two vesicles of blood, the rudiments of the heart, may be distinguished, one resembling a noose folded down on itself, and pulsating distinctly; at the end of seventy hours, the wings may be seen, and, in the head, the brain and the bill, in the form of bubbles; toward the end of the fourth day, the heart is more completely formed; and on the fifth day, the liver is discernible; at the end of one hundred and thirty hours, the first voluntary motions may be observed; in seven hours more, the lungs and stomach appear; and, in four hours after this, the intestines, the loins, and the upper jaw. At the end of the one hundred and forty-fourth hour, two drops of blood are observable in the heart, which is also further developed; and, on the seventh day, the brain exhibits some consistence. At the one hundred and ninetieth hour, the bill opens, and the muscular flesh appears on the breast; in four hours more, the breast bone is seen; and, in six hours afterward, the ribs may be observed forming from the back. At the expiration of two hundred and thirty-six hours, the bill assumes a green color, and, if the chicken be taken out of the egg, it will visibly move. At two hundred and sixty-four hours, the eyes appear; at two hundred and eighty-eight hours, the ribs are perfect; and at three hundred and thirty-one hours, the spleen approaches near to the stomach, and the lungs to the chest; at the end of three hundred and fifty-five hours, the bill frequently opens and shuts. At the end of the eighteenth day, the first cry of the chicken is heard; and it gradually acquires more strength, till it is enabled to release itself from confinement.
After the hen has set a week, the fertility of the eggs may be satisfactorily ascertained by taking a thin board with a small orifice in it, placing a candle at the back, and holding up each egg to the points of light. The barren eggs may then be removed, and used, hard-boiled, for young chickens. Some reserve this for the eleventh or twelfth day.
About the twenty-first day, the chicken is excluded from the egg; for the purpose of breaking the shell of which it is furnished with a horny-pointed scale, greatly harder than the bill itself, at the upper tip of the bill—a scale which falls off, or becomes absorbed, after the chicken is two or three days old. The chicken is rolled up in the egg in the form of a ball, with its forepart toward the highest end, and its beak uppermost, the hard scale nearly touching the shell.
The first few strokes of the chicken’s beak produce a small crack, rather nearer the larger than the smaller end of the egg, and the egg is said to be chipped. From the first crack, the chicken turns gradually round, from left to right, chipping the shell as it turns, in a circular manner, never obliquely. All do not succeed in producing the result in the same time; some being able to complete the work within an hour, and others taking two or three hours, while half a day is most usually employed, and some require twenty-four hours or more, but rarely two days. Some have greater obstacles to overcome than others, all shells not being alike in thickness and hardness.
When chickens do not effect their escape easily, some little assistance is needed; but the difficulty is to know when to give it, as a rash attempt to help them, by breaking the shell, particularly in a downward direction toward the smaller end, is often followed by a loss of blood, which can ill be spared. It is better not to interfere, until it is apparent that a part of the brood have been hatched for some time, say twelve hours, and that the rest cannot succeed in making their appearance. It will then generally be found that the whole fluid contents of the egg, yolk and all, are taken up into the body of the chicken, and that weakness alone has prevented its forcing itself out. The causes of such weakness are various; sometimes, insufficient warmth, from the hen having set on too many eggs; sometimes the original feebleness of the vital spark; but, most frequently, the staleness of the eggs employed for incubation.
The chances of rearing such chickens are small; but, if they survive the first twenty-four hours, they may be considered as safe. 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 gentle hand can persuade a crust of bread down their throats, it will do no harm; but all rough and clumsy manipulation will utterly defeat the end in view. Animal heat will be their greatest restorative. At night, they should be quietly slipped under their mother; the next morning will disclose the sequel.
The period of incubation in the Guinea fowl is twenty-eight days, or one month; in the pea fowl, from twenty-seven to twenty-nine days; in turkeys, a month; in ducks, thirty or thirty-one days; and in geese, from twenty-seven to thirty days.
Incubation of turkeys. When the turkey hen has once selected a spot for her nest, she will continue to lay there till the time for incubation; so that the egg may be brought home from day to day, there being no need of a nest-egg, as with the domestic fowl. She will lay from fifteen to twenty eggs, more or less. If there are any dead leaves or dry grass at hand, she will cover her eggs with these; but if not, she will take no trouble to collect them from a distance.
Her determination to sit will be known by her constantly remaining on the nest, though it is empty; and, as it is seldom in a position sufficiently secure against the weather or pilferers, a nest should be prepared for her, by placing some straw, with her eggs, on the floor of a convenient out-building. She should then be brought home, and gently and kindly placed upon it. With the smallest varieties, thirteen eggs will suffice; a large hen might cover more. At the end of a week, it is usual to add some fowls’ eggs; the activity of the chickens excites some emulation in the larger brethren, and the eggs take up but little room in the nest.
Some believe it necessary to turn the eggs once a day; but the hen herself does that many times daily. If the eggs are marked, and their position noticed when she leaves the nest, they will never be found in the same order. In about four weeks, the young will be hatched.
Incubation of geese. Geese breed in general only once a year; but, if well kept, they sometimes hatch twice a season. During the sitting, in sections where the most attention is paid to breeding them, each bird has a space allotted to it, in rows of wicker-pens, placed one above another, and the person in charge of them drives the whole flock to water three times a day, and, bringing them back to their habitations, places each bird in its own nest.
The most successful breeders of Bremen geese adopt the following method: The birds are, in the first place, carefully and properly fed; the eggs are removed every day in the gentlest manner from the nest, and placed in a basket of cotton kept in a moderate temperature, and free from damp. When all the geese begin to sit steadily, each is furnished with a nest composed of chopped straw; and care is taken that it is sufficiently capacious.
Not more than one of the geese is allowed to leave the eggs at a time. As soon as one leaves, she makes a cackling noise, which is the signal for the attendant to shut up the boxes in which the others are sitting. These are made somewhat like a dog-kennel, with a roof pitched both ways; and are thirty inches long, by twenty-four wide, and twenty-four high; the door is in the end, and is covered by a sliding panel, which moves upward, when egress or ingress is sought, and may be shut down at pleasure. The goose, upon returning, finds only her own box open. When she re-enters her box, the whole of the doors are again opened, and the same rule observed throughout the period of hatching. In this way, each goose is kept to its own nest.