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.
THE GAME COCK AND ITS BATTLES
I do not want to say much about cock-fighting, for it is a cruel sport and leads to the vice of gambling, through which many lose large sums of money. But the fighting of game-cocks has a history of its own, and cannot be quite passed over in our story of the hen and its brood.
The males of all the higher animals are fond of fighting. It is one of their duties to act as guardians of the family against danger from outside, while the females look after home affairs. This fighting temper is very common among animals and men have often made use of it in getting up battles between animals. We find it in the chicken family, and cock-fighting has long been enjoyed by sport-loving people.
While all cocks are ready to fight at times, and the winning cock struts about the poultry yard like a conqueror, there are special breeds known as Game-cocks which are always ready for a battle and will fight till victory or death ends the fray. Game-cocks are classed among the ornamental poultry, for they are of little use as food and their hens lay few eggs. Yet they are highly thought of in some countries, a good fighter is treated as a member of the family, and one that has won several victories is worth much money to his owner.
There are two kinds of fighting cocks, large ones and small ones. Some of the little kind are not larger than pigeons. They are usually known as Bantams, from the town of Bantam, in Java, though it is more likely they came from Japan. These little birds, many of them of only a pound in weight, are heroes of the poultry yard, for a fighting bantam is more than a match for a common cock five times its size. The bantam has been spoken of as "a fine example of a great soul in a little body."