CHAPTER V.
EGGS.
During the natural process of moulting, hens cease laying because all the superabundant nutriment is required for the production of the new feathers. Fowls moult later each time; the moulting occupies a longer period, and is more severe as it becomes later, and if the weather should be cold at its termination they seldom recommence laying for some time. But young fowls moult in spring. Therefore, by having pullets and hens of different ages, and moulting at different times, a healthy laying stock may be kept up. Pullets hatched in March, and constantly fed highly, not only lay eggs abundantly in the autumn, but when killed in the following February or March, are as fat as any one could or need desire them to be, and open more like Michaelmas geese than chickens. When eggs alone are wanted, you can commence by buying in the spring as many hens as you require, and your run will accommodate, not more than a year or eighteen months old. If in good health and condition, they will be already laying, or will begin almost immediately; and, if well housed and fed, will give a constant supply of eggs until they moult in the autumn. When these hens have ceased laying, and before they lose their good condition by moulting, they should be either killed or sold, unless they are Hamburgs, Brahmas, or Cochins, and replaced by pullets hatched in March or April, which will have moulted early, and, if properly housed and fed, will begin to lay by November at the latest, and continue laying until February or March, when they may be sold or killed, being then in prime condition, and replaced as before; or, as they will not stop laying for any length of time, the best may be kept until the autumn, when, if profit is the chief consideration, they must be disposed of.[2] But Brahmas, Cochins, and Hamburgs will lay through the winter up to their second, or even third year. If you commence poultry-keeping in the autumn you should buy pullets hatched in the preceding spring. The best and cheapest plan of keeping up a good stock is to keep a full-feathered Cochin or two for March or April sitting; and, if necessary, procure eggs of the breed you desire. The Cochin will sit again, being only too often ready for the task; and the later-hatched chickens can be fattened profitably for the table. But if you wish to obtain eggs all the year round, and to avoid replacing of stock, or object to the trouble of rearing chickens, keep only those breeds that are non-sitters, as the Hamburgs, Polands, and Spanish; but you must purchase younger birds from time to time to keep a supply of laying hens while others are moulting.
Warmth is most essential for promoting laying. A severe frost will suddenly stop the laying of even the most prolific hens. "When," says M. Bosc, "it is wished to have eggs during the cold season, even in the dead of winter, it is necessary to make the fowls roost over an oven, in a stable, in a shed where many cattle are kept, or to erect a stove in the fowl-house on purpose. By such methods, the farmers of Ange have chickens fit for the table in the month of April, a period when they are only beginning to be hatched in the farms around Paris, although farther to the south." It is the winter management of fowls that decides the question of profit or loss, for hens will be sure to pay in the summer, even if only tolerably attended to. It is thought by many that each hen can produce only a certain number of eggs; and if such be the case, it is very advantageous to obtain a portion of them in winter when they are generally scarce and can be eaten while fresh, instead of having the whole number produced in the summer, when so many are spoiled from too long keeping in consequence of more being produced than are required for use at the time.
When the time for her laying approaches, her comb and wattles change from their previous dull hue to a bright red, the eye brightens, the gait becomes more spirited, and sometimes she cackles for three or four days. After laying her egg on leaving the nest the hen utters a loud cackling cry, to which the cock often responds in a high-pitched kind of scream; but some hens after laying leave the nest in silence. Some hens will lay an egg in three days, some every other day, and others every day. Hens should not be forced. By unnaturally forcing a fowl with stimulating food, and more particularly with hempseed and tallow greaves, to lay in two years or so the eggs that should have been the produce of several, the hen becomes prematurely old and diseased; and it is reasonable to suppose that the eggs are not so good as they would have been if nature had been left to run its own course. The eggs ought to be taken from the nest every afternoon when no more may be expected to be laid; for if left in the nest, the heat of the hens when laying next day will tend to corrupt them.
When the shells of the eggs are somewhat soft, it is because the hens are rather inclined to grow too fat. It is then proper to mix up a little chalk in their water, and to put a little mortar rubbish in their food, the quantity of which should be diminished. We give the following remarks by an experienced poultry-keeper of the old school, as valuable from being the result of practice: "The hen sometimes experiences a difficulty in laying. In this case a few grains of salt or garlic put into the vent have been successfully tried. The keeper should indeed make use of the latter mode to find out the place where a hen has laid without his knowledge; for, as the hen will be in haste to deposit her egg, her pace towards the nest will be quickened; she may then be followed and her secret found out."
"Though one particular form," says Mr. Dickson, "is so common to eggs, that it is known by the familiar name of egg-shaped, yet all keepers of poultry must be aware that eggs are sometimes nearly round, and sometimes almost cylindrical, besides innumerable minor shades of difference. In fact, eggs differ so much in shape, that it is said experienced poultry-keepers can tell by the shape of the eggs alone the hen that laid them; for, strange to say, however different in size the eggs of any particular hen may be occasionally, they are very rarely different in form. Among the most remarkable eggs may be mentioned those of the Shanghae, or Cochin-China fowl, which are of a pale chocolate colour; and those of the Dorking fowl, which are of a pure white, and nearly as round as balls. The eggs of the Malay fowls are brown; those of the Polish fowl, which are very much pointed at one end, are of a delicate pinkish white; and those of the Bantam are of a long oval."
A very important part of the egg is the air-bag, or folliculus æris, which is placed at the larger end, between the shell and its lining membranes. It is, according to Dr. Paris, about the size of the eye of a small bird in new laid eggs, but enlarges to ten times that size during the process of incubation. "This air-bag," says Mr. Dickson, "is of such great importance to the development of the chick, probably by supplying it with a limited atmosphere of oxygen, that if the blunt end of the egg be pierced with the point of the smallest needle (a stratagem which malice not unfrequently suggests), the egg cannot be hatched, but perishes."