Our Humble Helpers: Familiar Talks on the Domestic Animals

by Jean-Henri Fabre

Incubator

“What you would like to do, others, more skilful, have already done, not only opening the drawer but [[49]]breaking an egg each day so as to see how things are going. I told you that the germ of the bird is a round spot of dull white, the cicatricle, which by its mobility is always on top at the surface of the yolk, no matter what the position of the egg. After five or six hours of incubation you can already distinguish in the center of the cicatricle a minute glairy swelling which will be the head, and a line which will be the backbone. Pretty soon there begins to beat, at regular intervals, the organ most necessary to life, the heart, which chases through a network of fine veins the blood formed, little by little, out of the substance of the yolk, and distributes it everywhere to furnish materials to the other organs just coming into being. It is toward the second day that these first heart-beats, destined to continue henceforth until death, become apparent. Thus irrigated with running flesh—for blood is nothing else—this organism thenceforward makes rapid progress. The eyes show themselves and form a large black spot on each side of the head; the quills of the large feathers form in their sheaths; the scales of the feet are outlined in a bluish tint; the bones, at first gelatinous, acquire firmness by becoming incrusted with a small quantity of stony matter. [[50]]From the tenth day all the parts of the young chicken are well formed. The little being, softly suspended in its hammock by means of the two suspending cords that untwist little by little to give more room as it grows, is bent over on itself, the head folded against the breast and hidden under its wing. Note, my friends, that it is precisely this attitude of deep sleep inside the egg that the hen assumes when she wants to sleep. Crouched on her perch, she again folds her head on her breast and tucks it under her wing, just as she did when she was a little chicken in its shell.

“In the meantime the little bird keeps growing on the yellow and white matter; matter which soaks and penetrates it and, vivified by the air, becomes its blood and its flesh. One day it breaks the thin membrane under the shell, and there it is more at ease with the increase of space given it by the air-chamber. Now an attentive ear can distinguish feeble peepings inside the shell; it is the seventeenth or eighteenth day. A couple of days more, and the young chicken, summoning all its strength, will apply itself to the arduous work of deliverance. A pointed callosity, made expressly for the purpose, has formed on the upper part of the tip-end of the beak. Here is the tool, the pick, for opening its prison; a tool for that particular purpose and of very short duration, which will disappear as soon as the shell is pierced. With this provisional pick, the little chicken begins to hammer the shell; perseveringly it pushes, strikes, scratches, until the stone [[51]]wall yields. For the most vigorous it takes several hours. Oh, joy! the shell is broken; there is the young chicken’s little head, and all yellow velvety down, and still wet with the moisture of the egg. The mother comes to its aid and completes its deliverance; others, weaker or less skilful, take twenty-four hours of painful effort to free themselves. Some even exhaust themselves in the undertaking and perish miserably in the egg without succeeding in breaking the shell.”

“Those are the very ones the mother ought to help,” said Jules.

“She would be careful not to, for fear of a worse accident than a difficult birth. How could she direct her blows accurately enough not to wound the tender little chicken just inside the shell? The slightest false move would cause a wound, and at so tender an age any wound is death. We ourselves, with all the dexterity and care possible, could not, without danger, help the bird in distress; it can be tried as a last resort, but the chance of success is very small. The young chicken is the only one capable of carrying through this delicate deliverance if strength does not fail it. The hen knows this wonderfully well, and so does not interfere except to finish freeing the prisoner when half out of its shell. Let us hope that things will turn out as we wish, and that on the twenty-first day the whole family may be warmed under the mother’s wings without mortal accident at the moment of hatching.

“From the instant of leaving the shell the young [[52]]chickens already know how to peck food and how to run around the mother who, clucking, leads the way. They have besides a little fur of downy hair that clothes them warmly. This development is not found in all birds; far from it. Pigeons, for example, come naked from the egg and do not know how to eat; the father and mother have to feed them by disgorging a mouthful of food into their beaks. The young of the warbler, chaffinch, goldfinch, tomtit, lark, in fact of nearly all the field birds, are naked, very weak, at first blind, and completely incapable of feeding themselves, even with the food just under their beaks. The parents, with infinite tenderness, have for a number of days to bring it to them and put it into their beaks.”

“That is a difference that has always struck me,” commented Jules. “Little sparrows open their mouths wide to receive the food offered them, but for a long time they do not know how to take it even if it is put at the very end of their beak. On the contrary, little chickens easily pick up from the ground for themselves the seeds and worms that the mother digs up for them.”

“I will tell you, if you do not already know,” continued Uncle Paul, “that the young of the duck, turkey, goose, and, among wild birds, the partridge and quail, have the same precocity as those of the hen. They are clothed with down on coming out of the egg, and know how to eat. One of the causes of this difference in the way young birds act immediately after [[53]]hatching comes from the size of the egg. The chick is formed wholly from the substances contained in the egg; the larger the egg in proportion to the size of the animal, the stronger and more developed the young. Therefore the kind with the largest eggs are clothed at the time of hatching; they can run and know how to eat, unaided. Where the eggs are relatively small the young are hatched weak, naked, blind, and for a long time, motionless in their nest, demand the mother’s beakful of food.

“The largest egg known is that of an enormous bird that formerly lived in the island of Madagascar, and of which the species appears to-day to have been completely destroyed. This bird is called the epyornis. It was three or four meters tall and thus rivaled in stature a very long-legged horse or, better still, the animal called a giraffe. Such birds ought to lay monstrous eggs; such in fact they are; their length is three decimeters and a half and their capacity nearly nine liters.”