For long weary months the geese seemed the only fowls truly at home on my farm. They did their level best. Satisfied that my hens would neither lay nor set, I sent to noted poultry fanciers for “settings” of eggs at three dollars per thirteen, then paid a friendly “hen woman” for assisting in the mysterious evolution of said eggs into various interesting little families old enough to be brought to me.
Many and curious were the casualties befalling these young broods. Chickens are subject to all the infantile diseases of children and many more of their own, and mine were truly afflicted. Imprimis, most would not hatch; the finest Brahma eggs contained the commonest barn-yard fowls. Some stuck to the shell, some were drowned in a saucer of milk, some perished because no lard had been rubbed on their heads, others passed away discouraged by too much lard. Several ate rose bugs with fatal results; others were greedy as to gravel and agonized with distended crops till released by death. They had more “sand” than was good for them. They were raised on “Cat Hill,” and five were captured by felines, and when the remnant was brought to me they disappeared day by day in the most puzzling manner until we caught our mischievous pug, “Tiny Tim,” holding down a beautiful young Leghorn with his cruel paw and biting a piece out of her neck.
So they left me, one by one, like the illusions of youth, until there was no “survival of the fittest.”
In a ragged old barn opposite, a hen had stolen her nest and brought out seventeen vigorous chicks. I paid a large bill for the care of what might have been a splendid collection, and meekly bought that faithful old hen with her large family. It is now a wonder to me that any chickens arrive at maturity. Fowls are afflicted with parasitic wrigglers in their poor little throats. The disease is called “gapes,” because they try to open their bills for more air until a red worm in the trachea causes suffocation. This horrid red worm, called scientifically Scelorostoma syngamus, destroys annually half a million of chickens.
Dr. Crisp, of England, says it would be of truly national importance to find the means of preventing its invasion.
The unpleasant results of hens and garden contiguous, Warner has described. They are incompatible if not antagonistic. One man wisely advises: “Fence the garden in and let the chickens run, as the man divided the house with his quarrelsome wife, by taking the inside himself and giving her the outside, that she might have room according to her strength.”
Looking over the long list of diseases to which fowls are subject is dispiriting. I am glad they can’t read them, or they would have all at once, as J.K. Jerome, the witty playwright, decided he had every disease found in a medical dictionary, except housemaid’s knee. Look at this condensed list:
DISEASES OF NERVOUS SYSTEM.—1. Apoplexy. 2. Paralysis. 3. Vertigo. 4. Neuralgia. 5. Debility.
DISEASES OF DIGESTIVE ORGANS.—99.
DISEASES OF LOCOMOTIVE ORGANS.—1. Rheumatism. 2. Cramp. 3. Gout. 4. Leg weakness. 5. Paralysis of legs. 6. Elephantiasis.
Next, diseases caused by parasites.
Then, injuries.
Lastly, miscellaneous.
I could add a still longer list of unclassified ills: Homesickness, fits, melancholia, corns, blindness from fighting too much, etc.
Now that I have learned to raise chickens, it is a hard and slow struggle to get any killed. I say in an off-hand manner, with assumed nonchalance: “Ellen, I want Tom to kill a rooster at once for tomorrow’s dinner, and I have an order from a friend for four more, so he must select five to-night.” Then begins the trouble. “Oh,” pleads Ellen, “don’t kill dear Dick! poor, dear Dick! That is Tom’s pet of all; so big and handsome and knows so much! He will jump up on Tom’s shoulder and eat out of his hand and come when he calls—and those big Brahmas—don’t you know how they were brought up by hand, as you might say, and they know me and hang around the door for crumbs, and that beauty of a Wyandock, you couldn’t eat him!” When the matter is decided, as the guillotining is going on, Ellen and I sit listening to the axe thuds and the death squaks, while she wrings her hands, saying: “O dearie me! What a world—the dear Lord ha’ mercy on us poor creatures! What a thing to look into, that we must kill the poor innocents to eat them. And they were so tame and cunning, and would follow me all around!” Then I tell her of the horrors of the French Revolution to distract her attention from the present crisis, and alluded to the horrors of cannibalism recently disclosed in Africa. Then I fall into a queer reverie and imagine how awful it would be if we should ever be called to submit to a race of beings as much larger than we are as we are above the fowls. I almost hear such a monster of a house-wife, fully ninety feet high, say to a servant, looking sternly and critically at me: