“All right, come on!” said Adam North. “I haven’t gathered all the eggs yet—not half, I guess.”
So the children had a good time looking for the nests in the different places the hens had hidden them. A hen, you know, likes to “steal her nest,” as the farmers call it. That is, she likes to sneak away in some quiet place and lay her eggs. Each day, or every other day, she will lay an egg in the same place. And, if the nest is not found for a week or more, sometimes there may be a dozen eggs in it, for often two or more hens may lay eggs in the same nest, taking turns.
And, when there are a dozen, or perhaps thirteen, eggs in the nest, some hen will begin to “set” on them—hovering over them for three weeks until little chickens hatch out of the eggs. The warm body and feathers on the mother hen bring the little chickens to life inside the egg, and with their beaks they pick open the shell and come out.
It is because a hen does not like to be disturbed when she is hatching out her eggs that she steals away to make her nest in as quiet and as dark a place as she can find. But farmers who raise eggs to sell do not always want them hatched out into chickens, so that is why it is needful to hunt for these hidden nests to take away the eggs.
“There’s a nest away back in there,” said Adam, who had looked under a low part of the barn. “I see some eggs, but I can’t reach them.”
“Let me crawl in an’ get ’em!” begged Mun Bun.
“Yes, I guess you’ll have to. I’m too big to get under there,” said the hired man.
“I want to get half the eggs,” said Margy.
But it was decided that it would be best for Mun Bun only to crawl under the low place in the barn, and soon he was wiggling and crawling his way there, toward the hen’s nest.
“If the old hen is on won’t she pick him?” asked Violet.