St. Landry democrat., 1886-07-31
WONDERS OF INCUBATION.
Stages of Development Necessary to Con-
vert the Egg Into Downy Chick.

Stages of Development Necessary to Com
vert the Egg Into Downy Chick.
1t is wonderful to trace the develop.
ment of the chicken, during the process
of incubation, from the day on which
the mother hen begins her tedious term
of ''sitting" to the moment when the
downy biped bursts the shell and enters
on life as an animate and independent
existence. In the pursuit Of learning.
and in the interest of science, no seem
ing destruction of material is of any
moment, and we trust no economical
poultry raiser will accuse us of eXtrava-
gance if we remove each day or oftener
Of the twenty-one days required for the
perfection of the chicken, a single egg,
and show you Gas far as we can COM
prehend the principles of creation) how
the feathered tribes of our barnyard are
made,
Of course the germ of life is i'll the
egg from the beginning, as no amount
of warmth and quiet will produce bird
from a sterile egg; but with this fact
assured, the hen has sat on her eggs
hardly twelve hours before we find some
lineaments of the head and body of
chicken. The heart may be seen to
beat at the second day, and its aspect,
or shape, is that of tiny horseshoe.
Blood-vessels appear at the end of the
second day, and their faint pulsation is
distin guishable, one being the left ven
tricle and the other the rudiment of the
great artery. About the tiftieth hour
one aur.cle of the heart appears, re-
sembling a loop folded down upon it
self. At the end of seventy hours symp-
toms of the wings are appare MT, and on
the head five bubbles are seen, two for
the incipient brain, one for the bill, and
the other two for the front and back of
the head. At the end of the fourth day
the auricles, already visible, approach
nearer to the heart, and the liver ap-
pears toward the fifth day. At the
end of seven hours more we see
the lungs and stomach, and, with
wonderful rapidity, are developed
four hours afterward, the intes-
tines, the loins and the upper jaw.
At the one hundred and forty-fourth
hour two ventricles are visible, and two
drops of blood instead of the single
drop which we had seen previously.
The seventh day the brains seems to
have some consistency; and at the end
of the two hundred and nineteenth hour
of incubation the bill opens and flesh
appears on the breast. Four hours af-
ter the breast bone is seen; and in six
hours after this the ribs appear, form
ing the back of the chicken; and the bill
is distinctly visible, as well as the gall
bladder. The bill becomes green at the
end of two-hundred and thirty-six hours,
and ii we remove the chick from the
shell it evidently moves itself. At the
two hundredth hour the eyes appear,
and lightweight hours after the ribs are
perfect At the three hundred and
thirty-first the spleen draws near to the
stomach and the lungs. to the chest.
About the fifteenth day the bill fire.
quently opens and shuts, and careful
listener can catch the smothered cry of
the imprisoned chick at the end of the
eighteenth day.
For the remaining three days it grows
continually, developing the finishing
touches to its various organs, and to
the silken covering of down which en-
velops the tiny creature from glossy
beak to slender drumstick. Strength
comes with all the accelerated forces of
quickening life, and a few strokes of
the powerful bill sets the pretty prisoner
free, and his after life and prosperity is
something with which we. as his own
ers, have more or less connection
american Poultry Yard.