The weekly examiner., 1901-03-23
WISDOM OF THE HEN.
Something More Than Mere Sitting
 Required to Change Egg In- ss to Little Chicken.

A fresh egg has the yolk perfectly balanced in the middle of the white. Unless it remains thus balanced the chances are decidedly against it's hatch ing. Brooding hens understand that. When filling the nest a hen turns over all the eggs in it before she quits it after laying a new one.
 Brooding is throughout full of quaint surprises. Eggs will hatch if kept at blood heat-9S degrees. But they hatch more certainly and turn out stronger chicks if the temperature is a degree or so higher. Just how it is done nobody knows, but mother hens some way contrive to raise the normal heat of their bodies to the requisite pitch. Further, they strip the whole breast of feathers, so the eggs may have the benefit of full heat. Twice a day they turn over every egg in the nest, cuddling them separately up un- derneath their beaks, making little soft half-fretful chuckling noises the while.
 Hens are most ufcalculating egg stealers. All eggs in sight will be drawn into the nest, though the stolen eggs may crowd out those legitimately there. Still, in a way, hens take stock of what they brood. With few eggs they sit prim, with trimly folded wings. With too many they sprawl all over the nest, wings loose enough to let light between the feathers, and frequently turn themselves about reaching for un covered eggs, and drawing them under meath the breast.
 A hen of average size cannot profit ably cover more than IS eggs. In cold weather 13 is better limit, although in midsummer the same hen might brood and hatch 2o Left to themselves, the unchecked instinct of egg stealing with hens is apt to result in a nest full of spoiled eggs, with maybe one or two feeble chicks.
 Twenty-fourhours of breeding makes hardly a perceptibel change in an egg. Sometimes in warm weather there is the least reddish tinge beside the whitish clot in which the germ lies After 36 hours the clot shows we'll defined drop of very red blood. In two days the blood drop has spread to veins and arteries. At the end of ten days the head is fairly we'll formed, though the trunk is still ragged. In two weeks the chick is recognizable as a chick, and if the shell envelope is broken will quiver all through and feebly move the head. It has, however, no vestiges of the fine down coat it will wear little later. The coat forms rather rapidly.
 The period of incubation for chick en is 21 days, and for two days before leaving the shell the young fow1is prac- tically perfect. Yet it would not live were the shell forcibly removed. It spends the last two days gathering vital force to make it's own way out into the world. Ii lies snug within the shell, the head bent upon the breast, in such a position as brings the beak full 1 against the she'll
 The beak is armed with a tiny de- 1achable piece of horn, f1int-hard and set upon the very tip of the upper mandible. At full matching time the chick presses this triangle against the brittle shell and makes a hole in it, possibly a quarter inch across. An | hour later the chick, having turned it. self slightly, presses the beak against new spot and makes a fresh break. | As more air comes in the little creature grows stronger. It writhes still more strongly in its prison, turning always from left to right. Tn two hours or ten it breaks the shell in two and slips | out into the nest, wet and weary sprawler.
 Egg production varies enormously | A hens capacity is about 400 eggs, di- vided pretty equally through the first three years of her existence.-N. Y. | Sun.