No 21. Chicken and the egg.

CHICKEN AND THE EGG.
Of all the tasks small boys could do around a farm the feeding of the hens and collecting of their eggs was the easiest, though also the most boring. But first bring the hens into the world.
At Whitehall our mother took care of the poultry and first we must hatch the eggs. Mother had an incubator in the laundry room where it could be well supervised, heated by small oil wick lamps and the temperature was critical with a thermometer essential. The incubator was warmed for a few days before setting the eggs to get everything just right. There were two small trays of water in the incubator to provide a degree of humidity, kept the shells from getting too brittle. I do not remember how many eggs the tray held, maybe 240 but I am guessing. Then incubation, the tray taken out each and every day, the eggs turned over by hand, mother telling us the hens did the same when they were sitting on their own clutch of eggs. She put a penciled cross on one side of the eggs so the turnover could be monitored. After a week the eggs were candled on a small apparatus with a back light of a candle against which each egg could be held and showing if fertile, if not the eggs were still usable for baking. The same candling after two weeks but infertile eggs missed on the first candling were not used. Then, after 21 days, the really big moment, listening for the first telltale chip, chip of a new chick tapping its way to freedom out of its shell. With a small air sack at the top of the egg, the big end, a chick could even cheep inside the shell. There is a small hard point on a chicken’s beak to better break the shell, a wonderful display of the good sense of nature. While an egg will stand remarkable pressure from outside it is mind boggling how a small chick can break out of the shell from inside, as do all birds of course.
Great excitement, can we look, can we help, can we touch, be patient. Came the magical moment when we saw the first new chicks, their wet new-born coats now dry and fluffy. It was incredible to see an egg we could have had for breakfast turn in 21 days into a bright eyed example of new life. The tiny chicks were carefully removed from the hatching tray into a warmed indoor first brooder, heated with small paraffin oil lamps and with clean new soft chaff underneath. The un-hatched eggs were left a couple of days to perhaps hatch any late arrivals, some being helped to break out of their shell. No hurry, some had not yet quite absorbed all the yolk. There would be some eggs that never hatched, but not many.
The new chicks in the brooder had a feeding tray filled with a mixture of oatmeal and water crumbed to small pellet size, and a tray of drinking water. The chicks took little time to find the food, pecking a small amount almost immediately. The heating lamps were turned down as the days went by, the chicks growing rapidly, generating their own heat, needing more room. Small air ventilators were adjusted. The chicks brooder had a warm, sweet, fermy smell, not at all unpleasant, with constant chirping and cheeping.
They were soon moved to larger accommodation, first to a brooder in the out door wash-house, then outdoors to one on the old tennis lawn with a run out into chicken-wire cages, meant to keep them in and hopefully rats and cats out. Not always successful as rats incredibly burrowed in during the night and a dead chick in the morning. Not too many but amazing what a hungry rat or two could do. Even a predatory black-back gull would perch on top of the chicken run with hungry eyes but no luck.
Feeding the chicks was progressive with various added ingredients as they rapidly grew. At about 6 weeks with feathers developing the young cockerels began to show rudimentary red combs ahead of the females. Came the first culling of little cockerels at about 1 lb. live weight, an on-farm delicacy to melt in your mouth, casseroled with farm made butter, and a very welcome if necessary adjunct to rearing our own chicks. Later in my farming life we bought day old chicks from a hatchery at Gollanfield, Inverness which were already sexed and only female chicks came our way. Unless we wanted to rear capons – cockerels - for the Christmas market. Anyone who traveled on our old steam trains with guard vans will remember the constant cheep, cheeping from the many cardboard boxes of day old chicks on their way to various train stations for collection by farmers.
Came the big day, moving the now rapidly growing chicks in handy boxes out to a hen house in a field, the cleaner the better, sometimes washed out and disinfected and treated with creosote. Got rid of the fleas I believe, even if only temporarily. A new henhouse was best of all. At first the henhouse had a small chicken wire run attached as introduction to the great outdoors, allowing the chicks to learn to go in and out the small pop hole. Then a chicken wire fence around it for a day or two to let the young pullets further familiarize themselves with their new abode. The fence was then taken away and the growing young pullets left to find their own way in and out of the wooden hen houses, which were built on skids and moved on to fresh ground every now and again, very organic.
The young pullets grew apace and came the day we saw their combs getting brighter and redder, sign of approaching maturity. Soon they would begin to lay. The nests were filled with fresh straw to entice them, and an occasional one would explore the nest for curiosity if nothing more, settling herself down and turning round in the straw, making a bed. Then the very first pullet’s egg, small at first but they quickly developed to full size. Soon they were all laying, with a cacophony of proud cackling, boasting a bit I suppose.
Some small farms or crofts or farm workers or just country dwellers hatched chickens in a more natural manner, a very common practice, setting a clucking hen on a dozen eggs to hatch and rear her own chicks, tend them herself and guard them against any marauders with fierce determination. On occasion at Whitehall a hen would hide away in the nettles and hatch her brood in privacy, proudly appearing in due course with her tiny brood following behind her, flying fiercely at us or the dog with beating wings if we came too near. Cats kept well clear but actually more dangerous than a dog who sometimes only wanted to shepherd the chicks a little while. I fear we boys might have teased a few.
The breeds we used were legion and sometimes farmers exchanged a setting of this or that breed, big Rhode Island Reds, White Leghorn, Wyandottes, Barr Rocks, others. And there were some really funny breeds kept just to show off.
Today in commercial poultry production they are all long gone, hens are now called chickens, the good fat hen we used to have for the pot of soup unattainable. No more can we get a good boiling fowl from the butcher, wonderfully tasty when sliced cold, or just torn apart with your fingers and eaten likewise. Lick your fingers afterwards, yummy!! Hybrids have been efficiently developed for specific tasks, either for egg production or for poultry meat.
Not so much fun anymore.