Hatching Chickens, and Geese,

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.


No 55. COUNTING THE CHICKENS – AND THE GEESE.

Today we hear so much about the mythical “Family Farm”, with visions of contented cows being milked by sonsy maidens, patiently the time chewing a bit of clover leaf, maybe a four-leafed one. The hens are surrounding the auld wife as she dells oot scattered handfu’s o’ oats with one hand from a bucket held under the oxter of her other arm. The pet lamb tugs at the teat on a bottle of milk held by the wee lass. At the back door the auld broon and white collie dog lies curled contentedly waiting for the boss to come awa oot and they will tak a turn up the hill tae hae a luk at the sheep.

The horse looks over the fence. The old sow hangs over her pen gate with front legs gracefully holding her up as she takes a look around. If she hears the clatter of a pail she gives great encouragement to hurry up, she is always hungry. The ducks are having a swim on the pond, the mother goose waddles along with her goslings following. A rabbit chews his way through the lettuce in the kitchen garden.
Well, I saw it all a Long Time Ago. We seemed to have a bit of everything around Whitehall, and our father was a bit of a magician at handling all the different birds and animals we had. And he seemed to have plenty time to do so, no mad rushing from pillar to post as today, finish one job and rush on to the next. The pace of life was a bit more sane than now. We indeed had all these old fashioned farmyard creatures.
There was always something to be seen on most farms, some activity of farming life, hens scratching around, the cock chasing his amorata of the moment. The grey geese in the Front Park flapping their wings in a useless attempt to fly, honking the while. It was a bit of fun for them. They could indeed manage to run and lift a few yards off the ground, especially going down a slope into the wind, but they were just not designed to be air-born or for the space age.
Turkeys do not seem to be too much in my memory, we had a few but kept well away from them as the turkey cock could be a mad loon at times. They could fly up into a stack in the corn yard but usually did not take such exercise. They were of the old grey bronze variety, a bit old fashioned now but a good bird in its day.
Breeding, or rather hatching, all these different birds was an art form. Father had a crazy knack of setting a hen in the most unlikely places, an aumry in the stable, an empty stall in the byre in summer, a corner just about anywhere. I think he got a great deal of fun out of taking a visitor around and stopping here and there to have a look at some clucker. Sometimes he would get a setting from a neighbour who would exchange a dozen eggs. “Try this ones, Tom, this new breed are great layers”. I think he could have set a hen on eggs on top of a telephone pole, except we had no telephone.
His victims were readily available, the hen house provided him with a steady supply of clucking hens, a nuisance in the henhouse as they would monopolise the nests and make the active layers drop their eggs on the floor instead of in a clean newly-strawed nest. Never one to see anyone idle, man or beast, he would make the clucker work for her living by hatching whatever eggs came to hand. That meant that she could be sitting on hen eggs, duck eggs, goose eggs, or rarely turkey eggs.
The geese would make a nest out in a corner of the field, or in a small hutch or barrel handily left for them. One of our small-boy tasks was to find a nest in some out-of-the-way spot where the goose thought she was safe from prying eyes. It was interesting to catch the goose on her way to lay an egg, she was as cunning as could be, and would only sneak to her nest if she thought we were not around. A goose could lay a dozen eggs or more before she began sitting. Father would steal the eggs, for a time, not more than four from any one goose at one every two days as she layed them. He did not wish to discourage her so most were left in the nest, a goose could count, and she would keep on laying until she had enough to sit on. A goose egg is a bit monstrous compared to a hen egg, four goose eggs made a good setting for a hen to cover adequately. A fresh goose egg made a real breakfast but could choke a horse, and only a odd cracked one made its way to the table, fried with the yolk broken, never boiled. Tasty too.

The stolen (borrowed!!) goose eggs were very carefully kept in a soft lined box, and when father had his four eggs and a clucking hen appeared he would find a suitable site and set the hen. It might take a day or two for her to settle down and usually a loose lid was put on top of the box for a few days. Occasionally a hen would not co-operate but another clucker would easily be found to keep the eggs warm.
Wooden egg boxes belonging to Orkney Egg Producers. Ltd., which held 240 eggs in two sides made good boxes, one hen each side. Four goose eggs made a good setting, a hen could cover them adequately. Father made use of feed boxes in the stable stalls, an odd barrel, a corner of the cow byre, indeed any byre, but this was a summer time job so the cattle were out and the byres were empty.
One task was to lift the hen off her eggs to give her a bit of feed and a drink. This was especially needed when sitting on geese eggs as hen eggs took three weeks to hatch but duck and geese eggs took four, so a sitting hen could get quite thin if not fed a bit.


It was not out-with Father’s province to have her sit on Mallard eggs, the old Stock Duck of the Vikings and still called so in places. Domesticated, the Mallard was the ancestor of our farmyard Khaki Campbell duck, so someone long years ago pinched a few Mallard eggs as well as our father. Probably a Campbell!!
The Mallard and the farm yard duck could indeed interbreed, but very rarely. The wild duck eggs were filched from a nearby small lochan down at Old St Peter’s Kirkyard on the shore where Father had spotted a mallard duck trying her best to remain invisible. It was also quite possible for a mallard to make a nest half way up an un-thrashed stack of oats still in the stackyard in summer, but any stack left over would always be built on a raised steathe to stop entry by vermin which in summer time would have riddled an unthrashed stack to utter destruction.
Father would take only enough Mallard eggs for a setting, not more than five, leaving most of the wild duck eggs for nature to take its course. It is worthy of note that Mallard ducks, wild birds as they are, still come in about a farm and even across the road from where I sit in the farmhouse of Isauld they sneak into the feed shed to see of they can find a bit of loose grain. Totally not domesticated, they still have an affinity with man which is quite wonderful, and are the only wild duck I know that comes into such close contact with ourselves. In winter they would be quite happy in the stackyard gleaning a bit of loose grain from a thrashed stack steadle. I do not know what makes the Mallard behave so, but it is a fact. They are without doubt the most beautiful of all the ducks, absolutely my favourite. They also pair up for life so are seen usually in their pairs, only bunching up a bit in winter and not too much then.
This setting and hatching of eggs was a favourite ploy of our father, he was good at it, got a great deal of fun out of it, and it never left him even to the end of his days at Greenland Mains in 1958.














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