The art of hatching and bringing up domestick fowls of all kinds, at any time of the year. Either by means of the heat of hot-beds, or that of common fire / By M. de Réaumur.

  • Réaumur, René-Antoine Ferchault de, 1683-1757.
Date:
1750
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The art of hatching and bringing up domestick fowls of all kinds, at any time of the year. Either by means of the heat of hot-beds, or that of common fire / By M. de Réaumur. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/522 (page 11)
    of the fpecies carried fo far as might be wifhed : it is not nearly all the hens of a poultry-yard that are willing every year to fit. In fome years, when I have wanted fitting hens for fome experiments I would have made, I have hadthe mortification not to find above four fuch among fifty or fixty of them. Complaints of hens that refufe to fit are very com¬ mon in the country. I think in general, that it feldom happens that the third or even the fourth part of them are fo difpofed. Befide this, they are not al¬ ways willing to fit at thofe times when we wifh they would, which is in part the reafon why the early chickens are dear a great while, and why we have not every year a fupply of them as early as we wifh for it. Why do we not try then to make upbyart for the fcarcity of what the hens are difpos’d to give us? The example of the Egyptians, who are fo much the better for not depending upon hens to have chickens,feems to point out to us what we ought to do: notwith- ftanding thd* expence of the building of their ovens, and that of the people employed to look after them for the whole time, during which a gentle and equal heat is to be kept up in them, their broods are not by much fo expenfive as ours: for it would be a very great miftake to think that it cofts us nothing to make our hens fit. A hen is employ’d in fitting on her eggs, and in the care of the chicks that come out of them for two months and a half at lead, and fome- times for three, or three and a half of the months that are moft favourable for laying, and during which fhe might have laid above thirty eggs at a medium. To have fifteen eggs fat on, which is the number commonly given a hen in this country, we mud of courfe lofe, thirty others *, by which means the price of each of thofe that are put under the hen, becomes that of three eggs. This is one of thofe things that may feem to be final], or almoil unworthy