844 Rural School Leaflet. 



asking the children to make their observations in the chicken yard 

 and report the results. 



Facts for the Teacher. — In early spring — about Easter time, the hen 

 begins laying regularly, depositing not more than one egg each day 

 and announcing the fact with loud, triumphant cackles. If allowed 

 to follow nature's promptings she would cease laying and begin to sit 

 as soon as she had accumulated a nest full — from twelve to fifteen eggs 



too 



But by removing the eggs each day the laying season may be prolongC(^ 

 several weeks. If not furnished with a "ready-made" nest, she will 

 make one on the ground or in some low and secluded spot, using thi 

 feet and breast and beak to hollow and shape it. When sitting she 

 never allows her eggs to get cold, and turns them daily, rolling them 

 under her breast-bone and prying over with her beak the ones on the 

 outer edge of the nest. She keeps faithfully to her task and is not at 

 all good-natured when interrupted. She leaves the nest for food and 

 drink and to relieve her cramped muscles, usually twice a day, the 

 length of time varying with the temperature to which the eggs are 

 exposed. Incubation lasts about twenty-one days and the chick " pips " 

 the shell and escapes from it by its own efforts. For this purpose a 

 small horny tooth forms on the upper tip of its beak which remains only 

 a day or two, being sometimes pecked off by the mother hen, or knocked 

 off when the chick is picking up food. 



The down which covers the young chick differs from the feathers 

 which come later; it has no quill but consists of several flossy threads 

 coming from the same root; later on this down is pushed out and off 

 by the true feathers which grow from the same sockets. Of course the 

 chick is unable to fly until the true feathers appear. 



There is a great difference between the young of perching birds and 

 those which get their living from the ground. Compare the young 

 robin, blind, bare, scrawny and seeming to be all mouth, with the fully 

 clothed, bright, active little quail, partridge or chick, ready to follow 

 its mother anywhere and pick up for itself the food which she finds. 

 At night it cuddles under her wings to sleep as she rests on the ground 

 with her head tucked beneath her wing. Grown-up fowls roost on trees 

 or perches but still tuck the head under the wing to protect the eyes 

 and combs from the cold. 



We chew our food until it is soft and fine, then swallow it, but the 

 chick swallows its food whole and after being softened by juices from 

 the crop it passes into a little mill called the gizzard filled with gravel 

 which the chicken has swallowed and which grinds the food fine for 

 digestion. The chick has no muscles in its throat enabling it to swallow 



