86 A GAMEKEEPER'S NOTE-BOOK 



they are willing, are supplied with another clutch. 



A hen that will hatch several clutches is too useful 



to be honoured with the task of bringing up 



The Luck a brood, and must be content to play the 



anto ear- P art ^ l* vm S incubator. The keeper knows 

 ing his hens through and through and he can 



tell when a hen has chicks without seeing 

 them, by the bristling of her feathers at his approach, 

 and her instinctive clucking. 



An incubator helps the keeper to cope with the 

 whims and frailties of broody hens. It is always 

 ready to receive those unexpected eggs which may 

 be brought to his cottage at any moment, as when 

 sitting birds are disturbed by sheep or cut out in the 

 mowing grass. And it is ready to take charge of the 

 eggs abandoned by a fowl, or the chipped eggs of a 

 foster-mother which shows an inclination to crush the 

 chicks as hatched. Yet it will be long before it ousts 

 the broody barn-door hen from the rearing -field. 



In the days before incubators, keepers who found 

 themselves with more eggs than hens were forced to 

 strange shifts. One keeper saved the situation with 

 the help of ducks. Wild duck nested in numbers 

 on an island in a lake, and one spring day he took 

 six hundred pheasants' eggs to the island, exchanging 

 them for the eggs of the sitting ducks. The ducks 

 proved excellent sitters, but as his hens became 

 available he would punt to the island to relieve the 

 ducks of their charge. Pheasants were more prized 

 in those days than wild duck. Such a sacrifice of 



