LAYING AND SITTING. 33 



these barren birds can often be made very useful ; for a couple 

 of dummy eggs will tempt many of them to sit almost at any 

 time, if put in the pan at the right intervals ; and they thus 

 become very handy as feeders, since they will, when the time is 

 up, take young ones and feed them as if they had hatched 

 themselves. 



Soon after matching^— generally ranging from one to three 



weeks, according to age and time of year — the eock will begin 



to drive the hen towards her nest, and seem uneasy whenever 



she is away from it. That is a sign laying is near,, and in fact 



the eggs generally appear in from two to five days after. Two 



are laid; the first usually about five or six o'clock in the 



afternoon, the hen standing more or less over it all the next 



day a,nd night, and laying the second egg about two o'clock 



on the third day. The young hatch on the eighteenth day 



from the laying of the second egg. Very rarely three eggs 



are laid, and we have heard of one or two cases in which four 



have appeared, but the rule of a pair is rarely broken. -These 



two are in three cases out of four a cock and hen, but by no 



means always so, as usually supposed; about twenty-five per 



cent.' being pairs of one sex or the other. When one is a hen 



it is generally the last of the two, and as such likely to be 



stunted in growth from the earlier hatching of the first, which 



has had a start by the hen standing over it before the other 



was laid, and. thus gets fed and becomes larger and stronger 



before the hen is hatched. To avoid this, laying should be 



watched for every evening, and the first egg taken away and 



replaced by a nest-egg of bone or a waste pigeon's egg, to be 



replaced the evening the second is laid. This plan will save or 



improve many a hen ■ that otherwise would be dwarfed in 



rearing. It may here be. noted that pigeons never eat their 



eggs, so that the breakage of a waste one, should it occur, need 



cause no fear' of bad habits in this respect. 



Weakly hens are liable to be egg-bound or have difficulty . 



D 



