Lord Tavistock—Breeding Results for 1937



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and an ordinary cock respectively. The father of these hens, a scrubby,

undersized, and now somewhat aged bird bred in a small fixed aviary

and addicted to the vice of child-murder, was mated to a newly-acquired

common green hen. A two-year-old son of the lutino hen mated to the

ordinary cock, was paired to a wild lutino hen and a 1936 brother or sister

of the two-year-old, for a time occupied an aviary with another wild

lutino hen. The latter for nearly a year had suffered from a swelling

and discharge under the eyes which, strange to say, did not seem to

affect her general health at all, though it did not yield to treatment.


The lutino hen paired to the adult lutino-bred cock had nested as a

two-year-old but got egg-bound and refused to sit. For two seasons I

tried to induce her to breed after the warm weather had come but

instead she only dropped into moult. This year I gave her her nest

in April and she took to it fairly quickly, and, as her brood should have

contained a good percentage of yellows, X decided to have some fun

with her at my expense. After producing one curiously elongated and

misshapen egg she proceeded to get egg-bound and had to be brought

into the hospital. She remained there quite a week without anything

happening and, as she seemed fit and well, I at last concluded that she

was not going to lay her egg at all but had decided to “ re-absorb ” it,

an extraordinary feat of which even egg-bound hens are occasionally

capable (I have known two instances). I therefore put her back in

the aviary. She paired with the cock almost immediately ; went into

her nest; came out again ; looked about for one of the few places where

the wire-netting on the floor of the flight was not covered by grass ;

took a careful aim and laid a good normal egg from the perch on to

this hard wire with the natural result that it broke in half! She then

took to her nest after a fashion but for a long time sat so nervously

and unsteadily that I dared not look to see whether she had laid again

for fear of making her desert altogether. When, however, I judged that

the period of incubation—a little over three weeks—was fully up

I did have a look at the nest and found, as I feared, only the original

misshapen egg. Believing that ill-favoured wight who once asserted

that badly-shaped eggs never hatch, I took it out and held it up to the

light. To my surprise it was dark, not clear. “ Addled, of course,”

whispered A. “ Why let the hen waste time over a thing like that ?



