The History of The Hen Fever Part 14

CHAPTER XXI.

EXPERIMENTS OF AMATEURS.

The newspapers of the day were now occupied with speculative and actual statistics, of various kinds, relating to the utility and value of poultry and its produce, and every one seemed to join, in his or her way, to magnify the vastness of this enterprise; and statements like the following, in respectable public journals, had the effect to increase and keep up to fever-heat the state of the hen malady:

"By reference to the agricultural statistics of the United States, published from reliable sources in 1850, it may be seen that the actual value of poultry, in New York State alone, was two millions three hundred and seventy-three thousand and twenty-nine dollars! Which was more than the value of _all the swine_ in the same state; nearly equal to _one half the value of its sheep_, the _entire_ value of its _neat cattle_, and nearly _five times_ the value of its _horses and mules_!"

The amount of sales of live and dead _poultry_ in Quincy Market, Boston, for the year 1848, said another paper, was six hundred seventy-four thousand four hundred and twenty-three dollars: the average sales of one dealer alone amounting to twelve hundred dollars per week for the whole year. The amount of sales for the whole city of Boston, for the same year, was over one million of dollars. The amount of sales of _eggs_ in and around the Quincy Market for 1848 was one million one hundred and twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and thirty-five dozen, which, at eighteen cents per dozen, makes the amount paid for eggs to be two hundred three thousand three hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirty cents; while the amount of sales of eggs for the whole city of Boston, for the same year, was a fraction short of one million of dollars; the daily consumption of eggs at one of its hotels being seventy-five dozen daily, and on Sat.u.r.day one hundred and fifty dozen.

At this time, a single dealer in the egg-trade, at Philadelphia, sent to the New York market, daily, one hundred barrels of eggs; while the value of eggs shipped from Dublin to Liverpool and London was more than five millions of dollars for the year 1848.

In addition to these facts, frequent allusions were made to the enormous quant.i.ties required for other markets, in the interior, to supply which the number of laying hens must be kept good, and increased, as the demand for the eggs was constantly augmenting, and the business, "if skilfully and judiciously managed" (said the agricultural papers), _must_ prove immensely profitable to those who engage in it.

If "skilfully and judiciously managed"! This was good advice. But no one could inform "the people" how this management was to be effected. In the mean time, every sort of experiment was resorted to, by amateurs and fanciers and humbugs (who had been humbugged), to "improve" the breeds of poultry, and to produce new fowls that would lay two or three or four eggs for one, as compared with the old-fashioned birds.

We knew one beginner who had purchased a pretty little place a few miles from the city, who contracted the fever, and "suffered" badly, but who was cured by the following curious result of his early experiments. Eggs were scarce (genuine ones), and, after considerable searching, he finally procured of some one in Boston a clutch of "fancy" eggs, for which he paid big figures, but which did not _turn out_ exactly what he antic.i.p.ated; and so _he_ concluded, after a time, that the hen fever was a rascally hum. (He didn't procure these eggs of _me_, be it understood.

_I_ never had any but _genuine_ ones!)

He purchased what he was a.s.sured were pure "Cochin-China" eggs. (Perhaps they were--who knows?) And after waiting patiently for six long weeks for the "curious" eggs to hatch, he found six young _ducks_ in his coop, one morning!--So much for his knowledge of eggs!

But this was not so bad as was the case of one of his neighbors, however, who paid a round price for half a dozen choice eggs, queer-looking speckled eggs--small, round, "outlandish" eggs--which he felt certain would produce _rare_ chicks, and which he was very cautious in setting under his very best hen.

At the end of a few days he was startled, at the breakfast-table, to hear his favorite hen screaming "b.l.o.o.d.y murder" from within the coop! He rushed to the rescue, raised the box-lid, and found her still on the nest, but in a frightful perturbation--struggling, yelling and cackling, most vociferously.

He spoke to her kindly and softly; he would fain, appease and quiet her; for there was great danger lest, in her excitement and struggles, she would destroy the favorite eggs--those rare eggs, which had cost him so much money and trouble. But soft words were vain. His "best" hen continued to scream l.u.s.tily, and he raised her from the nest to look into the cause of the trouble more critically. His astonishment was instantaneous, but immense; and his surprise found vent in the brief but expressive exclamation, "_Turkles--by thunder_!"

Such was the fact. This poor, innocent poultry-"fancier" was the victim of misplaced confidence. The party who sold him _them_ eggs had sold the buyer shockingly! And instead of a brood of pure Cochin-Chinas, he found that his favorite hen had hatched half a dozen pure _mud-turtles_, all of which, upon breaking from the sh.e.l.ls, seized upon the flesh of the poor fowl, and had well-nigh taken her life before they could be "choked off." He has given up the chicken-trade, and has since gone into the dwarf-pear business. Poor devil!

A youthful lawyer of my acquaintance, away Down East, who was proverbial for his "sharp practice" at the bar, met with a young doctor, who was a great bird-fancier, and with whom he subsequently formed an intimate acquaintance. Our medicinal friend owned a pretty little estate; distant a few miles from the city of P----, where he kept up a very neat establishment, which was thoroughly appointed. Among his out-of-door appurtenances, he maintained a modern bee-house, a choice dove-cot, and a well-selected aviary; in the latter he had some choice poultry, and into this the doctor invited his legal a.s.sociate, one day, to examine his specimens of cacklers and crowers.

There was a super-excellent "Bother'em" fowl among this collection,--a rare hen, the many good qualities of which the doctor dilated on (as he always did before his visitors), and the lawyer took a fancy to the beauty, instanter; but this fowl was a great favorite, and the doctor would neither sell, lend, or give her away; and then the visitor begged some of her eggs, as a last favor. But the doctor was selfish in regard to this particular bird--he wanted the breed exclusively to himself. It was of no avail, however, and his friend promised to embrace the first opportunity to steal the hen, and all the eggs he could find, if his request were not complied with; whereupon the doctor at length reluctantly promised to send him a dozen within a week, provided he said nothing about it. He would do it for _him_, as a particular favor--and so he was as good as his word.

The young lawyer had his poultry-yard, also; and, selecting a fine hen, he quickly set her upon the choice Bother'em eggs, resolved to have as good a show as his neighbor. But three weeks pa.s.sed--four, and upwards--but no chickens appeared! He broke up the nest, at last, and then called upon the doctor at once.

"What luck, Tom?"

"Not a chick!"

"No!"

"Not a _one_. The eggs weren't good."

"No? That is queer," continued the doctor, "when I took so much extra pains with 'em."

"Extra pains--how?"

"Why, _I boiled every one of 'em_, the last thing before I sent 'em down to you!"

And so he did. Tom grinned, squirmed, and went home,--but that wasn't the last of this joke.

Six months afterwards, the keen-witted doctor visited the lawyer's little place, where he saw a magnificent large Bucks County rooster stalking about in the latter's yard.

"By Jove, Tom! That's a rouser," exclaimed the doctor, enthusiastically, "'pon my word! Where d'you get him?"

"Pennsylvania--Buxton's; a fine fellow that. Only eight months old."

"Will you sell him?"

"Yes--no; I reckon not, on the whole."

"I'll give you an X for him."

"Well, take him. He's worth twenty dollars; but you shall have him for ten dollars, being an old friend."

The doctor placed the huge crower in his gig immediately, went home, killed off two of the finest Dorking roosters in the county, and put the new comer into his nice poultry-house; congratulating himself upon having at last secured a "tip-top breeder," and nothing else.

At the end of the season, however, he complained to his friend the lawyer that he had had but very few eggs latterly; he could raise no chickens from them--not a _one_; and he didn't think much of the ten-dollar bird he purchased of him, any way.

"He's a rouser, Bill, surely," said the lawyer, with a knowing smirk, repeating the doctor's exclamation on first beholding the rooster.

"Well, yes--large, large--but--"

"And a finer _capon_ I never sold to anybody in my life!"

"A _what_!" screamed the doctor, springing towards his horse, which stood near by.

"What's the price of _b'iled eggs_, Bill?" roared the lawyer, in reply.

"Ten dollars a dozen, by thunder!" was the answer, as the doctor drove his rowels into the sides of his nag, and dashed away from his friend's gate a _wiser_ if not a better man.

Many amateur poultry-raisers resorted to the most ridiculous and injurious shifts for remedies against the ills that hen-flesh is heir to. I have known certain friends who pa.s.sed two or three hours every morning in running about their fowl-premises with pill-box and pepper-cup in hand, zealously dosing their drooping chickens, to their certain destruction. And some of the "doctors" went into _jalap_, in cases of colds, fevers, &c., in their fowls. We should as soon think of using a.r.s.enic, or any other poison, under such circ.u.mstances. The internal formation of a hen is scarcely believed to resemble that of a human being, surely; and why such medicinal applications, pray? This reminds us of a private joke, by the way, that was "let out" by a young fancier (out West) a little while ago.

He had a bad cold himself, and had mixed "summat hot" to swallow, one evening. His servant informed him that his favorite Cochin-China crower had been ill for a day or two; and he ordered twenty grains of jalap to be prepared for his fine bird. By some mistake his toddy was given to the crower, and he swallowed the hen-medicine himself, and retired to bed.

He slept soundly for a time, but was visited with shocking dreams. He fancied himself to be a huge rooster--one of the biggest kind; that he had taken all the premiums at all the shows, and that he had finally been set to hatch over a bushel of Shanghae eggs. It was the twentieth day, at last, and the chickens commenced to come forth from their sh.e.l.ls beneath him. He dare not move,--his fowl-cure was at work,--and his critical position, for the time being, can be better imagined than portrayed. With a desperate effort, and a shrieking crow, he at length sprang from his couch, dashed out of doors, and, since the day afterwards, has resolved to eschew the use of jalap among his poultry,--a determination which, in all candor, we recommend earnestly to the hen-Galens who imagine that a hen is "a human."

It had now become an every-day occurrence to hear of black chickens emerging from what were "warranted" pure white fowls' eggs; top-knot birds peeped forth from the eggs of pure-bred anti-crested hens; and all colors and shapes and varieties of chickens, except those that they were purchased for, made their appearance about the time of hatching the eggs so bought.

All the old-fashioned fowls were utterly discarded. Cochin-Chinaism, Shanghae-ism, Bother'em Pootrumism, was rampant. The fancy egg-trade had begun to fall off sensibly. "The people" had had enough of _this_ part of the enterprise, which was destined to prove so "immensely profitable," if "judiciously and skilfully managed;" and the price was reduced to the miserable sum of three to five dollars a dozen, only, as customers chanced to turn up.

From the commencement of the trade, in 1849, down to the month of August, 1853, I had a continued and certain sale, however, for every egg deposited upon my premises, at _my_ price.

But this, though an exception, was not to be wondered at. _I_ kept and raised only the "genuine" article.

[Ill.u.s.tration]