Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/141

Rh

Often, during incubation, an egg or two will be found lying outside the nest. Most authorities maintain that the birds put them out designedly, and that such eggs are used as food for the newly-hatched chicks, being broken for this purpose by the parent birds.

There is no truth in either contention. These eggs are rolled out accidentally, and if replaced will not be rejected, as I know from having frequently marked and replaced them by way of experiment. They may be quite fresh, in some stage of incubation, or rotten. There is no truth whatever in the statement that the newly-hatched chicks are fed upon them; but I have seen chicks a few days old greedily eating the dung of their parents, which often, after sitting, is in the form of small pellets. In the earlier days of Ostrich-farming I have seen little incubator-hatched chicks supplied with soft cow-dung and beaten-up Ostrich egg, but nothing of the sort is done now; they are fed with succulent green food, which is enough for all purposes. If left to nature, and allowed to run with their parents, they thrive perhaps better than under any other conditions; only they become very wild, and are liable to be killed by hawks, jackals, and other animals.

If an egg should be broken in the nest, the old birds eat it, shell and all, as they will often do when the first chick or two hatch out. This habit has no doubt given rise to the erroneous belief, expressed by one of the authorities, that the cock breaks the chicks out—cracking the shell with his breast, shaking the chick loose, and then swallowing the membrane. The chicks hatch out unaided, and though no doubt the movements of the parent on the eggs do occasionally help to free a chick which has already pecked through and cracked the shell (as I have seen), there is no design in these movements, and no need for help.

If sitting begins after the hen has laid her full complement of eggs, naturally all fertile eggs will have sufficient time to hatch. Even if she lays one or two after beginning to sit, still all may Zool. 4th ser. vol. I., March, 1897.