Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Chick, or Chicken

CHICK, or CHICKEN, the young of the gallinaceous order of birds, especially of the common hen.

From the importance of this bird, as constituting a delicate and agreeable food, especially to invalids, the means of hatching, and rearing it, have long exercised the ingenuity of speculators. We shall, however, confine our present account to those modes only, which are the most simple, and have been attended with the greatest success.

The manner in which they are hatched in ovens, by the Egyptians, is too well known, to require a detailed description: by this contrivance, six or seven thousand chickens are produced at one time: these, as the spring is uncommonly mild, being indeed much warmer than our summer, will thrive without "clutching." Similar success has attended the experiments of M. Reaumur. In order to remedy the severity of a northern climate, that would have otherwise destroyed the chickens as soon as hatched, he resorted to an expedient, which he called "a woollen hens" namely, he put them in a warm basket, and covered them over carefully with dry animal wool.

Another method of hatching and rearing chickens, we shall extract from the 13th volume of "Dodsley's Annual Register" (for 1770, p. 105, Chronicle). It was laid before a learned society, by a gentleman, to whom a gold medal was awarded for his contrivance.—The chickens should be taken away from the hen, the night after they are hatched, and be re-placed with new eggs, on which she will continue to sit, for a second and third brood. When first removed from the hen, they are to be fed for a fortnight with eggs, boiled hard, chopped fine, and mixed with bread, in the same manner as larks and other birds are reared. After this period, they are to be supplied with oatmeal and treacle, so mixed as to crumble; a food of which the chickens are so fond, and thrive so rapidly, that, at the end of two months, they will be as large as full grown fowls.—We apprehend, however, this ingenious method would render the chickens more expensive, than we can purchase them, in the most extravagant London markets: hence it appears to be calculated only for the curious and speculative epicure. See Egg and Hen.