Brood

“ The brood would not prosper; the poor mothers would shiver on their eggs, and the bitter cold, stealing under their wings, would kill the chicks in the shell, despite the warmth of the maternal bosom. ”

“ The hen will feed her brood on substances which would mean the annihilation of ones’ entire flock of youngsters, should one attempt it, and, perhaps, the most curious feature of the feeding part is the fact that one may give the brood, running with the hen, food Nature never intended a small chick to eat, and many of the brood [122] will thrive on it, and the mortality will, in most cases, be confined to the weak ones. ”

“ All of those having honey had brood and some of them young bees; such had soiled the combs. The one that is alive is strong and has plenty of brood. I thought that bees did not commence to raise brood until a warm spell, but it seems I was mistaken. ”

“ Howard Saunders, in his 'Manual' (p. 518) , says:—"Two, if not three, broods are produced in the season, the young from the first nest assisting their parents in building another, and even in taking care of the second brood." The method of feeding struck me as peculiar. The old bird, on catching an insect, swam up, and presented it to the youngster, who picked it out of his (or her) bill. ”

“ Yes, to be sure it is, and here are the eggs which the creature carefully covers with her body, and upon which she will sit till the young ones are formed; the small brood, sometimes one hundred and fifty or more in number, then attach themselves to the under surface of the parent, and are carried about wherever she goes. ”

“ The brood consists of seven or eight eggs of a green colour, sprinkled with brown spots. In three weeks the young are hatched, and are fed by both parents on a great variety of insects, earthworms and snails, the greatest caution being employed to avoid discovery of the nest; and so attached are the parents to their offspring, that we have known a female continue to brood after having received a shot in her body. ”

“ In many cases, when the brood is grown and all have left the nest, the whole family keep together. One who has eyes sharp to see will find everywhere little groups of parents with their young. If the old birds rear more than one brood in a summer, the young ones of the first nest keep together. ”

“ In a few days after this, the young brood is enabled to fly, but it is some time longer before the little creatures can take their own food; until which time, they are fed by the parent birds, with the most affectionate solicitude. ”

“ The Finch-family, for example, have broods averaging about 5 in number, and have commonly 2 broods in the season; while in the Crow-family the number of the brood is on the average less, and there is but one brood in the season. ”

“ Do Robins raise more than one brood in a season? If so, do they use the same nest twice? If they raise two broods, what becomes of the first, while the mother is sitting upon the eggs for the second?
Watch for a Robin leading out a family of chicks. ”

“ So soon as the first brood is well on the wing, the cock takes charge of it, and the hen proceeds to lay and hatch a second, the male bird and first brood remaining in the close vicinity, and the parents, I doubt not, attending the labor of incubation and attending the young. ”

“ She cannot bear thirst and it makes her do strange things. There may be new broods of young five or six times a year, and if only three or four of each brood live there will be a good many by the year's end. ”

“ As soon as this has been done the female lays, on the bare ground at the further end of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a single very large, top-shaped, brightly-spotted egg, and begins to brood alternately with the male. ”

“ The amount of brood is at first small, and as the new workers emerge they assist in the brood rearing so that the extent of « 27 » the brood can be gradually increased until it reaches its maximum about the beginning of the summer. ”

“ With the crow also the female alone broods, and broods throughout the whole period; the male bird supports the female, bringing her food and feeding her. The female of the ring-dove begins to brood in the afternoon and broods through the entire night until breakfast-time of the following day; the male broods during the rest of the time. Partridges build a nest in two compartments; the male broods on the one and the female on the other. After hatching, each of the parent birds rears its brood. But the male, when he first takes his young out of the nest, treads them. ”

“ Dry grass, roots, and cow-dung are the materials employed in the construction of the nest. The brood consists of from four to seven small elongate eggs, with a dirty greenish white or yellowish grey shell, occasionally finely spotted with white. The female alone broods, and the young are hatched in a fortnight. ”

“ For whereas among Mammals a mother is able, unaided, to bear and suckle and rear half-way to maturity, a brood that probably weighs more in proportion than does the brood of a Bird; a Bird, or at least a Bird that flies much, is unable to do this. ”

“ When all the fertile eggs are hatched her next care is to get the brood safely to the water. This, when the distance is great, necessarily demands great caution, and so cunningly is it done that but few persons have encountered the mother and offspring as they make the dangerous journey. [1] If disturbed the young instantly hide as they best can, while the mother quacks loudly, feigns lameness, and flutters off to divert the attention of the intruder from her brood, who lie motionless at her warning notes. ”

“ When her young are hatched she marches them out like a hen with her brood, leading and protecting them, while they whine and bark around her like young puppies. Their mother belongs to the cannibal species, eating up her young in their babyhood, which precludes but few of them attaining their full size. ”

“ The sympathy between a bird and the eggs it sits upon, is of the same kind; many instances having been observed, wherein eggs, taken from one bird and placed under another, have produced a brood feathered like the foster instead of the real parent. ”

“ What would become of the chick in the egg if the mother hen did not brood over it? She forgets her own desires to move about in the stronger desire to bring into active being the hidden lives within the eggs. ”

“ They are laid in some warm place, where the heat of the sun and earth hatches them; but though the mother does not brood over them, as a hen does over her eggs, she seems to take great care of them, and defends them from their many enemies by hiding them out of sight in the singular manner I have just told you. ”

“ The nature of the hen seems to broaden with the duties of maternity, but I think myself that we presume a little upon her amiability and natural motherliness. It is one thing to desire a family of one’s own, to lay eggs with that idea in view, to sit upon them three long weeks and hatch out and bring up a nice brood of chicks. ”

“ The old man went and collected the eggs and put a brood hen over them. Two weeks later he and his wife went to see, and they found that there were children born of the eggs, and they looked again and they found that forty of the children were fine, strong and healthy, and there was one who was a weakling. ”

“ A fertile female overwinters and places her first-laid eggs in the chambers of a simple nest that she constructs herself. When the young of the first brood hatch, she provides them with food, enlarges the nest, and continues the task of egg-laying, while her first offspring relieve her of her former duties as they become able. ”

“ Where, as is sometimes the case, there are two or three generations or broods of a species during the year, the life of one brood is generally longer than that of the others, because this brood is compelled to overwinter, or hibernate. ”

“ The female lays from four to six eggs the first time, four or five the next, and when there is a third brood, which is sometimes the case, seldom more than three, of which I have rarely found more than two hatched. ”

“ When a hen has eight or ten or twelve eggs, over which she has properly brooded, the wish arises in her heart, 'O would that my little chickens would break open the egg-shell with their claws, or with their beaks, and come forth into the light in safety!' yet all the while those little chickens are sure to break the egg-shell and will come forth into the light in safety. ”

“ After about four weeks of brooding, the young emerge from the eggs, looking at first like soft balls of wool, from which dark eyes peer forth, and a dark bill and very sharp claws protrude. Even in their earliest youth the little creatures are as pretty as they are self-possessed. ”

“ The eggs are spoken of in the books as from fifteen to twenty. I have never found less than twenty-four, and from that number to thirty-two. I think that each female lays but about eight, and that several females make use of the same nest,—never less than two, nor more than four. But this opinion is conjectural rather than ascertained. They have two broods in a season, the second in August, at which time the male is engaged in leading the first brood, of which he takes charge when they are hardly half grown. He is a courageous, watchful, and devoted guardian. ”

“ The young from the same dam, whether produced at the same time or not; young children of the same mother, especially if nearly of the same age; offspring; progeny; as, a woman with a brood of children. The lion roars and gluts his tawny brood. Wordsworth. 3. That which is bred or produced; breed; species. Flocks of the airy brood, (Cranes, geese or longÐnecked swans) . Chapman. 4. (Mining) Heavy waste in tin and copper ores. To sit on brood, to ponder. [Poetic] Shak. Brood, a. 1. Sitting or inclined to sit on eggs. 2. Kept for breeding from; as, a brood mare; brood stock; having young ”

“ For instance, one hen is a good, persistent layer; another is a patient, brooding mother; a third is fickle, and leaves her nest so often and for such long intervals that the eggs become chilled, and incubation ceases. ”

“ The results show how ignorant we are of animal life, and how slow we should be to tamper with the arrangements of nature. In Southern cities it produces five or six broods each year with four to six young in each brood. (Notice what it feeds its young.) It fights, competes with and drives away our native useful birds. ”

“ Each family had five brood hens and two brood sows, which were kept to their breeding seasons, and thus the old were able to have flesh to eat. The husbandmen cultivated their farms of 100 mu, and thus their families of eight mouths were secured against want. ”

“ Two broods are usually reared in the season, and the young on leaving the nest soon make their way to some leafless bough, whence they try their powers of flight, at first accompanying their parents in short excursions on the wing, receiving from them the food which they are as yet unable to capture, until able to shift for themselves. ”

“ To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her. ”

“ It's getting along towards nesting time for them, and maybe we'll find some nests, and maybe get some young ones this spring. 24 I've raised a brood or two, but they always went off after they got big. Along in the fall, say in October, just before it gets cold weather, they get together in big droves, hundreds and hundreds together, and stay like that all winter. They're big, but they ain't much account. They taste too strong of the sage. The young ones about half grown are good eating, though not near so good as the blue grouse or the pheasant. ”

“ Long, long ago; her thought was of that child
By him begot, the son by whom the sire
Was murdered and the mother left to breed
With her own seed, a monstrous progeny.
Then she bewailed the marriage bed whereon
Poor wretch, she had conceived a double brood,
Husband by husband, children by her child. ”

“ The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings which had lost their mother filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side to find some place where they would not be trodden on. ”

“ The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood. ”

“ You have heard so much about the mother-bird sitting on the nest, that I am sure you will be interested in seeing a father who broods the eggs and hatches out the little ones. I have five wives. They all lay their eggs in one and the same nest, which is a hollow pit scraped out by their feet, the earth heaped up around to form a sort of wall. They lay the eggs, I have said, sometimes thirty in a nest, and I—well, I do the rest.
We are dangerous fellows if disturbed when brooding; have been known to attack a man on horseback, trying to kick and leap on him. ”

“ By rearing a number of broods, each in a separate vessel, and by hastening the development and propagation of some broods more than others, meal-worms may be obtained fresh throughout the year; the amount of trouble and attention required is accordingly great. ”

“ I have brought up ten broods myself--as likely and respectable chickens as ever were a blessing to society--and I think I ought to know a good hatcher and brooder when I see her; and I know THAT fine piece of trumpery, with her white feathers tipped with gray, never will come down to family life. SHE scratch for chickens! ”

“ The robin lays four eggs, and frequently raises three broods of young in a season, never, so far as I know, using the same site or the same nest twice in one season, or more certainly never using the same nest or site for two consecutive broods. ”