Keith,
In this video is a good example of a rat-snake on the largish side (this
one could easily eat a couple dozen chicken eggs at one feeding ... or a
couple chickens). A rat-snake this size is rarely found raiding
hen-houses at night but usually a very successful hunter (he will,
however, lie-in-cover, sneaking about your premises, picking-off your
free-ranging young fowl one-by-one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykrAqlBZgWg
The smallish rat-snake in this video would probably have only eaten 4-6
total eggs (if he hadn't gotten caught in mid-meal); this snake is more
of an average size of those usually caught raiding hen-houses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRgmfKZEj6Y
Here a man makes a rat-snake regurgitate a fake-egg he swallowed that
they used for snake control:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoFS4jioKL0
Regards,
Bob Skiles
On 8/7/2015 2:18 PM, Bob Skiles wrote:
> Keith,
>
> I dunno about these being used so-much for stimulating hens to lay
> more eggs ... nor when exactly they began to be made for commerce ...
> but my grand-parents used them for snake-control (and their parents
> before them, certainly before the 1880, I'd opine) ... specifically
> controlling the rat-snake (called chicken snakes in east-Texas). One
> of these big snakes could seem to find its way into the tightest
> chicken-coops (I've personally witnessed them wriggling through the
> tiniest knot holes in pine planks), and greedily gobble-up a whole
> clutch (or two) of eggs in a single meal. They easily constrict and
> crush the shells of the (natural) eggs and make-away with a
> protein-rich meal, thru the same narrow opening with which they made
> ingress, but if they make the fatal mistake of swallowing one of the
> trick glass eggs, then its curtains for Mr. Snake! the next time
> grand-mother arrives to gather eggs. His front-half is dangling
> through the hole or crack where he made ingress, wildly wriggling
> trying to getaway (or hanging limply having already exhausted himself
> from hours of futilely struggling beforehand), prevented from it by
> the huge undesolvable and unbreakable bulge in his body, and with one
> deft swipe of her hoe, grand-mother slices-him-in-two.
>
> I've seen this little drama repeated on several occasions occasions,
> being tasked with retrieval (and cleaning) of the glass-egg from the
> bisected snake's innards, and return of it to the nest nearest the end
> where it was felt the next snake might gain entrance ... for there was
> ALWAYS a next snake... and one did not have to await long for him to
> show-up.
>
> Regards,
> Bob Skiles
>
> On 8/7/2015 1:08 PM, Keith Doms wrote:
>> Hello,
>> We recently discovered a blown milk glass egg. It
>> appears to be a dummy egg that was used it encourage chickens to
>> lay. My informants tell me that door knobs and darning eggs were
>> also used. It comes from a midden that dates between 1880 and 1910.
>> The little research I have been able to do has not answered the
>> following questions. 1. When did they start making blown eggs? 2.
>> How far did the practice of artificial eggs to induce laying go back?
>> 3. Does anyone know of an advertisement for these things.
>>
>> Keith R. Doms
>> Newlin Grist Mill
>> Site Manager
>> 219 S. Cheyney Rd.
>> Glen Mills, PA 19342
>> (610) 459-2359
>> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>
>
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