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]>
>>
>