The Gauchos unanimously affirm that several females lay in one
nest. I have been positively told that four or five hen birds have
been watched to go in the middle of the day, one after the other,
to the same nest. I may add, also, that it is believed in Africa
that two or more females lay in one nest. (5/13. Burchell's
"Travels" volume 1 page 280.) Although this habit at first appears
very strange, I think the cause may be explained in a simple
manner. The number of eggs in the nest varies from twenty to forty,
and even to fifty; and according to Azara, sometimes to seventy or
eighty. Now although it is most probable, from the number of eggs
found in one district being so extraordinarily great in proportion
to the parent birds, and likewise from the state of the ovarium of
the hen, that she may in the course of the season lay a large
number, yet the time required must be very long. Azara states that
a female in a state of domestication laid seventeen eggs, each at
the interval of three days one from another. (5/14. Azara volume 4
page 173.) If the hen was obliged to hatch her own eggs, before the
last was laid the first probably would be addled; but if each laid
a few eggs at successive periods, in different nests, and several
hens, as is stated to be the case, combined together, then the eggs
in one collection would be nearly of the same age.
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