The chickens spend a lot of time in the woods. I can follow them and watch where they go, but what is it that they see with their amazing eyes? (see Disordered Hyperuniformity) Do they care about the tulips blooming at the edge of the woods? What about the bleeding hearts on the forest floor? Or the new fern leaves? The massive old tree trunks? The bark path? The skunk cabbage?

Or is everything just about what looks good to eat? The slightest movement of a bug. The new berries. The new shoots.

What has caught her eye? Does it make any difference if a laying hen spends hours foraging through a forest, or spends all day surrounded by tens of thousands of other hens in a laying house? The next time you buy an egg, stop and think what the hen who laid that egg saw that day.