a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • It’s a Jungle Out There

    Everything is wet after steady rains through the night and morning. Behind the chicken yard, it’s a jungle of comfrey, burdock and tall grass.

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    It’s a perfect place for a mother hen to scratch for food with her chicks. They huddle around her beak, eager to snatch up any bugs or worms she finds. This is where chicks belong, outdoors with a mother, exploring a jungle full of exciting things to see and do.

    An interesting fact about mother hens is that they don’t care at all whose chicks they are raising. They are communal birds and will sit on anyone’s eggs. The chicks they hatch may be those of other hens, but they love them all.

  • 27 Days and Getting Big

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    The eight chicks which hatched on April 28 are now 27 days old. They are too big now to all fit under their mother at once. They are probably halfway on their way to being independent. Their mother is a Buff Orpington, and generally they raise their chicks for two months. We will see as each mother is different.

    When raising chicks in open pasture, a mother is imperative. Just like human children, chicks are quite oblivious to danger. They are so caught up in their own little worlds that they don’t see the hawk flying high above. Their mother and other grown chickens will, and she will scurry them off to safety, just like a human mother will grab a child who wanders off the sidewalk into the street.

    Just like a group of human children, these eight chicks jabber nonstop all day long. I wonder if it drives their mother crazy. Or does she just tune it out like human mothers do?

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    Buff Orpington, our favorite backyard chicken ~ The Tangled Nest
    Orpington Chicken ~ the Livestock Conservancy
    Buff Orpington ~ Pinterest
    Breeding Exhibition Tips ~ United Orpington Club
    Buff Orpington ~ City Girl Chickens
    Orpington Chickens ~ Poultry Keeper

  • Waterfowl or Where the Bugs Are

    When I think of waterfowl, images of ducks, geese, and herons come to mind. Chickens? Not. But, chickens go to where the bugs are, and so they spend a lot of time wading narrow streams, scratching in the mud for bugs to eat. They’ll also dig along the banks of the pond where they find plenty to eat.

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    The thicker the brush along a stream the better. You can’t see them, but there are six chickens hidden under the brush.

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    And a mother hen leads her chicks through the forest, followed by a young rooster looking for love.

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  • A Mother Hen’s Touch

    These chicks are now three and four days old. They stay close to their mother all day long and watch her every move. They watch what she is eating. They watch where she drinks. They roll around in the dirt with her when she takes a dirt bath. When she goes for a walk they run alongside her.

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    Two hundred years ago, this is how all chicks were raised. According to the National Chicken Council it wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that the modern chicken industry began to develop. Prior to that, chicken was a summer meat, something special for Sunday dinner.

    Now, the chances of a chick hatching under a mother’s warm breast only happens in small backyard flocks. The chances of it happening in a commercial setting and for customers to purchase chicken raised this way is infinitesimal.

  • Paradise for Few – Hell for Many

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    Looking at the peaceful pictures of roosters, hens and chicks at a man and his hoe®, it’s easy to get lulled into thinking that this is how many chickens spend their lives, happy and carefree. If you want spectacular eggs, this is what it takes.

    But the truth of how eggs are really produced is not so idyllic. According to the American Egg Board, there are roughly 280,000,000 egg laying hens in the US and they lay 75,000,000,000 eggs each year, about 10% of the world egg production. Almost none of these egg laying hens have the a man and his hoe® experience. A tiny percentage of them have something approaching what the chickens here have. Sadly, according to NPR, 90% of egg laying hens in the US live out their lives in wire cages. Most of the rest spend their lives in very crowded, cage-free hen houses.

    Today, I came across an article from Australia at Australian Broadcasting Corporation, reminding me again just how dreadful most egg production is. When you buy inexpensive eggs at Walmart, Costco, and most any supermarket, those eggs were most likely produced in a facility similar to that pictured below. In these battery farms, the hens spend their entire lives, four to six in a small wire cage. They never get to snuggle down in a soft, straw nest to lay an egg in peace. They never get to sun themselves under a blue sky. They never get to roll around in the dirt. They never get to do the things chickens want and need to do.

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    The result is billions of inexpensive eggs, but at an incredible cost to the hens. There is also a tremendous human cost. First, to the egg farmers who must face the unspeakable suffering they inflict on the tens of thousands of chickens under their care. It’s hard to imagine that farmers doing this do not incur an emotional cost.

    Then there is the cost to everyone who eats these eggs. Can it possibly be healthy to eat eggs produced by hens who live in such dreadful condition? This type of egg production makes people believe that it is possible to produce good food cheaply, but when it comes to eggs, that is a lie. Creating eggs worthy of human consumption takes a lot of space and time. To create an egg worth putting in your mouth, a hen needs to spend her day outdoors, free to go wherever she wants to. She needs to be able to scratch in the dirt for earthworms and bugs. She needs to be able to roll around in the dirt. She needs to be able to soak in the sun. And she needs a clean, quiet nest to lay her great egg.

    So when you buy your eggs, demand eggs that are worthy of you.