a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • Good Food

    Luscious Eggs
    Luscious Eggs

    Good food makes all the difference in the world. And when it comes to eggs, it’s impossible to produce good eggs by the millions. To produce an egg as round and bright as the sun, a hen needs good food, plenty of exercise, lots of time outdoors in the sun, fresh earthworms, bugs, field mice, grass, seeds, berries, in other words, a rich and varied diet. She needs to be able to gossip with other hens, cavort with roosters, run through the woods and pasture and have a great time.

    It’s not possible to do this on an industrial scale. Once you start crowding hens together, the quality of their eggs drops precipitously. But the industrial food producers don’t care about the quality of the eggs they sell. They won’t tell you the date they gathered the eggs they are selling. They won’t let you see the insides of their farms. Imagine that, a farmer who won’t let you see how they produce the food they expect you to eat. In fact, many of these industrial farmers want to make it a crime to show the public how they operate! They want to label as terrorists those who show people how their food is produced! How radical an idea is that? See Ag-gag laws. They only care about their profit margins. So hardly anyone ever gets to savor the texture and flavor of these full bodied eggs. It’s your food. You are the one putting it in your mouth. You have every right to know precisely how your food was made.

    When you cook with these luscious eggs, the difference is startling. They fluff up easily. They make billowy soufflés which never fail. Fried eggs which taste rich and creamy without any salt.

    But we live in a system which is consumed with making things as cheaply as possible, not with making things as good as possible. As a result, most people have no idea how spectacular a thing as simple as a chicken egg can be. And in an economy when everything is treated as a commodity, the individual differences between eggs is not allowed to be recognized. As far as the industrial food producer is concerned, one egg is the same as every other egg, and the eggs which cost the least are the best. But you and I know that this is as far from the truth as possible.

    You won’t find eggs like this in the supermarket. You need to go find a local farmer who is as fanatical about the care and happiness of his chickens as you are. That’s where you’ll find perfect eggs.

    perfect eggs
    Perfect Eggs

  • A Cold Day Doesn’t Stop These Chickens

    Chickens on a late afternoon
    Late afternoon

    This was taken this evening, looking out from the door to the chicken yard. It’s a cold day, barely above freezing, but that doesn’t stop the chickens from venturing far and wide.

    The New York Times had an article today titled The Seeds of a New Generation by Michael Moss, describing corn farmers in the Corn Belt who are starting a movement by turning part of their corn fields into fruit and vegetable fields. According to the article:

    The success of this movement, still in its toddler stage, could affect more than just the farmers. Field corn, bolstered by subsidies and corporate research, now dominates American agriculture and constitutes much of what we eat in processed foods. A turn toward locally grown produce would lessen the dependency on California (now plagued by drought), slash carbon emissions from trucking, make produce available to more people, increase its appeal through freshness and perhaps even lower prices.

    These farmers are finding they can earn much more per acre growing fruits and vegetables than they can growing corn.

  • At the End of the Day

    Mother Hen Taking her Chicks to Bed
    Mother Hen Taking her Chicks to Bed

    The nice thing about chickens is that they like to come home in the evening. Your or old, as the sun starts to set, they all make their way back into the chicken yard and the coop. In the winter months, they are in by 4 o’clock. In midsummer it can be 9 o’clock or later. They don’t want to be left outside in the dark.

    Chickens coming home
    Chickens Coming Home

  • All in a Morning

    All in a morning
    All in a Morning

    So just how far do chickens travel in a day? Much further than most people realize. In just three hours, the mother hen has taken her chicks over 600 feet through woods, pasture, and gardens. Over the course of a day she will take them from half a mile to a mile. This would be the equivalent of a person walking three to six miles.

    I wonder what the psychological effects are on chickens which have very little room to move. I look at chickens being raised in 10 by 12 foot chicken tractors and can’t help but imagine they must be going mad. I’ve yet to see any of my chickens limit their daily movements to such a small space. Some of them travel so far I’m surprised they don’t get lost.

    What I’ve observed with my chickens is that they don’t like to stay in one place very long. Even when they are in the midst of plenty to eat, they won’t stay more than five or ten minutes eating before moving on. It may an instinctual behavior to keep from being found by prey. Wild chickens which stay in one place too long may have a greater chance of being eaten than those which keep on the move. And if chickens have this instinctual need to keep moving, what happens to their psyche when they can’t?

  • Every Day is a Good Day

    Chickens come running
    Chickens come running

    Each time I go outside, chickens come running to see what’s up. And in the upper right, you see a three and a half month old chick with its mother. The chick was a single chick, and though most chicks are on their own by the time they are three months old, single chicks bond closely with their mothers and stay with them for much longer.

    Six week plus chicks
    Six week plus chicks