every day is a good day
On a sunny day, chickens enjoy taking dust and dirt baths. They can really kick up a storm, turning upside down even to work dust and dirt deep into their feathers and onto their skin. They do this to clean themselves, and to get rid of parasites. How this works is that the dust clogs the breathing pores of the parasites, killing them. Smart birds.
That’s why when chickens shake their bodies, sometimes they leave behind a cloud of dust.
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Chicken producers talk about providing enriching environments for their birds, but none of the large producers ever provide trees for their chickens to climb. During the day, a growing sequoia is an enticing place to hang out, either underneath it or up in its branches.
I certainly don’t want to lump Mary’s Chicken with the likes of Foster Farms or Tyson, but even an outstanding farm like Mary’s Chicken which takes chicken welfare seriously can not provide the rich environment like a man and his hoe®.
Every chicken at a man and his hoe® has a story. Lucky had an unfortunate accident as a chick. Somehow she scraped the back of her head and for several weeks had to be separated from her siblings and mother while her wound healed. We kept her in a wire cage next to her siblings so she wouldn’t feel isolated. Even so, it was not an easy time for her as she so wanted to be running around with them. Unfortunately, chicks can’t help but peck when they see blood, and if we had let her run with her siblings, she would have met with an unfortunate demise.
Once her wound healed, we were able to set her free. Now she cuts an imposing figure, and has a habit of laying her egg in one of the dog houses. If we don’t fetch her egg quickly enough, the dogs get a tasty snack. We just have to keep our ears attuned to her “I’ve hatched an egg” cackle between seven and eight in the morning to fetch the eggs before the dogs get it.
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The chicks which hatched December 19, 2013, are four months old now, nearly a month old. They are getting quite independent and running ahead of their mother. She’s the one trying to keep up with them now.
Some mothers stop their child rearing around now. Others continue for another month or two. We’ll see how long she keeps on the job.
Each chicken is unique. Each egg is unique. The variety of colors and patterns of chickens is endless. With each new chicken you can see evolution at work, trying new colors, patterns and personalities. The differences can be very subtle, but look closely and you’ll see them. And each chicken lays a slightly different egg every time. Over the life of a chicken it amounts to an incredible variety of eggs just from one bird. Life is always trying to better itself, trying this color, that shape, testing to see what will endure.
Buying eggs in a supermarket is downright depressing. The industrialists who supply the market with billions of eggs do their best to stamp out this riot of egg variety. By devoting all their energy on keeping costs down, they are depriving consumers of the joy beautiful eggs can bring. One amazing aspect of my chickens’ eggs is the sound they make when you tap them together. Close your eyes and gently tap these eggs together and you hear the distinctive clinking of bone china. You’ll never hear that from commercial eggs.