The good egg

My three funny little hens have turned the chicken coop into a finely-tuned egg-producing factory for our family. We get three eggs a day most days and about once or twice a week we get only two. We have no clue who the hold-out is or if they rotate which hen gets a day off, but I like to imagine there is some sort of due process involved.


I read so much about how to get chickens to lay in a nest and what to do if they're laying all over their chicken run, yet my three have only ever laid in the nest boxes. I attribute this to my finely-tuned chicken-whisperer-like skills. They repay me by leaving me three perfectly-shaped eggs in one of the nest boxes at the end of each day. It's beautiful.


Or maybe it's payback for all the treats we give them. They're so insanely happy to get our leftovers and I am happy to oblige. Between the compost and the chickens we don't waste any food anymore. They love any leftover scrapings from our plates, but don't worry, we keep the leftovers to ourselves if we have a poultry-themed dinner dish. I'm not about to end up with mad chicken disease, thank you very much. Here they are eating some leftover white rice, green beans and grapes. That's the chicken breakfast of champions.



We must be doing something right because the egg shells are insanely hard. The other morning I grabbed an egg from the carton on the 2nd-from-the-top shelf in the fridge. Because I like to try and carry 20 things at once, I accidentally dropped the egg straight down on the tile floor. I quickly scooped it up and noticed that nothing had leaked out onto the floor. The shell had cracked, but the egg was still contained inside. I carried the egg to the counter and cracked it into a bowl. I was completely floored that the egg survived such a big fall and didn't break open.


These are some chickens, all right.