the Chicken and the egg
Last weekend their were some chickens for sale in the local paper, keen to use my newly build chook run as some thing other than a unsightly garden feature I grabbed a borrowed old dog carrier pen and drove over the river to the chicken farm. I was a bit worried about getting chickens from a commercial farm as I don’t want to support the cage system however when we arrived I was reasonably happy with the situation. the farm reminded me a lot of the sorts of places I went camping as a scout. The chickens were housed in large barns with dirt floors plenty of room to run around and access to outside. not the ideal of chickens roaming over grassy hills and through lush woodland in the search of slugs, sunshine and sex, but it was a realistic setting and all the chooks that I saw looked happy and healthy.
we made the long drive home and the four girls sat happily in the cage on the back seat, although I did have to keep the windows down for the second half.
Unfortunately I arrived home to a bit of drama as the heavy rains had caused a small creek to start flowing throgh my garage. I quickly introduced the girls to there new home and got them settled with some layer pellets, kitchen scraps and water before I went to build a dam.
The next day I was surprised to find a egg on the floor of the chook house, they hadn’t used their nesting box I built but I had a egg and soon I had 2 more. So far we are getting 2-3 eggs every day and I have had to give some a way as I can’t eat them all. but I now have a few new eggy recopies mastered like chicken and cheese soufflé and spinach ham and onion quiche to accompany good old scrambled eggs.
