Be Kind to Your Fine-Feathered Friends.

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September 17, 2012 by elizabethritan

“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.” – Samuel Butler

Life in Salmon has been busy, busy, busy lately. The air is still filled with smoke from the fire which has now reached 320,000 acres and is twenty miles to the north of us. I wore a face mask while working in the yard all afternoon, our clean mountain air has turned all noxious.  Ever so industrious on my day off, I’ve been finishing up veggie processing, pulling out spent plants in the garden(s), and playing with new eggs in the incubator.  I ordered hatching eggs on Ebay, all robin’s egg blue from various exotic breeds.  What a fun vision: blue eggs to go with all the other colors, and these which arrived by mail today are certainly that.  Who wouldn’t want to own a bird known as a “true Rumpless Auracana”?

There seems to be a serious population of backyard chicken farmers in town. When I step out the door each morning, I can hear roosters crowing from three different directions!  I shut up my chickens at night in their coop, to keep them safe from marauding skunks.  Cogburn, my wee banty roo, does most of his dawn-crowing inside, so it doesn’t bother the neighbors too much.  I hope.  My job involves driving all over the county, and I can’t help but notice all the “fresh eggs for sale” signs.  They are more plentiful than “Mitt Romney for president” signs, and around here, that’s something.  I personally can barely keep enough eggs around for my own use, as they are very popular amongst my friends.  I have 19 hens at this time, who lay just over a dozen eggs per day. Recently I remember bringing in the basket of eggs and thinking to have one for my breakfast.  I found myself reaching for the carton of chilled eggs, and then thinking why not just have a warm one that I just retrieved?  Ewww, my mind said, that just came from a chicken’s behind!  And then I thought…

I never dwelt on where my eggs were coming from, previous to becoming a backyard chicken farmer.  During my stint on ranches in another life, I of course scoffed at animal rights activists and all their enviro-speak.  Clearly, the cattle had a fine life, wandering the pastures and range, raising babies and enjoying the good fresh air and feed, as cows like to do.  The sheep had similar nice lives, and the local pigs were provided pleasant, spacious enough pens if one happened to be a pig.  (Admittedly, I was horrified when I toured a “total confinement” hog operation while attending Montana State.)  The dairy cows didn’t seem to have such a great life, but… not awful, certainly.  The owners clearly cared about them.  Chickens living in tiny cages where they went crazy?  Well, I reasoned… that’s too bad, but how much can a creature like a dumb ol’ chicken really suffer?  How would you even know if a chicken is crazy, el pollo loco?

White Leghorn hens in battery cages

red sex-link hens in a “free-range” situation

I suppose you might say I have now climbed over the fence.  While certainly not a vegetarian, I do feel that we owe our livestock, who serve us so well, a decent life and quick, painless demise.  The PETA of Salmon, Idaho means “People Eating Tasty Animals”.  Still, I find the “battery cages”- which provide less space per hen than a piece of paper – abominable… and they represent the way 95% of commercial egg-layers are raised in this country. The term “Free range” is not well defined, and only requires that the hens are not caged, and have outside access for an undefined amount of time each day, perhaps even as little as 5 minutes.  They are kept in overcrowded conditions not much better than their sisters. Did you ever wonder about the pictures on egg cartons of roosters crowing at the sunrise, or pleasant barnyard scenes?  Most commercial chickens never see sunlight in their lives.  I won’t dwell on this too much, since I’m sure you are already aware of the problem, but am providing a couple of photos of such operations to prove my point.

A few of my best girls, chillin’.

The main objective here is to ask that you consider buying eggs from one of the folks that post those signs on country lanes, from me, from the Farmer’s Market, or some other similar vendor.  “Got any of those fowl-balls to sell me today?” says my friend Stewart. The price is not likely to be far from the grocer’s price.  I ask my customers for a “donation” of $2.50 per dozen, since my chickies are pampered, spoiled creatures who must be pandered to and supported in the style to which they are accustomed.  Enjoy those delicious cackleberries, knowing they came from birds with names, birds who get vaseline rubbed into their combs when it is freezing, birds whose breakfast may have looked better than yours! Did you know that any eggs from a bird with access to greens and fresh food will be “hi-omega”?  The improvement of farm eggs’ rich, dark yolk is legendary.  The tapioca pudding I made from my own eggs was a brilliant shade of yellow, purely because of the yolks.  My quiche is a lovely goldenrod color.

Having a penchant for rare and “heritage breed” chickens, I love to see an egg basket filled with speckled, dark brown, green, blue, and cream-colored eggs.  I

Bianca, my white Leghorn hen. Is she not lovely?

also love to see a flock of hens wearing a rainbow of fancy feathers, in all shapes and sizes.  There are, however, a few girls out there of the commercially popular kind, just to keep my egg count up.  One type is White Leghorn, which is the most kind of egg laying chicken there is, the most popular with commercial operations, the most to be housed in “battery cages” in huge numbers.  Wow, do they ever know how to crank out the eggs. Somebody gave me a couple of Leghorn chicks this spring, and what I notice is that these tall, elegant-looking hens are the most active, nervous, flighty, and curious chickens out there.  They are invariably the ones who make it over the garden fence, run to me the fastest when I am carrying the feed bucket, and figure out how to get into trouble.  No wonder they go crazy in a tiny cage, poor things.  The other type is the hybrid cross hen commonly called a “sex link”, used almost exclusively by commercial egg producers for their big, brown eggs.  These, I soon learned, are gentle, friendly birds, easily tamed.  These would be the ones who jump up onto my knee to inspect my sandwich, and are not to be trusted around bare toes in flip-flops.  They don’t deserve to be mistreated, either.

As I pull some especially obstinate weeds around my grape vines, I smile at the circle of hens who have gathered around me, eager to scratch in the newly loosened ground I am creating.  Prime bug-hunting real estate.  Somebody has discovered a moth, which flutters weakly above a team of intent hunters who chase and leap for it.  Inside the coop, where eight nest boxes sit at the ready, I find three young hens stuffed into one box, two sitting side-by-side, the third on top.  I can’t imagine what is so attractive about this one box.  Gracie, the little black banty, screams and pecks my hand when I reach under her to collect the five eggs she has taken ownership of this morning, abandoning her own tiny one upstairs.  The rooster chases my pet cat from the yard, once again.  Indeed, these animals do have personalities and deserve to be treated well, as do other types of livestock.  I reckon I am preaching to the choir here, as anybody reading this blog probably is already a fan of the backyard chicken. We are a loveable, big-hearted bunch, and our pets provide us with breakfast – when they feel like it, that is.  Support your local backyard grower, and have yourself a big ol’ bright orange omelette.