Chicken and Egg - Janice Cole [45]
I soon found out that chickens are not automatic laying machines. All sorts of things interrupted their laying schedule. Thunderstorms, for instance. A good shaking of the heavens and pounding rain on the coop upset them enough so that they didn’t lay for a couple of days. Stress also upset the girls. Change in temperature, change in light, change in feed all contributed to changes in egg laying. My little flock seemed to be affected by all of it.
“Dammit!” I muttered, as I grabbed the carrot that had rolled away and nearly caused me to slice my finger. I was busy chopping a pile of vegetables I’d picked up that morning at the farmers’ market to use for minestrone. Making a large pot of soup is therapy for me. Smelling herbs, dicing onions, and sautéing garlic is calming. Extra-virgin olive oil and garlic are my meds of choice. The problem was, on that day it wasn’t working. I wasn’t calm. I wasn’t soothed. In fact, I was hardly paying attention to what I was doing. All I could think of was what I had to do next, and I was dreading it.
I finished the soup, and left it simmering slowly on the stove. I had already used every delaying tactic I could think of. So I decided to just get it over with and slowly headed out the back door.
Roxanne came running over and squatted in front of me. I scooped her up with my disposable-glove-clad hands, feeling guilty. This wasn’t going to be just our normal cuddle and it wasn’t going to be easy. I’d enlisted the help of the unwilling participant in this entire adventure, the man who had wanted no part of any of this. I required an extra pair of hands in case anything went wrong and, as much as he hated it, his were available.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he questioned. “No!” I shouted grumpily. “I don’t want to do this at all.” What I wanted to do was sit on the deck with a glass of wine. But Roxanne hadn’t laid an egg in over a week, and there might be something wrong with her. According to the books, I had to check it out to be sure.
So there I was holding the wings of a cuddly, trusting hen, about to stick my finger up her rear end. I’d read that sometimes extra-large eggs can get stuck and endanger a chicken’s health. If so, all I had to do was gently push my lubricated finger into her vent while pushing on her stomach and carefully ease the egg out. Yeah, right! If the egg were to break while inside her, she could die.
As I poked around at Roxanne’s innards, she remained strangely calm for a chicken stuck on the end of my trigger finger like some bizarre lollipop. I guess if you’re used to plopping out a Grade A large egg every day, a small finger is not a big deal.
I, on the other hand, felt like I was participating in some sort of primitive initiation rite to prove I was worthy of owning chickens. I slowly moved my finger around her smooth inner track, but encountered no egg-shaped objects or sharp, pointy bits. For the time being, Roxanne appeared to be fine, and I gently let her go.
* * *
As time went on, the girls settled into an egg-laying routine. Except for Lulu, they were not super layers. Certain breeds are known for their egg-laying ability, but I had chosen two of my girls for the color of their eggs. I should have done more research. They seemed to be sensitive birds that upset easily, like high-strung purebred racehorses or operatic prima donnas. If I were a real farmer, I’d have culled them from the flock a long time ago. But I wasn’t a farmer. When you only have three birds it’s hard to get rid of two-thirds of your flock during their first year.
My visions of piling eggs on my neighbors’ doorsteps faded when I realized that I barely had enough to keep us in eggs. Each one became more special and more precious. It wasn’t until their second year that I started to keep track of the eggs each of the girls laid. When they were all laying, we’d get around fourteen eggs a week. When a couple of them stopped laying, we went down to four or five eggs a week.
The main reason most chickens stop laying is because they’re molting,