There Are Good Layers and Bad Layers

I'll admit, that when I decided we should start out our farm with chickens, I didn't know a thing about chickens. I was in the department of thinking that in order to have a chicken lay an egg, you needed to have a rooster. How many of you non-chicken people knew that wasn't true? Thankfully, no roos are needed. Mrs. Layer does all the work herself. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Mrs. Layer is only really good at egg production for the first 1-3 years of life, despite the fact that she can live into the teen years. And really, after two years, you are better off...ehem....culling them. Which means that if I'm a smart farmer, I'll be slaughtering my chickens in two years, and starting again. I wasn't ready for that news.

I am practical in things, so I agree that it is not worth the price in chicken feed to keep a chicken around who is down to laying an egg a month. I've just never killed anything before purposely, especially where it is necessary for the animal to "bleed out". But I decided that at least I would know our chicken had a good life free ranging on a farm, as opposed to the anonymous headless chicken I buy at the grocery store that someone killed for me. But there is also the children factor. The children needed to know before they started holding baby chickies that one day, the mama hens wouldn't lay eggs very well, and we'd need to kill the mamas for the meat. BUT we'd get to have baby chickies again. Jack, my softie, wasn't liking that news much at all.

So I compromised. I ordered 10 baby chicks...nine of which are excellent layers and most of which can be used for meat production. And then I ordered a baby pet chicken. Kid you not they are the silliest chickens I have ever seen. More of an ornamental chicken really. And known for their unusual docile pet like behavior. Behold, an example of a White Silkie Chicken:


She looks like Elvis in a white polyester suit, doesn't she? What a hoot. I hope and pray that the Silkie chicken will survive and thrive, as she will be the one who is allowed to maintain her coop beyond her two year internship at Knucker Hatch Farms. Personally, I am excited about my rainbow of egg layers, who should be gearing up for their first laid egg in late fall/early winter. The funny thing is, aside from cooking with them, I rarely eat an egg. It just sounded like a good and easy place to start with our farm on the cusp.

Now, one more thing I bet you didn't know about lady chickens. You can usually tell on someone's farm who the good layer girls are. Why? Because they look worn out. In fact they go through a bleaching process in their skin that moves throughout their body depending on how many eggs they have laid. A pretty chicken, is probably not a dependable layer.

And something about that whole life analogy really works for me right now. Lately, I feel like the lady chicken who continues to lay the eggs, and to show for it, I'm looking pretty frumpy. Not much pizzazz going on in the feathers, but in the chicken world, that is a sign of a hard worker. There is something reassuring about that --- if only I were a chicken. However, I do admit that I am looking forward to a decade from now, when I might just have a little more time to turn it up a knotch and strut my stuff with the decked out Silkies!