The Chickens and the Eggs

You know how there are certain things from your childhood that you'll never forget? Your first ride on a roller coaster, perhaps, or when you were lost at the mall and couldn't find your parents. Whether good or bad, these experiences will be with us for the rest of our lives. I'm fairly certain that they grow in proportion to the experience with age, too. If it was grandma's apple pie you remember as being the Very Best Ever, you've most likely had a piece or two here or there over the years that was equally as delicious as grandma's, but your mind will never allow that kind of thinking. Everything falls short, and your cry of "this isn't grandma's apple pie" will always be heard when you eat apple pie. Conversely, if it's a bad experience you remember, that bad dream of an event will live in infamy as The Worst Nightmare Of An Event. I mean, if you simply stubbed your toe, and it was memorable as a kid because it was painful, by the time you're an adult, that would be a broken toe. Every bone shattered. You couldn't walk on it for two months. WHY DIDN'T YOUR PARENTS PUT YOU IN A BODY CAST?!

Ahem.

My husband's bad experience was with chickens. Every time he'd see a picture of a chicken, look at a chicken at the county fair, or if chickens were just being discussed, we'd hear of how horrible chickens are. What a bad home life he had because he had to take care of the chickens. How awful chickens smell, and how it was his job to do the worst of the worst chicken jobs.

Clearly, chickens are the most evil things on the face of the planet.

And yet, shockingly, his head didn't explode when I said I'd like to get chickens. He did, however, look at me as though I'd finally lost my last marble. I'm fairly certain the only reason he's on board with this whole thing is to actually prove to me that chickens really are the most evil things on the face of the planet. That way I can join him in his loathing and we can lick each other's scarring wounds together. But hey, whatever his reasoning is, we've got chickens.

Although my mother-in-law said it best. "You'll either want to get rid of all the chickens by the time school starts this fall, or you'll want twice that many." I'm thinking she's absolutely right. Love or hate, but action would need to be taken either way. I am vowing now, however, to never turn into the Crazy Chicken Lady we got these girls from. She started with 30 and now has 300. Guys, I'm holding all of you responsible. If I start collecting chickens like that, come turn them loose or something. The responsibility is now yours.

But our chickens are doing what chickens do, and we get eggs daily. Only about half are laying at this point, but (interesting fact alert) chickens don't lay as frequently over winter due to the shorter daylight hours. They're just coming into the spring laying season (is it called that?) and the other girls will be laying soon as well. We hope. At any rate, we're up to 5 eggs a day from 4/day over the weekend. And its so awesome knowing that soon we wont' be buying store eggs at all anymore. The eggs this family eats is shocking, which is why I wanted to invest in the hens in the first place.

So it remains to be seen whether Sam is right and chickens are horrid and evil creatures just waiting to suck your soul while you sleep, or if they're little gold mines, depositing gems of edible awesomeness every single day into the laying boxes. I'm fairly certain I'm right.