Be tidy. Be brave. Elevate all laying-house feeders and waterers twenty-two inches off the floor. Use U-shaped rather than V-shaped feeders. Fill them half-full and don’t refill them until they are empty. Walk, don’t run. ….Don’t start three hundred chicks, if all you want is eight eggs a day for your own table….Tie your shoe-laces in a double knot in the morning, since hens are under the impression that shoelaces are worms…From “The Hen, and Appreciation” by E.B. White, 1944
In 1944, in the midst of our effort on the home front to fill our back yards with Victory Gardens, and hen houses, William Morrow published a book about raising hens by Roy E. Jones entitled “A Basic Chicken Guide for the Small Flock Owner.” They asked author and essayist E. B. White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, One Man’s Meat, etc…) to write the introduction. He obliged them with a piece of comic and useful agricultural writing. He admits to not having read the book he is introducing, and says that he can include all he knows about hens in a single paragraph. He does (albeit, in a very long paragraph), and I’ve excerpted it above. In addition this advice, he also cautions: “Don’t try to convey your enthusiasm for chickens to anyone else…Never give day old chicks starter mash for the first couple of days, give them chick feed…If you don’t have three hundred dollars, and don’t expect to have, don’t buy three hundred day old chicks, because you’ll soon need the three hundred dollars.”
It all seems like sound advice. He should know, since he had kept chickens from his youth, and famously divided his time between New York City, and his farm in North Brooklin, Maine. I know very little about the hen. The last hens I knew were kept at Cecil Shortridge’s house, but that has been years ago. The Jarrells have, more recently, kept hens, but they survived prowling vermin too briefly to mention (although I notice I just mentioned them). I know this about the hen - she’s originally from India, and in her undomesticated state is known as the Jungle Fowl (which is much more exotic and exciting than being called a Rock or a Red). I know that wringing a chicken’s neck takes a strong wrist. I know that you can’t skimp on feed if you are raising hens to lay, and not to eat. Dana Carvey insists that a chicken makes a lousy house pet. This seems like it would be generally true.
And yet the AP reported last week that a Bienvenida, a city hen from Madrid, is quite comfortable in her apartment. It also reported that every morning she leaves her apartment building and – Crosses the Road! I saw the video on Channel 4 morning news, Channel 9 news at 11, and on MSNBC online. There she was, looking both ways, then crossing the road that runs in front of her apartment building. More important than establishing that sometimes a chicken makes wonderful house pet, the AP reported that they knew why Bienvenida crosses the road every day. She crosses the road – to have something to do, someplace to go.
That’s sensible. I mean, no one should sit around the house all day. A person (or in this case, a chicken) needs a destination to provide initiative. Why did the chicken cross the road? To have some place to go.
That’s one hen-enigma solved. A second, that has seemed just as problematic, is, I think, just as easily answered. For generations (the earliest reference is found on a pottery shard from Petra, circa 4th century B.C.) humans have wondered: Which came first – the chicken or the egg?”
Of course the answer should be problematic, since the answer lays (I know it should be “lies” but I couldn’t pass up the pun) back, beyond human experience. Hens have been around longer than we have. And yet we have the answer:
And God said, “Let the waters team with living things, and let birds fly above the earth and fill the expanse of the sky. Genesis 1.20
God spoke and life appeared - mature, vibrant, swimming, soaring life. Which came first, the Chicken or the egg? The Chicken.
