Two Chickens, Two Eggs
A.V. Walters
In the best of circumstances, a healthy chicken will produce an egg a day. From time to time, or if under stress, a chicken will occasionally miss a day or two. When winter darkness comes, egg-laying goes. (It’s why commercial egg operations use artificial lighting.) Chickens will usually try to lay in a protected area. The chickens in our front yard have each picked a hollowed out spot under the redwood tree. We collect the eggs everyday. In fact, it’s one of the tasks that Rick especially likes.
What you don’t see, is extra eggs.
Yesterday, Rick found an egg just out in the grass, a yard or two in from the fence–no hollowed out nest–just an egg, sitting there. He picked it up and carefully set it aside. It wasn’t an especially good looking egg; it was a little dirty and mottled looking. Later, he quizzed me about the egg numbers over the past few days.
You see, we’ve been collecting two eggs a day. Rick figures we’ve been set up for another round of Farm Humor. That egg is a rotten-egg-bomb. Our front yard chickens couldn’t have laid it. The numbers don’t work.
We have a suspect. One Bad Egg. We don’t yet have a plan. We could just carefully dispose of this suspicious egg…or we could keep the joke going……
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tworockchronicles 
I remember when I was young and I found an egg outside the chicken coop. I went to take it inside and dropped it at the back door. It cracked open and a tiny black snake slithered out. Yikes – after that I never touched an ‘strange looking’ eggs 😯
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Yikes is right!
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I never used to think about label like organic and free range I just asusemd they were more healthy. Until my 80-year old dad one day informed me to my horror I’ve been reading about the free-range label. Apparently, you can call a chicken free range if their wire cage opens up onto a 2 x2 gravel or concrete space. And it doesn’t matter what they feed them or if they give them drugs or hormones to call them free-range. Doesn’t sound very free range to me. You’re best off growing your own food. I also found out a few years ago while working with environmental engineers that Energy Star classification is more about buying the use of the name than anything else. Sad.
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