Getting started with chickens

It ‘s very rare to hear  a fully grown man squeal with delight - and this is probably the first time I had ever heard it.  No it wasn’t at and FA cup final, or at some stag do in Amsterdam.  The location was slightly more mundane – my allotment, and the ‘man’ was my mate who was helping me search for eggs that our new hens should be laying anytime now.  He had found the first, and you would think he had won the lottery.  That is, unless you have ever experienced the joy of keeping chickens yourself.

You see to most people and egg is an egg is an egg.  Yeah I know, we’ve had the likes of Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall banging on for years about how eggs taste better from well cared for hens.   But until you’ve gone through the process of taking delivery of your chickens, feeding them, getting to know them individually, you never quite experience what they are going on about.  It’s like how Simon Cowell off of X-Factor explains it: It’s about the Journey.

So, I’m down on my allotment, with my mate.  We have had these chickens for around 3 weeks now, but it’s still winter, and they haven’t laid yet.  And we’re beginning to think we’ve been sold a duff batch of chickens.  And then there it was nestled in a laying box, small and slightly odd shaped for and egg (this is normal for the first few eggs of young chickens apparently), its pale whiteness winking at us from the box like a pearl inside a clam.

But now we had a problem: two fully grown adults, one small, odd shaped egg. Who’s gonna eat it?  “well I found it” exclaimed my mate, “they’re my bloody hens!” I shouted.  “lets settle this like true blokes – paper, scissors or stone...”  Now remember it’s an egg, and not a very pretty egg either.  It’s the kind of egg only its mother could love – in fact even she had abandoned it in favour of devouring some over ripe avocado I found in a recess of my fridge.  But we were about to come to blows over it, so in the end we decided to hard boil it, shell it and have half each.

Hard boiling is my least favourite way of cooking eggs – but logistically for the purposes of this egg it was the best way (have you ever tried to slice a poached egg in two?)  So there I am eating my half a small, hard boiled, misshapen egg.  And I can tell you it was the best egg I have ever tasted in my life.  Mr Cowell, you’re god damned right it’s about the journey!  I was hooked!