Nasty, Brutish, and Short

i romanticized
the keeping of my own hens
they eat their own young.


Couldn't figure out why egg production in the Maison du Poulet was down until I caught one of the Chanticleers in the act. Eating eggs. Might have been one of hers, maybe the laying of another hen, but .... eeeeewwww!! I guess during the idyllic establishment of my own henhouse I blithely skipped right over the chapters about how nasty chickens can be. Not only will they on occasion peck each other to death (sometimes out of sheer boredom), but they often develop a taste for eggs.

Cannibalism is bad enough but eating your own offspring ratchets the ick factor up quite a few notches.

"Curing" this behavior is tough and sometimes impossible. You can try calcium supplements in the feed, putting golf balls in the nest (chickens are dumb enough to confuse Titleist ProVIs with the product of their own loins) and just hanging out near the coop until you catch one in the act and tell her she's a "BAD chicken!" but ....

In the end, if a certain hen just won't quit eating eggs, you have to remove her from the flock altogether, because ... let's face it ... having one of your BFFs stalking you while you're trying to have a baby so she can immediately eat it would upset even the mellowest of souls. An egg-eater can spoil the whole flock. This means a more "final solution" for the offending hen, and that, my friends, is the subject of another post altogether.

My friend Miss Kate - who actually grew up on a real-live working farm, in Missouri - has watched with some bemusement as I've set myself up as a Suburban Lady Farmer. Like any good Daughter of the Midwest, she's taking my disillusion in stride and encouraging me to do the same. Apparently there are things even grosser than eating your own young.

I don't think I'm ready for that, yet, so ... haiku!