Production has dropped to just one or two eggs a day. At first, we thought it was just that the chickens are molting. Then we realized we had an egg-eater.

Was it her?

We occasionally found a broken egg in the nest box, but we put it down to accident. These things happen. Eventually, it became clear that there were too many to be happenstance. And sometimes, there was nothing but a damp yellowish spot in the straw; the whole egg was gone.

It probably started because the chickens weren’t getting enough calcium (we should have given them more oyster shell) and their eggshells were thin. The first couple were accidents, but then at least one of the chickens discovered that she liked eggs and, miracle of miracles, that there was a constant supply.

Egg-eating is a very hard problem to cure. You’re supposed to minimize the opportunity by collecting the eggs as frequently as possible but, no matter how vigilant you are, the chicken’s always going to be first to know when there’s a new egg.

The only sure-fire solution is the stewpot but, if that’s the route you’re going to go, you first have to identify the egg eater. This is no easy task. Kevin did some research on how to figure out which of your chickens is eating eggs, and here was the best suggestion he found: look for the one with egg on her beak.

Or maybe her?

Great.

Many years ago I saw a movie, or maybe a television show, in which a young girl was raped. She had to spend some time in the hospital, and the scene that sticks in my mind is the one in which her father, or maybe her brother, is driving her home. They’re driving through town and the girl gasps and points at a man walking down the street. “That’s him!” she says. “Are you sure?” asks the father, or the brother. She’s sure.

The father or the brother pulls over, chases the man into a parking garage, or maybe a vacant lot, and kills him. He gets back in the car and they’re on their way. A half-mile down the street, the girl gasps and points again. “That’s him!” she says.

Kevin caught Queenie, fair and square, with egg on her beak. “That’s her!”

Now what do we do?

Snack time

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An egg-laying machine, and dignified to boot

And we knew we’d get fewer eggs. There might even be stretches when we’d get none at all. Chickens cut back on their production in the winter, in part because there’s less light, which plays a key role in governing their laying cycle, and in part because they often molt in the colder months, and that’s a drain on the resources otherwise devoted to egg manufacture.

Some chicken owners put lights in the coop to prevent the downturn in the cycle, but we figured we’d let nature take its course, and let chickens do what comes naturally in winter. I don’t know for sure that keeping lights on all year stresses the birds, but I know I certainly wouldn’t like it. Besides, there’s no electricity.

It has been one of the surprises of this enterprise that our chickens haven’t slacked off the pace at all. We have gotten at least five eggs from our eight chickens every single day, and six or seven is the norm. I’m sure we can attribute this, at least in part, to the fact that they’re nine months old and at the beginning of their peak laying age. But still.

“Why do you suppose our chickens are still laying all those eggs?” I asked my husband. “Is it because it hasn’t been that cold? Is there something in the food?”

“Nope,” he said, with perfect confidence, almost swaggering. “It’s all about the husbandry.”

Sheesh. He takes credit for everything.

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Yesterday, we brought in four dozen eggs. A fifty-pound bag of layer pellets was $11.42, including tax. Although we had to subsidize to the tune of $3.42 (and do the heavy lifting) the chickens just about paid for their own food. Kevin said we were pimping them out, but I thought it was perfectly wholesome. Birds, supporting themselves and keeping us in eggs!

I’m going to have a word with the cat.

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Stop me before I bake again

Eggs don’t just sit on the counter, waiting patiently to be eaten poached, with whole-grain toast. They want to be combined with butter and cheese, sugar and cream. They want to be omelets, or custards, or soufflés. Most of all, though, eggs beg to be baked with. And I can’t have baked goods in the house.

I can’t have anything delicious and ready to eat in the house because I am ready to eat every last bite of it. Ice cream calls to me from the freezer. “Tamar!” says the Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk, “I’m delicious, and here for the taking!” Chocolate truffles call from the Lindt box. Cashews call from the cupboard. And forget baked goods. If Kevin wants any of that leftover pecan pie, he has to tie me to the mast and stop up my ears before he goes to work in the morning.

Kevin doesn’t hear the siren song of baked goods. He’s perfectly capable of letting the cake, or the bread, or the cookies sit on the counter until he gets hungry. Then he eats one reasonable portion and puts the rest away. I don’t understand it.

“It never calls your name,” I say, bewildered.

“It never has the chance,” says Kevin.

Why do I have such trouble with this? I manage to be disciplined in other areas of my life. I exercise regularly, I’m diligent about my work, I resist a wide range of ethical temptations – only to be undone by a pumpkin bread.

That’s what it was this time. A pumpkin bread. I knew I shouldn’t have made it, but I had an open can of pumpkin puree and just enough white whole wheat flour. And eggs. Dozens and dozens of eggs.

It wasn’t even a rich, decadent pumpkin bread. It was an austere, healthful pumpkin bread. I made it that way in part because I figured I’d probably eat too much, and if it was an austere, healthful pumpkin bread the worst-case scenario wasn’t too bad. But I also figured that an austere, healthful pumpkin bread might not taste very good, and I might just be able to find it within myself to resist it.

No dice. By some fluke, this was the best austere, healthful pumpkin bread I’d ever made. I used two eggs, instead of the usual one, and it had a moist, eggy crumb. Although I made it with white whole wheat flour, it had none of that dense, grainy texture. And it was just sweet enough. (The recipe is here.)

After I’d eaten almost half – half! – I gave Kevin two big slices to see him through his train ride to New York.  The rest, I gave to my friend Linda. 

Then I called my mother to ask her why food has such a hold on me. “Well,” she said, trying to avoid the obvious answer, which is that I’m an incurable glutton. “You write about it for a living, so you think about it all the time.” Hah! If only.

“I write about it for a living because it has such a hold on me, not the other way ‘round,” I said.

“Maybe,” she admitted, and added, “I’m the same way.”

She is, although not quite as bad. But her house, like mine, is filled with ingredients. There are vegetables and fruits, grains and condiments, but not a snack to be had. If snacks are to be had, we have them, and next thing you know we don’t fit through the doorways.

Is it just us, or is this part of the human condition? I know people who bake (and write about baking) all the time, yet manage moderation. One doorway could fit three or four of Rose Levy Beranbaum, who’s perhaps the world’s leading expert on baked goods, and maybe a size six. This argues against the “human condition” theory. So what’s my problem?

Eggs. Eggs are my problem.

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We don’t eat that many eggs – maybe two dozen a month, which is a little more than the output of one hen. If you’re going to keep chickens, you need at least four, so we’d end up with many more eggs than we’d need. Besides, it’s a money loser. We buy excellent eggs from a local farm for three dollars a dozen, and our yearly egg budget of about $75. wouldn’t go far in procuring, housing, and feeding a coop’s worth of chickens.

Six-eighths of our brood

But then there’s the barter system. Once you start growing and gathering, a whole new economy opens up. We’ve already traded some oak logs (to grow shiitakes), which we have in abundance, for two blackberry bushes grown by our friends Al and Christl. That worked out so well that, a couple weeks later, we traded them a peck of clams for some tomato and kale seedlings.

Chickens will expand our bartering options. Everybody likes eggs, and we hope to trade not just for edibles but for advice, assistance, and just plain good will. And if there’s anyone out there with a 17′ Whaler …

A Buff Orpington

That’s the idea, anyway, and it was what led to our buying eight baby chicks yesterday morning from the nice people at Cape Cod Feed and Supply. They get them, fifty at a time, from Murray McMurray Hatchery, a business which you’ve never heard of if you don’t raise chickens and which you hear of all the time if you do.

We had planned to get eight Buff Orpingtons, a breed known for its docile good nature and resistance to cold. There weren’t enough to go around, though, so we ended up with four Buffs and four Rhode Island Reds, a hardy breed with an independent streak.

A Rhode Island Red

The difference in the breeds is apparent even in three-day-old chicks. The Reds zoom around the brooder with confidence and aplomb while the Buffs quietly go about their business, which is eating, drinking, and crapping. That will be the sum total of our chicks’ business for the next six months, until they reach maturity and “laying” gets added to the list.

Until that happens, we have to keep them warm, fed, and safe from our cat, who seems excited by the prospect of having very small birds in the house. Kevin likes to let the cat commune with the chicks – through the impermeable wall of the brooder – on the theory that we can teach her that the brood is a part of our family community, and therefore not acceptable prey. I, however, have very little faith in our cat’s community spirit, and prefer to keep a closed door between them.

Can't we all just get along?

We didn’t plan it this way, but in an energy-saving piece of good luck, our timing is such that we have to keep both our baby chicks and our dandelion wine warm for the next week. We’ve sequestered brooder, heat lamp, and fermenting vat in the guest room, jury-rigging the lot so the brooder is at 95 degrees and the wine about twenty degrees cooler.

By all appearances, chicks and wine are thriving.

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