Living Off Grid – Another Chicken Story (humor)

Reader Contribution by Ed Essex
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When I was a kid we had a couple of bantam chickens. They were named Popeye and Oliveoil, or maybe it was Oliveoyle. Anyway we only kept them for their eggs. I’m not sure why we wanted such small eggs. We could have just raided a robin’s nest or two and not had to buy any feed. I still remember those two chickens. When the rooster was after the hen (which was often) she would run into the doghouse and hide behind the dog to get away from him. It must have been one of those forced marriages. Of course, as a child I just thought they were playing hide and seek.

I’d like to say I remember that we enjoyed the eggs but sometimes my mother thought the eggs should be soft boiled and I did not enjoy those at all. Who came up with that idea anyway? Why not just eat them raw? Did she think I wanted to grow up and be Rocky Balboa? What was the point in wasting the energy to almostcook them? Just saying……

So when Laurie and I moved out of the city we just had to have chickens. We fixed up an old storage shed and made a chicken condo out of it. We had all the chickens sign papers that they would live in harmony, lay lots and lots of eggs and the rooster would never crow before 9:00 a.m. and only on weekdays. Well, the chickens do seem to live in harmony.

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