It was the best of nights, it was the worst of nights. Due to an impromptu business trip I was left to care for the house, our child, the dog, the cat, and of course the chickens or “girlies” as we refer to them by myself. Have I mentioned that I also have a full-time job? Yeah, it was a little overwhelming but on the whole we managed just fine save one little incident. My first evening of caring for the girlies I went to collect the eggs hours before dark set in. For those of you not in the know, chickens generally go to roost once dusk descends. Ideally, you want to collect these eggs before evening as reaching into the coop while the chickens are roosting can be, well, awkward to say the least! Nevertheless, I was reaching in to get the eggs well before dusk and discovered that I could not reach them through the hanging food container, so in my infinite wisdom I took the food container down from its hook and continued my quest for the eggs. I retrieved them, celebrated, and then attempted to rehang the food dish. This is where things took a turn toward the Hitchcockian. I struggled for what felt like an eternity to find the hook with little success when I looked up and was faced with this in quadruple:
Curious and Scary
It would seem that the ruckus I was making caused the girlies to come take a peek at the person not Nate breaking into their home. Suddenly, the space got very small as these 4 girlies invited themselves into my personal bubble. The closer they got the more panicked I became. In a moment of sheer frustration in the elusive hook, I dropped the food causing a chain reaction of screaming, feathers and birdies flying. Once I uncovered my head, I realized that I was not only covered head to toe in straw, but also that all 6 girls had returned to the scene of the crime to figure out what had occurred. I found myself slamming the door shut to avoid having any escapes and breaking out in insane laughter as I pulled straw from my hair. With the help of a friend some hours later, I was able to hang the food and had a week without further incident. I imagine any neighbors who got a glimpse of me got a good chuckle. So the moral of the story, don’t make any sudden movements when 4 chickens are in your bubble and wear sweats in case you too find yourself covered in chicken dust and hay. On a more serious note in regards to chicken care and egg collecting, I learned today that washing the eggs when they come in from the coop is not the no-brainer I once thought. As it turns out, the eggs are coated in something called bloom when they are layed. This protects them from a lot of bacteria including salmonella from crossing the shell into the egg. If you wash them off, especially with cold water you not only wash off the bloom, but you also create a vacuum in which bacteria gets sucked into the egg more readily. While the little germaphobic gnome that lives in my soul will not let me put dirty eggs in the fridge, I am more careful to always use a steady stream of warm water and dry the eggs completely before placing in the fridge. Of course as always, I would recommend you cook your eggs all the way through to ensure safety, but at the end of the day, chickens in healthy living conditions with less stress are less likely to transmit bacteria to their eggs, but cleaning them appropriately is still key. Visit Backyard Chicken Forum for more info and happy, less hair-raising chicken raising.
Adventures in Farmgirl Chic 