This morning, Pip, Red and Puny pecked and scratched at the corn kernels and cobs leftover from our last night’s dinner. At some point today, each of the three hens will likely hop into a galvanized tub in the potting shed and lay a brown egg in the pine straw. “The girls” make delicious eggs.

For about a year now, they’ve produced two or three brown-shelled eggs a day. It was an experiment last spring (2009) to buy the wobbly little chicks – for about $2 each from a feed & seed down the road. But now, with this week’s news of overcrowded egg factories, battery cages and worries of contamination, I’m more thankful for the hens each day.

The girls are true foragers. In our fenced-in yard of about 1/4 acre, I’ve seen them scratch and eat grass, clover, pecans that have dropped (if the shell is broken… we sometimes help with that), sunflower seeds, worms, bugs, radish greens, blueberries, millet, collard greens, watermelon, cucumbers, seeds of any kind. To add to what they find, each day we give them a cup or two of feed crumbles and of dried, cracked corn. They drink from a garden spigot left on to drip. (Pretty interesting to watch.)

I think it’s a content little flock. They need so little and they give so much.

Thank you, Pip. Thank you, Red. Thank you, Puny.

– Sandy Lang, August 2010  (Egg image by PFE.)