Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?

I recently asked mother who laid the first egg. She was not sure.  In fact, she was not sure where the first chicken came from or if an egg just showed up on Earth one day.  She diverted my question with one of my favorite stories about my arrival to our family.  Let me share it with you:

Not long ago, my husband and I were living in an apartment with our 3 young children, catching our breath from job loss and financial ruin, and it didn’t take long to figure out that apartment living and children under the age of 10 were a bad combination. We needed a yard for the children to play in and it needed to happen soon! I had already been following the rental home prices on Craigslist and watched as rent prices started falling. We needed a yard but not something landscaped that would be ruined by the children. I also started to envision having a garden to supplement our food stamps. After a few months of waiting, we found the right home at the right price with a large neglected weed infested yard. By my reasoning, if the landlord didn’t care if the yard was a nightmare, why should he care if I turned it into an organic garden?

We moved in just before the start of spring and I went to work building raised beds from fence boards and used cardboard. Seeds were soon planted and we were on the way to independence.

Before

After

As seedlings started to sprout, another great idea came to mind…how about chickens for eggs? As you can imagine, the children were overjoyed to get chickens! We went to a family owned feed & seed and each child picked out their very own 1 week old chick. Chicks are so entertaining that I could spend hours just watching and holding them. The biggest and fastest growing chick was Martha, a “Production Red” hen. When I would venture out in the garage to check on them, Martha would be the first to turn her head sideways and give me the eye.

One week old

One month old

Now that I was a mother of soon-to-be hens, I needed to make a permanent home. I originally thought of building a moveable chicken coop that wouldn’t destroy the yard, something we could move every few days. So, I designed a coop on wheels and upon completion, it was perfect. The only problem arose after we filled it with litter, it weighed a ton! I proceeded to move the coop to a permanent position and build a small yard for them to play in.

The permanent home and yard

Move in day was most exciting! Martha and her “sisters” were pretty excited about their new home. Their coop had 3 nesting boxes but when I went to check on them that night all 3 were cuddled together in one nesting box. 

They sleep together in the far right nesting box

During the day, I let them play in the yard but they soon started focusing all of their energy into my newly growing plants. This was not going to work until the fall when the garden would go to compost. So, I started keeping them in their yard and supplying them with plenty of kitchen compost. It is amazing the amount of food they can consume!

Martha eating my peas

At 19 weeks of age, Martha laid her first egg. It was tiny and we felt really bad cooking it but it tasted really good. She lays an egg every day. Martha’s eggs are now normal sized and when I saw a tiny egg show up one day, I knew it must be another one of our hens producing.

The egg on the left is from a newly producing hen and the one on the right is Martha's

One morning, the chickens were making a terrible racket and I ran out to see what was wrong. Jumping over our fence was a cat that had obviously been terrorizing the hens. As soon as I approached “the girls”, they quieted down and Martha gave me the eye. It was then that I realized that they looked to me as their Mother.