h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here's something I honestly never thought I'd say.. the chicken laid an egg in my window box.

For those of you who don't know, let me explain. A few months ago a lone chicken wandered into my yard and decided to stay. Apparently she wanders the neighborhood quite a bit, though she seems to nest at my house.

Yes - I moved from Manhattan's Upper West Side to North Carolina's Piedmont. Though I must admit Charlotte is rather cosmopolitan and I like it quite a bit.

No - there are no farms anywhere near here. I live in an older, well treed suburban neighborhood with no agriculture for miles.

So how does this city girl end up with a chicken laying eggs in her flower box? Only Bob knows.. but there it is. One of those things I never imagined myself saying and I have to admit to having to say it.

You may now resume your regularly scheduled virtual pubbing.

Oooooh, free breakfast!


Don't wait around for it to hatch, because unless the hen has been making the acquaintance of a rooster (highly unlikely, since she seems to be the only chicken for miles), her eggs aren't fertilized, and even if she sits on it, it's just gonna sit there and rot.


Yep, I was born and raised on farms, I'm a real hick.

*hayseed chawin' on a piece of straw*

If you feed her regularly, she may lay eggs regularly, Batty.

or on the other hand roast chicken lunch

If you like the chicken's company, you wouldn't want to eat her.

I now know where to send that flipping rooster who lives across the street!

I hope Batty is a sound sleeper, then.
And that she isn't allergic to eggs.

Yep ...Batty shoulda' never sent me her addy.
An' that guy across the street shoulda' never left for work!~~

One rooster ... over easy ... comin' attcha'!

I wish I had a guy with a camera to film Pandora chasing a rooster.

Free range eggs, anyone!

I think Batty should go into poultry farming.

Somehow I don't think we're zoned for that. Actually as I understand it you're not supposed to have "livestock" in an area that isn't zoned for it so Penny might have to learn to hide. Of course she looked just like a lawn statue nesting in the window box amongst the petunias. The ones she didn't uproot to nest anyway.

I did go and collect the eggs this morning. She left 3 of them in my window box and none were bad. For a city girl I do know about spinning eggs to make sure they're good. Yummy! I haven't had really fresh free range eggs since I went to Italy!

To think - I used to pay a fortune for free range eggs at the market that weren't even as fresh as the 'just laid' variety I now get for a pittance. It was only $5 for a 50 lb bag of crushed corn chicken feed. Hope she's hungry - they didn't have smaller bags.

Free range eggs... that's what we used to have all the time when I was a kid. Of course your hen is even more "free range" than ours were, because ours were confined to the fenced in chicken house area behind grandma's yard. Still, it was a *big* fenced in area, and better to keep them confined to that area, rather than having them lay eggs all over the yard, the barn yard (where the manure was pitched from the milking barn), in the garden, and out in the alfalfa field... not to mention the pasture behind the chicken yard.

By the way, just in case you didn't know, your hen will continue to lay eggs regularly while the days are long. Once significantly shorter days arrive in the fall, she will probably slow to only an occasional egg, eventually stopping altogether until the days are longer again. This is why commercial laying hens are housed in buildings where the lights are kept burning constantly - the more light, the more eggs they lay.

I didn't know that. Maybe in winter I'll strap a sunlamp to her little beak.

When I was in Italy the family chickens were allowed to roam around where my friend's family was building their villa. Oddly enough their favorite place to lay eggs seemed to be in the scoop of the bulldozer. Because they were primarily fed corn the yolks were sweet and yellow. Same with Penny's eggs. She gets corn for the feed and scratches up the garden insects for her protein.

Now if I can just get her to continue laying the eggs in the window box where we don't have to hunt for them it will be perfect.

I was running late for work today so I'm planning on waking up early tomorrow so I can have a nice soft boiled egg with some toast.

Since she's found a place she likes to nest, she may just do that... I hate for you to be walking out in the yard and step on eggs that you didn't know were there.

Lord Scott's mom has a friend who has chickens, which are also apparently allowed to roam freely - those eggs had wonderfully yellow yolks. The things from the grocery store are just pathetic looking by comparison.

Do happy hens have healthier (h)eggs?

mmmm real fresh corn fed chicken eggs mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Paulie I do think free range chickens with healthy diets do have better eggs. The yolks are big, firm and usually so yellow they're orange! Plus the taste is amazing.

Lady S I'm hoping she'll keep laying her eggs there but this morning she was perched on top of the garden potting shed like a weather vane.

Maybe she's afraid her nest has gone to pot.