Did you know that the mass-produced farm egg has absolutely no flavour? Unless you’ve owned and raised chickens, you’ll never know what’s missing from the humble store-bought egg. The commercial version’s shell is thin, the yolk colourless, and that eggy taste isn’t all that good.
What we had before moving west has disappeared, and I miss our homegrown cluckers and their cackleberries. It’s time to resurrect a little of what we had by bringing in the specialist egg producer: The laying hen!
Yes, Margo wants chickens, so we can produce our own fresh eggs. This time, we’re doing it in suburbia.
We had a lot of building products left over from the house renovations. There was timber, roofing iron, hinges, locks, bolts, and steel purlins, all nicely stored behind and in our new garage. We looked at them and thought, we’ve got enough to make a chook pen out of all of that stuff. What we didn’t have was cage wire.
Roll-it-out-chicken wire wasn’t our preferred choice of cage wire. We’ve tried that before. That thin hexagonal stuff looks sloppy and daggy if it isn’t stretched taught. There’s also the fox problem to consider. Foxes can easily bite through, snap and fold that type of wire back. We wanted something much sturdier. The only thing we had to buy new was the welded mesh. It’s 3mm thick and is rigid enough to span a good distance. We buried it about a foot into the ground and then laid it on the walls and part of the roof to create an open section for the chickens to sun themselves in. One-third of the pen is roofed and walled in corrugated steel. They are leftovers from the house cladding, and that includes the timber!
During the day, chickens like sitting in sand/dirt and flicking it over their backs. They also like roosting in a safe, weatherproof place off the ground at night. When it comes to egg-laying, they are total mothers and look for a soft, quiet corner to put their babies in. So, at the other end of the cage, we’ve built a nesting box, complete with its own roof, laying shavings for a nest, and two compartments for the girls to do their business in private. Ordinarily, boxes like these are set in the same roofed area where the roosting occurs. That didn’t suit us at all. The roost is at the rear of the cage. We wanted to get our eggs from a more accessible place at the front. A long ramp leads from the ground to the box. A hinged lid allows us to reach the eggs outside the main cage. Luckily, we only need to go inside the cage to change the food. (The water is accessible from the front) Check the video out!
Anyhow, we finished it today, and Margo wanted to get the chickens right away. She just couldn’t wait. We found the number of a local supplier and picked them up right away.
-Michael Forman (Author of Dark Fiction)
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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