People always ask us what we do with the eggs. "Would it be so bad to eat the eggs?" a volunteer asks. Meaning that the chickens are free-range, rescued birds, after all.
But the humans here are vegan. And how many times do you have to hear Jenny Brown call eggs "chicken periods" (which they are) to swear off eggs forever.
Another volunteer who was cleaning a barn a few days ago, walked out to me, carrying two eggs. "What do I do with these?" he asks.
"Oh, just put them in the med center," I say.
He looks at me, "What are they?
I glance at him. "Eggs. From a chicken."
Was he so vegan he forgot what eggs look like? Was he so not-vegan and unhealthy that he only consumed pre-packaged food and forgot what eggs look like? He left before I found out.
Anyway, here's what we do with eggs: we cook them up (these are 2 dozen eggs--sometimes the hens get strangely prolific). We have a special, heavy-duty pan that we don't use for anything else. We boil the eggs, mash them up, stir in other things that are laying around--like grapes or applesauce or pieces of banana--plus add some vitamin mixture and then feed the whole thing back to the main flock.
And they are happy.
These are happy birds, fighting over egg-mash.
The white rooster at the top is Rod, who used to have a shoe-fetish (what do you expect from a bird who used to be called Maggie, as we thought he was a hen when he first arrived). He especially liked Amber's pink gardening clogs and sometimes she would leave one in the coop as a sort of cross between a date and a blow-up doll.
The other birds are hens. Every one has a name, but it's hard to tell who's who when they're running from one bowl of mash to the next, looking for the best morsels. The pigs do the same thing, going from trough to trough at meals, not wanting to miss anything.
Sylvia, one of the 6 hens who came as part of a rescue from an illegal slaughterhouse in the Bronx, is in the med center. She's thin and she's gurgly and she hasn't grown back all of her feathers. All 6 of the birds were nearly naked when they got here. They're what's called, "spent layers," birds who have been used to lay eggs constantly, are put through forced molting, and spend their lives stuffed into over-crowded cages. When they arrived, the first thing they did was dustbathe in the dirt, rolling and using the white, bone-like quills of their featherless wings to flip dust over their bodies. And then there was the sun. And then there were the bugs. And then there was the grass. And some time later, there was the mash.
Now Sylvia needs a shot of antibiotics every day. Dawnell holds her for the shot, then gives her green grape halves, which she swallows whole, and a bowl of mini-mash.
Sylvia joins Brewet, who's also in the med center because he
hasn't been able to walk in a few weeks. It's not good for him to sit all day, so he gets sling-time for a few hours, in a cloth grocery bag with holes cut out for his legs and tail. He's lost muscle in his right leg, so we take him for walks in the sling and get him to take baby steps. Sophie takes the approach of a physical therapist rehabbing a star athlete--less about sympathy and more about inspiration.
Brewet is our boy of days in the sun and pecking through straw and grass with his hen friends, Edie and Truffle. Of chasing away Peanut Butter, the younger rooster competition. Of being picked up by the person leading tours on weekends, so kids or adults or whoever can meet their first rooster. Of seeming to know his role as ambassador.
Brewet gets egg-mash too. He's not a layer-hen who needs to replenish his body, but he likes mash. And the hens give lots of eggs. And sometimes, the world feels like nothing but abundance, even to the humans.
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