Re: Chicken-and-egg story, spoiler Weds.

In message <446360f0$0$9258$ed2619ec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Marjorie Clarke <dontusethisaddess@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Can some hen-loving umrat explain, please? - What's the problem with a "broody" hen? Why would Mike want to ring their necks? Hayley may well be broody too, but nobody's wanting to ring her neck. - Why can't the broody hen lay its own eggs? Why does it get to sit on 13 surrogate eggs? Isn't 13 a ridiculous number? (how big is a hen's bum anyway?) - Whose eggs are those anyway? Well I know they're not Hayley's they're from other hens, but why? - Would those eggs otherwise have been eaten? Are they all fertilised, and if so why aren't their rightful mother-hens feeling broody too and sitting
on them?
- Or is there some point I'm missing entirely?

I haven't been listening to TA recently so I have no idea what you're on about in some ways, but on the other hand I have kept hens and think I am just about qualified to try and answer a few of your questions.

Broody hens don't lay eggs, just sit about all day waiting to be thrown off the nest and told they've jolly well got to eat something. If you're in the business of producing eggs for money then having hens sitting about and eating but not laying is a bit off.

As they are in the egg-producing business rather than the chicken-producing business they probably haven't got a cockerel, so none of her own eggs or those of her pals around her will be fertile. As for sitting on 13, well it's just a case of "because she can" really. When a hen broods she loses all the feathers on her breast so she has a nice hot bare patch to warm the eggs with and she goes all floppy and spreads herself over them so a biggish hen can cover quite a lot of eggs and if you're going to bother hatching chickens you might as well hatch as many as you can. In the normal way of things, because she can cope with about 13, about 13 is what she'd lay before she decided that enough was enough and it was time she got broody and started sitting on them.

There's no reason why you - or anyone else, except Kimbo - can't eat fertilised eggs, provided some broody hen hasn't been sitting on them for several days! Moddun hens have been trained, over several generations, not to go broody so nearly all of the BBJs and BWJs (Big Brown Jobbies and Big White Jobbies) that are responsible for the major proportion of egg production just don't do it and spend a couple of years churning out eggs at the rate of about 7 a week for about a year or so. When they get tired of doing that Mr Farmer gets tired of keeping them alive any longer.

Hope that's been a little bit of help.
--
Jenny
"I always like to have the morning well-aired before I get up."
(Beau Brummel, 1778-1840)
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