Tomorrow's Girls

     I was away last weekend. While I was away I left the roosters out (on purpose, because they can perfectly well fend for themselves) and left the hens (with one rooster) in the the chicken house with access to the enclosed chicken yard.
     It rained at least a little bit and sometimes a lot every day that I was gone, so the roosters got wet (sorry, boys), but that's the way it is sometimes.

     When I'm here, I gather eggs every day. I have six hens and get six eggs almost every day. Every once in a while one of the girls takes a day off, but only rarely. Sometimes one of the red hens, and I suspect it's the same one, lays an egg on the floor of the hen house or on the ground out in the pen, just right out in the middle of everything. Maybe she gets distracted, doesn't know it's coming, doesn't want to be bothered, I don't know. I don't bring those in the house. Don't be offended - the chickens have no idea what they're eating.
     A way back when we built that chicken house, we got hold of some nice galvanized nest boxes, a set of ten. I fill them with either wood shavings like I put on the floor of the chicken house, or shredded paper from my office (Reduce, Re-use, Recycle!). Most days when I go to gather eggs there will be one here, one or two there, and so on. I collect them and bring them in.  
     While I was gone, the girls laid most of their eggs in two specific next boxes, so these two boxes were full of eggs, as if they someone was thinking about going broody, as if chickens think. Oh, sure, they're smarter than they look, they're trainable - I wish I could train one to go broody and set a clutch of eggs, but that is an instinctual behavior. These girls are about a year and a half  old, now. I'm pretty sure if anyone was going to set a clutch of eggs, she would have started by now. They always did before. 
     I haven't dealt with those two nest boxes of eggs yet, but I'm going to have to soon, or they'll start to go bad. Do you know how nasty a rotten egg is?

     Meanwhile, I did gather two perfectly good eggs that I will have for breakfast (or brunch, now, as it's already after 10:30AM). On the way in the house Steely Dan's Tomorrow's Girls tuned up in my head. So I'm gonna go turn on some music, cook some eggs, and thank my hens for breakfast (or brunch), and hope that "Tomorrow's Girls" refers to the chicks that the broody hen of my dreams will hatch soon, even though I know that is not what that song is about!