…came into our yard, and caught those chickens right off of their guard…

I can’t get that stupid song out of my head and it’s driving me batty. I’m becoming strangely obsessed with roosters and chickens and eggs and all that farmyard stuff. Images of a cottage by the sea with some chickens roaming the yard next to the vegetable patch are a regular fixture in my daydreams of late. I’m sure it will wear off as soon as I run out of my home-grown eggs and have to revert back to the  old store-bought ones instead. But in the meantime…

At home, in the Curragh, where sheep wander freely, they all have different markings to show who they belong to. Just like these eggs. They’ll take 21 days to hatch from this incubator and not all of them will have chicks. It was eerily soothing to watch them revolve slowly over hot air and wonder which ones would have chicks and which would stay eggs. It’s all in the luck of the draw. Natures answer to a scratch-card.

Cue the ultrasound… or the chicken version. It didn’t come out in this photo but I could see the chick inside.  Now, considering I go all queasy when an expectant parent wants to share the ultrasound pics of their child-to-be, I was quite surprised that I was still standing after witnessing this. It helped, of course, that it was all in Hungarian and I was spared the full commentary or any of the more graphic details. It helped too, that I can’t tell a boy chick from a girl chick.  And yet I found it all strangely intriguing. Somewhere in there, there’s a question worth pondering but I’ll be damned if I can find it. I have a feeling it’s something to do with random chance vs fate and destiny. But either way, the chicken will end up on someone’s table – it’s just a question of when and in what form. mmmm….

HOT OFF THE PRESS (or the incubator!)

Them eggs are now walking – 50 of them turned into chicks. And they are sooooooooooooo cute.