Long-lived hens and the happy lays of the land

Fiona O’Connell

EASTER eggs have disappeared from the shops, as if that festival was ages ago instead of just last week.

Back when I was a child, I would have demolished the few eggs I got faster than any supermarket could clear its shelves in preparation for the next excuse to flog sugary junk at inflated prices. (Unlike my sister, who deserved a gold star for delayed gratification — one time going so far as to preserve an Easter egg in its box, intact as a museum piece, almost until it was time to get cracking on them again.)

At least the real deal egg is still freely available. Though freedom is a foreign concept for the poor hens behind those trays of cheap eggs that you see for sale.

Even the ‘Free Range’ label can be a fallacy, with the hens often confined indoors in crowded conditions or in a space smaller than this page of the Sunday Independent.

Luckily, there are good eggs laid by happy hens for sale in the local health store, while the eggs for sale in the country market are genuinely free range.

But living in the country means I can do more than cross the road and go a step further — by buying my eggs from The Eggshack, a self-service coop a few miles outside this town.

Even getting there is an ‘eggsellent’ adventure, driving along winding country roads to reach a charming hamlet perched on a hill; the cheerful blue coop located at the top of the driveway to where the hens call home. You lift the wooden peg on the door, slot your coins in the tin, and help yourself to beautiful brown eggs. What could be nicer? Well, maybe knowing that the hens don’t become history when they are too long in their non-existent teeth to lay eggs any more. For even free-range hens literally get the axe when that happens.

So I scribbled a nosy note one day, asking the fate of the feathery females and including my phone number, and left it in the tin. I didn’t have long to wait before I received a text message, informing me that their hens get to enjoy their retirement. Sometimes, they added, an old hen even surprises them (and maybe themselves) with an egg.

Happy hens mean happy days for me. I’m like that guy Bubba from Forrest Gump who was always singing the praises of shrimp — except in my case I’m eulogising over eggs.

Some days I would be driving up The Eggshack, fantasising about making fruit cake or scrambled eggs for breakfast, only to find the shack empty — just a sign apologising because Mr Fox had poached the hens instead of their eggs.

Thankfully, it wasn’t long before another sign announced the arrival of a whole heap of new hens. Since then, there have always been eggs available, even when there are none in the country market or the health store.

I guess knowing they are not being held hostage makes these ladies more likely to become such lays of the land. For don’t we all perform best when not threatened with the prospect of being laid off ?