Is there nothing people won’t panic-buy during this crisis? Having stripped shelves of food and toilet roll, shoppers are now turning to chickens. Coop company Omlet reports a 66 per cent rise in sales, and breeders have sold out of pullets. The British Hen Welfare Trust, which rehomes caged hens, has stopped taking new customers out of fear that the people bidding for their birds were either planning to eat them or didn’t really know how to look after them.
Keeping chickens does seem like a really good way of avoiding going to the shops. A good layer will give you an egg almost every day at this time of year and having a flock in your back garden will mean you’ll never run out. Your breakfasts will use eggs still warm from the hen’s bottom, so fresh they poach beautifully. The yolks of happy, healthy hens are a rich gold that’s nearly impossible to find in the supermarkets.
I had my own four hens for a few years and I miss them terribly, to the extent that they often flutter through my dreams. I would watch for hours as they scratched around looking for worms and worked their way around their complex social order.
Hear this article read out by Isabel Hardman on the Spectator’s Audio Reads (15:50):
Hens aren’t the brightest of birds, but they learn to associate certain objects with good news. Whenever I appeared carrying a green plastic bowl, they knew I was bringing porridge, and would charge towards me. Once they had the bowl, there was little restraint: the birds would often dunk their entire heads in the food, emerging with gloopy oatmeal on their bright red combs.
The loveliest spectacle was when the hens took a dustbath.
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