May 15, 2012 The Chicken or the Egg?

That age-old question started to haunt me while I spent the last year tending my new flock. And, the anthropologist in me also wondered about the evolution of the chicken: most people acknowledge that the chicken does look ‘prehistoric’ and dinosaur-like.

So, it made me wonder was there an Adam-and-Eve Chicken Ancestor? A chicken-god creator watching in the Garden of Eden for Chicken-Eve to take a peck of the proverbial apple?

Even Aristotle in 300 + BC pondered the first egg-first chicken idea.

Okay, so I DID major in anthropology in college and it has been an interest all my life - thank you National Geographic and Louis Leakey. Therefore, if I applied my anthropological mind to this I’d say we have an evolutionary conundrum. 

It starts like this:

Archaeopteryx, a possible fossil ancestor

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, somewhere on planet earth lived a small animal that would appear to us modern people as kind of avian-like. 

Maybe less feathers, more scales, maybe sort of wings or arms not very developed, a long neck and a beakish mouth. It probably wasn’t able to fly, so it hopped around on 2 legs with large toes and rapier nails. And, there had to be many of them, maybe traveling together as the forerunner of a herd or...okay, ‘flock’.  They had to procreate to keep the species alive.

Did they give birth to live young like a mammal or did they lay eggs. Was this the first dividing line in evolution that began the chicken? 


If Chicken-Grandparents were more reptilian-dinosaur related, and scientists have found dinosaur eggs, then I would argue that the Ancient Ancestor laid some type of egg.

Since evolution doesn’t happen overnight, many more thousands of years pass. Small changes take place, either from genetic mutation to the DNA or environmental pressures that alter physical characteristics. It’s a long wave of the Grand Magician’s wand that turns small, unusable appendages into wings, lightens the bones to allow flight, and covers them in feathers. That wand changes the feet a little, shortens a neck, and slowly adds proteins into the mix that formulates an egg. These changes get passed to the next generation, then the next, and on and on....

Modern Red Junglefowl

One day, Ancestor Almost-Chicken Adam meets Ancestor Eve...magic happens. Eve throws some leaves and moss together, sits down and lays ... an egg. Maybe the two of them mate several times and Eve is sitting on several eggs.  It takes many days for the eggs to develop and hatch. Peep peep peep...we now have something resembling the more modern-day version of a chicken! Okay, definitely not a Rhode Island Red or Buff Orpington, but scientists believe an ancestor of the red junglefowl that cross bred with an ancestral gray junglefowl. 

In our new brood of baby ancestor chickens, there are males and females which grow up, breed and continue the lineage, refining traits and characteristics over time until one day, our human ancestor follows one through the jungle to a nest of eggs. Being hungry and opportunistic, ‘she’ grabs a few eggs to carry back to the cave. Setting them by the fire, one cracks open and cooks on a hot rock. Scooping up the white and yellow mass, she pops it into her mouth...  “Oh boy,” she thinks, “If I only had bacon and toast, this would make a great breakfast!” And the rest is history....

Well, okay, it took the human going back to capture and tame the mama fowl; did she lay eggs without a male back then? That could be another esoteric question...

“Oh, I need that handsome looking male fowl, too. He’s a loudmouth, but at last I’m getting eggs and new chicks, too!”

It’s the domestication of animals by us thinking humans that give us today 60 different breeds of chickens...as well as dogs, cats, horses, parakeets, cows, sheep...etc.etc.etc.

And so, did I answer the question, “which came first...?”

Theologically, in Genesis, it would have been God creating a chicken:

“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”

In Buddhism, Hinduism, Native Americans and other religions there is the belief of a cyclical wheel of time, so there would be no ‘first’ because time is eternally repetitive.

[But, didn’t it have to ‘start’ somewhere?]

In the end, and from my view on evolution, I’d say the egg came first from a pre-chicken ancestor that carried forward mutations through generations of eggs and new beings. 

I can fly if you dangle worms!

No bells and whistles...
No Nobel Prize in Science...


Just what I believe...


So, toss that question out at your next dinner party and see what you can scramble up!

May 11, 2012 Surgery

Okay...not a chicken...me!  I had foot surgery on Monday, the 7th for hammertoe and bunion. While I didn't feel deformed like a Quasimodo, the hammertoe limited the shoes I could wear and the bunion would only get worse, so I bit the bullet and had it done.

Been sitting around all week with my foot propped up, thankfully using my sister Barbara's iPad for entertainment. Hubby Steve has added chicken duties, cat duties, and feeding me to his To Do List; and he's doing a damn fine job all the way around. Now if I could only get him to wear the French maid's outfit!

I haven't been down to see the girls since Sunday: not willing to risk chicken poo bacteria invading my incisions. But, maybe Steve will drive me down in the "mule" [think golf cart] on Sunday for a quick wave.

It's is really hard to feel so impotent, definitely not feeling very creative to work on a jewelry or art project. However, Stella the cat is loving an all day lap to nap in!!

April 30, 2012 Chicken Feed

Yesterday, Sunday, there were 2 newborn mice in the boiler room in the garage. I don't know how they got there, but I suspect a nest in the wall because I periodically catch adult mice there. So for fun I took the 2 little cute varmints down to the chickens.  Quicker that I could imagine, Curious and Dolly each grabbed a mouse-ette and ran off. Interestingly, Curious smacked the little mouse agains a wood board several times...to kill it?? And then ate the little guy whole! Dolly ran away to the backside of the coop, so I didn't see how she disposed of it, but she did return without it so I am assuming she ate it too.

Later, I went to the garage to feed Stella the cat and there was a baby rattlesnake near where I found the 2 mice!

I called to Steve who came out and killed it and he said there were several 'lumps' in it's stomach so we think the snake had also found the new mice and had dinner.

The dilemma: we don't want mice in the house and we like that we have snakes to eat the mice, BUT we sure don't want rattlesnakes. Sorry snakes....

Chickens also love other meats: mealworms that I raise, earthworms from the compost pile, and any cooked meat. I don't give them a lot of meat as a general rule, but I do give them plenty of worms.  They will practically knock me over for worms, so I have to portion them out assuring that each lady gets her fair share otherwise Curious would eat them all!

Meal worms are a great experiment to watch the metamorphosis cycle: worm larvae-pupa-beetle-egg-worm. I would say if you have kids looking for a science experiment, try the meal worm thing: it takes about 4 months to get a supply of worms.  I'd be happy to share with anyone how I did it.  If you have worm eating pets, its a cheap way to get their food!

My girls also love broccoli and cauliflower stems and leaves, red cabbage, grapes, rice [they love rice!!], oatmeal cooked and raw, scrambled eggs, sprouted grains, corn is a big favorite as is watermelon. They also love plain yogurt. Once a week in order to add calcium to their diet for thicker shells, I pulverize dry egg shells and mix them with the yogurt...it works great and I don't have to buy oyster shell meal.

I was picking through the old produce at one of the markets one day with another lady who said her chickens love lettuce.  HA! I can't get mine to eat any lettuce or swiss chard either. I guess we all have our picky eaters, human or other...And yes, I have to admit that I frequent the dumpsters of 2 stores that will let you take any of the old vegetables in the bins. It's great for free stuff for the chickens and I have to say, the "veg" is not in too bad of condition either!!

April 16, 2012 Another Sick Chicken

Today's post continues the Illness Saga.

After Fearless recovered and was re-introduced into the flock in December, I started to notice that Blondie was sitting still, fleathers fluffed up and head drawn in. Her comb had shrunk and she didn’t really want to move much.  I decided to watch her a few days to see if I should take her out of the pen or not.

She did eat and even lay a few eggs in December, but continued to be very quiet and fluffed up.  I began another round of chicken illness research, but couldn’t find anything definitive for her condition.

This is an interesting observation:  Fearless would sit or be near Blondie during the time she was sick AND Blondie had been the first mean one to Fearless at her introduction back after being up at the house-hospital. Go figure: it was like - “I know what you’re going through and I’m not mad you pecked me. So I’ll be here to  watch over you.”

In the Dec2010/Jan2011 issue of Backyard Poultry, I read about a woman who treated her chickens with herbal remedies. As I had already treated Fearless rather holistically, it didn’t seem to far fetched to start Blondie on something, too.  I read about Burdock root helping to rid the body of toxins and comfrey root as being a good tonic for general health, so I brewed up a concoction of dried roots plus crushed garlic. I put it in their water bowl for everyone - couldn’t hurt to be proactive.  I also sprinkled “Astragalus” herb on a batch of meal worms and fed them to everyone several times during the month. Astragalus is used in Chinese medicine as an immune system enhancer.

And, by the way, I am not advocating anyone use herbs without consulting a medical professional first!

Gradually through January she got better, her comb began to perk up. She’s in full fledged laying again: bright and alert and the largest of my chickens.  Of course, being that Buff Orpingtons are dual breeds [eggs and meat] it would stand to reason that she’d be a big girl.

I’m keeping fingers crossed that she has made a full recovery because she is lookin' very healthy now!

And, the benefit of her illness is she is more tolerant of me.

It's hard to tell where she falls in the pecking order of flock dynamics, but she is certainly not picked on by the others in the same way as Fearless is: Blondie seems to be alert to strange noises and keeps a watchful eye when she is out in the playground, and yet she is more of a loner preferring to forage by herself a lot of the time. 

Here she is sitting with the Wyandotte sisters.