Linda Hall: At last - three golden eggs

Linda Hall says at last she has some eggs. But they might as well be made of gold. Photo / NZME

OPINION:

There was a bit of a celebration in the chook paddock this week. Three eggs! Hallelujah.

That’s the most we have had in one day for almost the entire summer and half of autumn. They probably cost about $100 each.

We have 12 chickens that should be laying and another four born in December that will hopefully start any day now.

Trouble is, winter is coming, and that means chickens slow down or even stop laying.

So the freeloaders will have an excuse to stop laying again. They have been having a lovely time of it. Especially the younger ones who haven’t had their wings clipped. They perch on the fence, wander around the property pecking at this and that including my roses.

What a grand life they have. All play and no work.

For the past five months we have been lucky to get an egg a day. Some days no eggs, other days one, if we were really lucky we would get two.

It made me think about how all the new chook owners have been getting one.

Especially in this financial climate. Chicken pellets are not cheap. Neither are remedies for mites or any other health problems that can strike at any moment.

I have heard and read many complaints from people having the same problem. Lots of chickens and no eggs.

It’s almost as if all the chickens got a memo after the price of eggs went sky-high telling them to stop production.

Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today. Photo / Warren Buckland

Maybe the memo said something along these lines “Cluck cluck girls. Let’s teach these humans a lesson. They’ve kept us locked up in little cages, blinding us with light to trick us into laying eggs for them. Everybody stop laying”.

Crikey, I’m starting to sound like a mad chicken lady.

I tried lots of things that are meant to help chickens with egg production. Dog roll, paprika, showing them a bucket of KFC. I spoke nicely to them asking them to please lay some eggs — nothing.

They just carried on having dust baths, drinking water, eating everything in sight and walking around like they owned the place.

Maybe the dog roll worked. Maybe the memo had an end date. Maybe like the rest of us, they simply didn’t like all the rain.

We will never know. Lucky for them they are cute and entertaining otherwise they might have ended up in the crockpot.

And that leads me to another subject — the crockpot challenge. A few years ago Mr Neat and I decided that every Sunday we would have turns at making a crockpot dish.

It was a lot of fun and we both tried out lots of recipes. Of course, Mr Neat always thought his were the tastiest.

You can’t beat a decent crockpot or casserole dish in winter and what I really love about cooking these kinds of dishes is you usually get to cook once and eat twice.

Plus you can use the cheapest cuts of meat and not have to chew for hours to get your meal down.

If you have tried and true recipe I’d love to try it. Email me at linda.hall@nzme.co.nz

Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke’ Bay Today.