In the Circle of Life, The Egg Came First

Micah has the answer to the age old question of the chicken and the egg! In his experience this past year, the egg certainly came first, that is, given the condition that “dad” already has a hen.

You see, last year, about this time, Micah, Grace and I went to the market to buy two laying hens, Dalmatian and Pinky. A few weeks later, Micah's hen (that is the one that he named) had laid her clutch of eggs and was now ready to begin her three-week sitting marathon of incubation. However, early one evening, Micah and I pulled a fast one on them. You see, not having a rooster to fertilize these eggs, we knew that no chicks would hatch from these eggs. So, instead, Micah gathered his chore money and we headed off to the market to buy other people's eggs. And that we did, Micah bought 12 eggs with his money which we then exchanged with the eggs under “his” hen – Dalmatian. And so the excruciating 3-week wait began.

“Hey Dalmation, are those eggs cooked yet?”

In mid-January, a surprisingly high percentage of the eggs hatched, giving Micah 10 tiny chicks and a potential huge return on investment (eggs cost about 16¢ each, but a full-grown chicken sells for at least $4.50). All we had to do was raise these chicks through to adulthood.

Micah, carrying Dalmatian, leading the chicks inside the coup for safety.

Sadly, a brown chick, named Caramel, died on day two. He was my favorite at the time, which was especially sad for Grace. And so to appease her grieving on my behalf, I chose another favorite, a nice yellow chick called Treasure. Well, later that week, I came home from the office one day to learn that Treasure was no more. Although we never got the full details, we suspect she was dropped (or thrown) and internal injuries cut her life short. And so once again, I chose new favorite – this time a black one with a  white chest. He was known as Penguin.

After a few weeks, our family went to the capital city for some meetings, entrusting the care of our chicks to our housemates. Upon our return, we were informed that all the chicks were doing well, except one that had disappeared, likely grabbed by a cat. Any guesses of which chick that might be? Yep, a quick head count and sure enough, it was Penguin! After that, I stopped choosing a favorite chick and wouldn't ya know it, all the remaining seven chicks successfully grew to reach adulthood. (That, and Micah and I built a stronger coup.)

Building a New Coup

The first return on investment came in late August when two of the Bible translators wanted to treat their families to a chicken dinner. Each paid Micah 100 birr ($4.50), and happily invited Mr. Pink and Cat Breath (whom I had once rescued from a cat's mouth) home for dinner.

200 birr ($9) might as well be a million for Micah!

 In early September, Micah's female chicks, now grown into young hens began to lay their first eggs. In October, we were raking in 3 or 4 eggs a day, many of which made it onto our breakfast plates. In November, we decided to let our young hens, with the help of their one remaining brother J, complete the cycle of life on their own. And in the span of about week, we successful got three hens sitting on eggs: Shiney, Squawker, Redneck, followed by one more, Almond, about a week later. And so the waiting game began again.

 

Shiney's first two chicks, discovered early Sunday morning.

On November 27, the life cycle was completed, when Shiney hatched 6 new chicks, followed later that week by Redneck's 7, and Almond's 3 (we shafted Squawker by yanking her hatching eggs and planting them under other chickens – why? Because Squawker earned her name with a loud beak, and one of our coup rules is that loud beaks get invited to “dinner”J).

A “once in a lifetime” invite to dinner!

So Micah's initial investment of $1.92 in 12 eggs, has him now sitting on $15 for the sale of three roosters, 4 adult hens valued at $14, and 16 baby chicks  with the potential of raking in over $70 in the May/June marketplace – that's a grand total of nearly $100 or an over 5000% return on investment. I suppose that doesn't figure in the dad who bought the original hen, a year's worth of food, building supplies for the coup and whole lot of elbow grease.