As we all know, there’s an obesity epidemic, and it’s not just affecting people. Our pets are suffering, too. It’s not simply a matter of aesthetics – it’s a matter of health. We’ve all seen the waddling beagle who can no longer run and play, and the fat cat on youTube that people laugh at, but is bound for a short life. We indulge and we feed to excess, thinking that it’s a loving act. It’s not.

A few months ago I heard from a woman (let’s call her “Bess”) who found a lone, white hen wandering the neighborhood. Bess and her husband love animals, and have cats and dogs, and so brought the hen home and it became a doted on pet. A couple of months ago she emailed me because the hen had some sort of respiratory ailment. She put it on a course of antibiotics (a default when a hen is wheezing) but after 10 days the chicken was no better. Some time later, Bess took her hen to a vet who prescribed another round of antibiotics. Again, no improvement. So, back to the vet they went for a stool sample and check-up.

Bess emailed me to say that her chicken was weighed at the vet’s office, that she came in at 14.6 pounds, and asked if the hen was overweight.

The average hen weighs 6 pounds, 8 would be quite large. 14.6? !!! No wonder the poor hen can’t breathe. Her lungs are surrounded by fat.

Why didn’t the vet notice? Several trips to the vet’s office, and the hen’s weight was never mentioned. It shows you how little vets know about chickens.

Bess was loving and feeding her hen to death. She’d heard that corn will keep a hen warm in the winter, and gave it free choice. Since the hen had no competition from a flock for food, she was eating constantly. This is what the hen looks like.

I think she’s a Leghorn, which is a slender, active breed. I could be wrong. It’s hard to tell. I’m thinking perhaps I’ll call it a new breed, the “Sumo Wrestler Rock.”

My old poultry books warn against letting hens get overweight because, not only was in not economical to overfeed, but excess fat interfered with laying. I don’t think that they ever imagined a hen getting this big.

I’ve recommended that Bess feed chopped greens in the morning, and a handful of laying hen pellets in the afternoon. No scratch corn! I think there will be a marked improvement soon.

Having seen this, perhaps my readers will take a clear-eyed view of their own flocks. We all love to see plump hens with fluffy bottoms. But, for the hens’ health, they shouldn’t be waddling like ducks or have difficulty breathing. It’s true for people and for chickens -we should all eat more vegetables and go easy on the candy.

What with all of the egg steaming and boiling, there’s been a bowl of hard-cooked eggs in my refrigerator to use. It’s far from home-grown vegetable season (more snow predicted for this weekend. Egads, I’ll never see my garden) but the broccoli from the supermarket has been very good this winter. After all of the soups and stews over the last few months, I’ve been craving light and bright and steamed. What I came up with was and egg and crouton mixture to top steamed vegetables. I can’t wait to use this on local asparagus, but for now, I’ll settle for broccoli.

Here’s a few cooking hints first:

Lemon zest lends a bright tang without sourness to recipes. The trick is to peel the lemon without getting any of the bitter white pith. You can use a zester or microplane grater, but I prefer to use a sharp peeler. See how clean the rind is? Then, use a chefs knife to mince the peel. When cooking with peel, always use organic citrus. The regular fruits are covered with wax that contain fungicides and other nasty ingredients that don’t wash off. If you have more peel than the recipe calls for, freeze it, and it will be perfect for muffins and other baking needs.

Mincing eggs with a knife sometimes yields whites with mashed yolks. Instead, use an egg slicer. Slice one direction, then turn the egg 90º and slice again. Voila! Minced eggs. If you want them finer, do again. (And, yes, for those of  you who notice, this is a vintage egg slicer. I have a collection. Pink! Orange! Love those mid-century colors.)

Okay, here’s the recipe:

Chopped Eggs and Croutons for Vegetables

2 slices of bread, cut into cubes no larger than 1/4-inch

3 – 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon paprika

3 hard cooked eggs, minced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon minced organic lemon zest

lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil

3 cups steamed vegetables of choice

1. Put the bread cubes on a sheet pan and place in a 350ºF oven for about five minutes, until dried out but not browned.
2. Warm the oil in a skillet. Toss in the bread cubes and cook, tossing so all sides are coated with oil, until toasty and crunchy. Add the fourth tablespoon of oil if necessary – these should be crispy and brown. While toasting, dust on the paprika.
3. When the croutons are done (this is only a matter of minutes) toss in the salt, pepper, parsley and lemon zest (if it’s all been measured out and waiting in one bowl, this goes smoothly and you won’t overcook the croutons.) Immediately put the croutons in to a bowl with the minced eggs. Stir in the salt and pepper.
4. Whisk equal parts of lemon juice and olive oil. Toss in a bowl with the steamed vegetables. One lemon will yield about 1/4 cup of juice which is usually enough to coat the vegetables. You can steam the veggies ahead of time and this can be served cold like a salad, or, cook the broccoli right before service and serve warm as a side-dish.
5. Place the vegetables on a serving plate and top with the egg and crouton mixture.

This photo is of my first test. The second time I made the croutons half that size and liked it better. But, it’s delicious either way!

Lulu laid an egg!

This is a sure sign of spring.

Lulu is a 4-year old Speckled Sussex. She doesn’t lay during the winter, and she goes broody in the summer. In between, she lays lovely brown eggs, just not very many. This year I’m actually hoping that she’ll go broody, so I can put some of the chicks coming at the end of April under her. Being Lulu, though, she’ll undoubtably do something unexpected.

Chickens require dust baths for health and happiness. But, right now it’s 20º colder than usual for early March, there’s 18 inches of snow under the bushes where they usually take late winter dust baths, and there’s several feet of snow in their run. There’s no dirt, let alone loose, warm earth to get under their feathers and next to their skin to kill parasites.

So, I went to K-Mart and purchased two kitty litter pans, and filled them with sand, fireplace ashes (all hardwoods) and food-grade diatomaceous earth. There’s a spot of sun in the HenCam run, so I set one down there. You know who’s on the top of the pecking order by who gets the first bath.

Buffy settled right in.

Next it was Lulu’s turn. Notice the dirt that she’s kicked up onto her feathers. She’s about to fluff and ruffle and have it settle onto her skin. Chicken bliss.

The Big Barn has plenty of room inside for the dust bath, and there’s sun streaming in the window. Just the right place for their new spa. The girls are wary of the bin, but I’ve tossed in some corn. They’ll soon be sun-bathing, too.

I wish that spa treatments for myself were so inexpensive and easy!

The perfect hard-cooked egg is cooked by steam. Thank-you to Terry P’s comment yesterday, saying that steaming eggs for twenty minutes make eggs easy to peel, I decided to do some investigating on my own. I took freshly laid (that day!) eggs, put them in a steamer basket, and to my great surprise, the peels came off easily. What was going on?

You food science geeks out there might have a more detailed explanation, (and I’d be happy to hear it) but basically, steam is a gas and so is able to penetrate the egg shell’s pores. The steam toughens the membrane between the egg shell and the whites, allowing the egg to be peeled without any trouble at all. Water’s molecules are too big to enter the egg, so although the insides become set from the heat, the membrane isn’t affected.

Why didn’t I know this? It’s one of those hit yourself on the head and go “duh!” moments. I’ve seen these egg cookers at flea markets and have thought how neat looking they were, but never thought about how they worked.

They’re egg steamers! Obviously, a lot of people knew that you could take fresh eggs and hard cook them to perfection in steam. But, if you didn’t grow up with one of these appliances, that knowledge was lost.

I know what I’ll be looking for at a flea market this spring.

By the way, vinegar has a totally different effect on eggs. It reacts chemically with the shell to break it down into calcium carbonate and gas. If you leave an egg in a bowl of vinegar, the shell will dissolve. Leave it in long enough and the egg turns into a rubberized ball! (This was one of my son’s favorite science experiments.)