It is time to write another article about chickens and eggs. Since I knew I had written many times about my backyard hens in the last 11 years, I searched “chickens and eggs” in my word program and came up with 37 matches. I will also add the popular avocado in this article as well.
Unless you are living under a rock, you are aware of the avian bird flu that has wreaked havoc on egg/chicken supplies and prices. The American egg board has a very good web page with many interesting facts about egg production. It states that we ate 280.5 eggs per capita in 2021. Given the current price of eggs, one must wonder if consumption will go down this year. My bacon and eggs breakfast has been replaced with bacon and avocado.
The chicken’s scientific name is Gallus Domesticus. The chicken has a crop, which is a wide spot in the esophagus just above the stomach, that is used for storing food. The gizzard is the second part of the stomach where the food is ground with rocks and grits so it can be digested since chickens do not have teeth.
A cockerel is a male under one year old; it is called a cock if over one year of age. Similarly, a pullet is a female under a year, and a hen is over a year old. There is also a term for the capon, a male chicken castrated at 4-8 months. I can only speculate how that process is performed, and I will refrain from asking Mr. Google to search the internet for a video on this procedure.
Iowa is the top producer of laying hens. Stop the presses… go to the egg board’s web page if you want to learn more; I need to add some humor and my own silliness to this article.
I have long had an idea for grocery stores to adopt that would be ideal given our current price of eggs. What if we fenced in the roof of every grocery store and installed chicken houses on top of the roofs? Each day all the expired, rejected foods and old produce can be fed to the chickens on the roof. Landfill waste is reduced, old food is recycled, and eggs can be collected and sold the same day they are laid. Talk about fresh eggs!
Now about that avocado. The first 45 years of my 59 on this planet I was told eggs were bad for me and I had never bought an avocado. Researchers no longer vilify cholesterol from eggs, and avocados are almost as in vogue as a morning latte. It does bother me to buy an avocado and remove a very large pit, technically a seed. I should develop a breed of avocado with a pit that is the size of a dime, so I have less waste.
Wait, maybe I have this wrong? Instead of making the pit smaller, what if I made it edible? Can I crossbreed a chicken with an avocado? Imagine cutting an avocado open and removing an egg instead of that hard center stone. If you think avacodas are popular now, wait until my new cultivar with an egg inside hits the shelves.
Wow, I am going to be rich. I hope they name the bacon, egg, and avocado omelet after me.
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