Jake has appointed himself chief egg collector:
A task he takes very seriously:
Every day:
You are currently browsing the archive for the Chicks category.
I’ve been called cynical more than once. In fact, I’d go so far as to call myself cynical, and being cynical is a healthy thing if you ask me. Another thing that’s healthy, all of a sudden, and once again, according to the media, is eggs. They used to be good for you, you should have one every day. Then they were bad, you should only have your allotted quota of standard egg units per week. Now you can, and indeed should, have as many as you like again.
Of course, all reasonable people are used to this backwards and forwards nonsense with every kind of food and drink under the sun and routinely laugh it off with a good dose of “all things in moderation” common sense. Only the media seem to suck it up like a sponge, with this latest egg story apparently being headline news everywhere.
I was blissfully unaware until it was given a prime slot on the BBC evening news, the highlight being the way they managed to wheel out the amusingly named Lucy Egerton from the British Egg Information Service without cracking so much as a childish grin.
The cynical side of me though, as always, responded with a weary “who paid for this ‘research’ then?” No surprises in the answer, or the fact that you have to dig a bit deeper than the news stories (a.k.a. press releases) to find out. It was of course the egg industry, which also seems to double up as the acronym industry, what with the BEIS (British Egg Information Service), the BEIC (British Egg Industry Council), BEPA (British Egg Products Association), the BEA (British Egg Association) and many more.
None of this though, should detract from the fact that you should eat eggs. Because they’re nice. Poached, boiled, scrambled, fried or omeletted – you can’t go wrong with an egg. Ok, you could – there is eggnog, for example. But in general, my advice, which I say is just as valuable as some ‘scientific’ research paid for by a vested interest, is to eat plenty of eggs. I wouldn’t advise eating eggs produced by an industry though – instead, eat eggs produced by a free* and happy chicken, preferably your own.
*As with free software, the “free” is as in freedom, although of course if they’re your own chickens you don’t pay for the eggs)
A couple of weeks ago I was out for the evening and when I got up the next morning and went out with the dog, Nibby was watching from the window while I let the chickens out, which seemed a bit odd. The reason became apparent when six new chicks came chirping out of the chicken house.
We must have done something bad because someone or something has decided to unleash a plague of vermin on our garden.
Despite the sudden explosion of techy posts on here, life in the real world goes on. The highlight in recent weeks was my sister’s wedding, which was a brilliant day. Mia, in particular, enjoyed it immensely, singing away to herself throughout the service. Afterwards she played the church organ and followed that up with running round and round the outside of the church at high speed with me in tow. You might think that would tire her out, but she later spend a solid four hours on the dancefloor at the reception.
Two quick snippets of unrelated randomness:
1. The things that were recently tasty eggs are now cute chicks, as of last Sunday, hence the picture. Only two though – one yellow, one black. The majority weren’t even fertile this time around, so perhaps Fred is losing his touch.
2. I was planning to go to bed two hours ago, then I started playing with Mnesia, which is Erlang’s distributed database. Very interesting indeed, but I need to stop doing it immediately and go to sleep instead.
Having been abandoned for the evening, I was feeling rather peckish, and all we had in were eggs, so I decided to poach a couple. The eggs in question are earmarked to go into the incubator tomorrow, and should emerge as cute baby chicks in exactly three weeks.
For some reason, it felt rather odd eating these eggs, compared to ‘normal’ eggs. This was doubly strange, considering that I ultimately intend to eat them anyway when they become big fat chickens.
As an aside, something else that’s odd is that pretty much everybody who discovers that we intend to eat our happy and healthy chickens expresses their horror with a “how could you?” and then zips off down to Tesco to purchase a tortured beast that is frankly lucky to be dead, having spent its ‘life’ in a dark cage.
Anyway, back to my ‘point’ (there isn’t really one of course) – a vegan wouldn’t eat the egg no matter what, that seems pretty straightforward, but I believe that a vegetarian would eat an egg. However, at some point during the next three weeks, it will magically turn into something they wouldn’t eat. When does that happen? At the point where we said “these eggs are going in the incubator”? Tomorrow? Next week? When it hatches?
I can’t figure it out, but they were very tasty eggs anyway.
The ducklings are now on the loose in the orchard during the day, but still going back indoors to the garage at night. Luckily this is an easy process, no sheepdog required, since all eight move as a single tightly-packed unit and can be easily ‘steered’ around.
The young chickens are not quite sure what to make of them though, and much fun was had today herding the ducks towards them and watching them scatter left, right and centre. I tried to capture the excitement on video, but I guess you had to be there:
Get the Flash Player to see this content.
Talking of the young chickens, they’re doing very well. Unlike the ducklings, they’re extremely friendly and like nothing more than to be picked up and stroked. They have no idea that they’re going to end up on my dinner plate, and that’s just the way it should be. In the meantime, they’re a happy bunch, at least when the ducklings are not bearing down on them.
I seem to have gone into ranting mode this week, so I’m going back to cute pictures until I can think of something nice to say about someone or something.
So here’s a picture of my big fat cock.
I haven’t done any work today. Actually, that’s a lie, I’ve poked around in Bugzilla a bit, reviewed some check-ins and discussed a few issues by IM. That probably adds up to a total of 15 minutes though, which is as near to no work as I’m ever likely to get. So, ignoring those 15 minutes, something interesting must have happened, let’s see…