With 30 eggs a week, his cholesterol is probably off the charts, but Michael Kelly hopes the joy he gets from keeping hens offsets any damage.
Hens are hassle. They poo everywhere. On the lawn. On the deck. On the driveway. In their house. On their house. You name it, they poo on it. A putrid, gut-wrenching stench assails your nostrils as you clean out the dung-covered sawdust and straw from their house. They peck your hands when you try to feed them. You have to lock them in at night and let them out in the morning. And all you get in return is an egg a day. Over a year it's probably cheaper just to buy the eggs in a supermarket. So why bother?
A battery-reared hen will typically spend most of its life sharing a 50cm-by-50cm (20in-by-20in) wire cage with four other birds. The cages are stacked six high in a room with no natural light. Their homogenised food is treated with antibiotics and other medication, as well as artificial colouring, to brighten the yolks of their eggs. The hens are, understandably, frustrated in this environment, so they peck at each other, pulling out feathers and causing injuries. Some battery hens end up almost entirely bald, and many die. Eggs from these hens will typically be labelled "Farm Fresh", "Country Fresh" or "Naturally Fresh".
If the plight of these hens doesn't bother you, then the quality of the eggs they produce should. Although free-range producers must adhere to relatively strict EU regulations about space and access to open air, only the "organic" tag enforces strict dietary controls.
Fancying myself as a bit of a Hugh Fairly- Longname, we moved to the country last year, and the bit of land we now have gives us a chance to do things we couldn't in suburban Dublin (which is to say Gorey, Co Wexford). So as Mrs Kelly got stuck into digging a sizeable vegetable patch, I decided to do my bit and get some hens.
If you have an interest in being a smallholder or are just into decent, natural food, getting some hens is a great toe in the water. My mother-in-law got me four Rhode Island Reds last year. You don't need a lot of space or to be too fancy with their housing.
I found a design for a coop on the web and decided I'd try to build it. It made me feel manly but took weeks of hard labour and cost a fortune. I used so much wood that the owner of my local DIY shop was able to hire some extra staff and pay off his mortgage early.
The house is triangular, about 1.2m (four feet) long and 90cm (three feet) tall. One side is hinged, to allow you to get at the eggs. Inside are a nesting box, for the hens to lay their eggs in, and a roost, which is a small horizontal bar 30cm off the ground where they sit at night, discussing how rubbish the house is. I spent two hours building a little ladder for them to climb up to the roost. My friends laughed a lot at the house. But they reserved special mirth for the ladder.
The house has a three-metre (10ft) run. Usually we let the hens roam free in the garden, but if we are going away for a day we leave them in the run, in case a fox gets them (no sightings yet, but I imagine it's only a matter of time). The house is portable enough to be moved to fresh grass every few days.
When we got the hens I was surprised by how attractive they were. I had assumed they'd be scrawny, ugly things, but they are quite proud and aristocratic-looking. They have a shock of rusty feathers, which they keep very clean. Rain does them no favours. When it rains their feathers stick to them and they look, well, scrawny and ugly.
Initially we kept them in the coop most of the day, letting them out for an hour or two. But now we pretty much leave them out all the time. Hens hate the dark and always return to their house when the light fades, so there is no rounding up to do in the evenings.
We feed them a mixture of barley and organic layer's pellets. There is no doubt that the eggs taste better when the hens are out scratching in the grass for worms, slugs and spiders. I've discovered that they adore berries, any rotten fruit from the kitchen (especially kiwi) and even some mashed potato (especially if it's warm).
It took them about two weeks to settle in and start laying. I would go out each morning to check on their progress and return disappointed. Mrs Kelly sat a yellow table-tennis ball on the straw one morning, which fooled me for a couple of seconds. How she laughed. When the first egg finally came, it was a moment to savour. The first three or four were a little small, but after a week or so all four hens were laying one a day, and they are as big as eggs you would buy.
We get nearly 30 eggs a week, so I expect to keel over with clogged arteries any day now. We give a lot of them away (I have a good barter arrangement going with a friend, who gives me fresh fish and some sweet apples). We eat lots of them, of course. Boiled, poached, scrambled, omeletted. They look and taste spectacular. The yolks are a vivid yellow - so much so that my sister thought the egg had gone off the first time she cooked one. My cholesterol is probably off the charts, but I hope the joy I get from keeping hens is enough to offset the damage.
Hens love exercise. The first thing they do when we let them out of their coop is to run off - all four of them in a line - flapping their wings furiously. It's the equivalent of stretching when you get out of bed. That still makes me smile. A hen has a wingspan of about 80cm (32in), which is a ruler's length longer than the cage in which a battery hen will spend most of her life. Hens look really stupid when they run. It's as if running draws attention to the fact that they don't have arms. Try to imagine what you would look like if you ran with your arms by your sides.
In the summer, if they get too hot, they will dig a little hole in a flower bed and give themselves a dust bath. This looks strange if you don't know what they are up to, but it helps them to cool down by dissipating the heat. When a battery hen gets hot she often tries to do the same thing, lying on the cage floor and scratching herself against the wire. You can imagine how that works out.
Our hens also keep our springer, Ozzie, amused. We were a little worried about how he would take to them. The day we got them he was practically wetting himself with delight. I couldn't decide whether it was because he was thinking, "Hey, new friends!" or, "Hey, dinner!" They strutted around him, and all was fine until one flapped her wings and he grabbed her in his mouth. I thought we had our first casualty, but he dropped her again as quickly. Since then he has been fine with them. There was a curious incident one day when I went out to discover all four hens sitting on top of the hen house, a load of feathers on the grass and Ozzie looking guilty. I will never know what happened but suspect he was involved.
A battery hen gets no exercise and so suffers from skeletal and muscular weaknesses. By her second year her egg-laying capacity will drop to about a quarter of what it was, and she will be slaughtered, probably ending up in a stock cube. I haven't been able to get a definitive answer about how long our hens will live - depending on who you ask, it can be anything between four and 10 years - but most agree they will keep laying for about four years.
It's hard to love hens individually, but collectively they have given us lots of happiness. My niece named one of them Dora, but we are not sure which she is, to tell you the truth. They are likeable without being really loveable. They run inquisitively after me as I walk around the garden. They follow me around in the summer when I am cutting the grass and make me feel like St Francis. And they produce those eggs.
And, with new-found confidence, I am planning my next move. Pigs. Well, when's the last time you had a decent rasher?