Bothered about chickens.

Tammy, the farrier, came by causing a frenzy of excitement among the chickens. Horse hoof trimmings are something else we didn't expect them to eat. Fortunately, both the horses and Tammy are used to having chickens underfoot and mostly avoid stepping on them. Tammy's not from a privileged background. She told how, after her father couldn't pay the electric bill, they'd had to cope without running water; the well pump being the critical electric appliance in rural houses. I hope this was in summer as peeing out back in winter in Canada is dangerous to one's valuable bits. I thought the better of asking for more detail than she offered. Talk of living cheaply brought us on to chickens, Tammy feeds hers for just six weeks, a cost of three or four dollars to put one on the table, "not just cheaper but better eating" she said.

Later, having finally, after six months, erased the smell of wet dead chicken feathers from our memories, we ate a backyard chicken. One we'd plucked on the washing line. It wasn't as meaty as a store bought bird:



But it was, indeed, better eating. It tasted, not of some sauce, but actually of chicken. This was a meat bird so it hadn't had a long life grazing and eating bugs, those birds barely move because they're too heavy for their legs, they pretty much eat only the grains from the feed mill. I find it a worrisome thought that a bird that is free range only in the sense that the door's open, it could wander out if it could propel itself, can taste so much better than commercial birds. Feed mill grains are cheap enough, it's not a pleasant thought that a commercial chicken eats something so much cheaper, and presumably nastier, that it's still cost effective to deliver it even after paying for all the drugs and chemicals needed to keep the thing alive in a crowded cage.