Gimme the Dirt…On Chickens and Eggs

From high atop the ancient spire of the old Notre Dame Cathedral stood a weathervane of enormous artistry and character: a rooster with beak open and wings spread wide. In 2019, I watched the cathedral burning on television, feeling heartsick at the enormous loss. I’m a francophile, despite what some might think is my gauche farming life. France seems like a logical place for my heart to land: it’s where cheese plays a critical cultural role and food regions define gustatory delights and the palates that savor them. French philosophers, writers, and architects – all hold deep fascination for me. Importantly, I’m also a musician; the instrument I played professionally – a Loree oboe – was handmade in Paris. As Notre Dame burned, I said a prayer that my two favorite pieces of the cathedral – the spire with its weathervane and the ancient, extraordinary pipe organ – would survive the flames. Those items are building blocks in the adult I’ve grown to be: farming and music. In the survey of damage in the days afterward, the organ was found to be heavily damaged by heat and water yet repairable. But the weathervane…

The rooster is the national symbol of France. It crows from the top of war memorials and palace gates. It’s used in the heraldry of flags, banners and sports jerseys. Across nearly every religion, the rooster has important significance, but for Christians at this time of year, a rooster is at the heart of the Lenten story. The rooster crowed after Jesus’ crucifixion, reminding disciple Peter he’d denied Jesus three times. It’s a Bible story that brings chills. Roosters decorate the steeples of French churches because they represent the victory of light over darkness; their crow heralds the end of night and the start of day. Here on the farm, we see the days growing longer, and the increase in daylight means springtime is around the corner – flowers, green hay fields, calving season, and our precious sunset porch time. We also give extra notice to the creatures who are the first to physically manifest the longer days: our chickens.

Chickens are what I call “the gateway drug” of farming. Once someone starts with chickens, it always seems like larger livestock soon follow. It also feels like a farm just doesn’t quite feel complete without a few chickens pecking around the yard. Many years ago, my original coop was breached by a tenacious weasel who killed off most of my flock and mortally wounded Buckbeak, my heroic rooster. I had a love-hate relationship with Buckbeak. He took offense at my gentle shooing of one of his hens one summer evening and decided then and there that I was a threat. He never let me forget it. I wouldn’t approach the coop without being armed with my telescoping car scraper since it had a brush on the end that he detested. He would lie in wait, looking for me to step out of the house, and when I did, he’d come running and then fly into my face. It was funny until he matured to the point of growing long, sharp spurs on his legs, and he’d fly, spurs forward, toward my eyes. My husband still thought it was funny – it wasn’t. I often threatened him with the soup pot (the bird, not the husband), but he was such a diligent protector of the hens that he stayed. And then the weasel incident happened. Buckbeak let me tend his wounds, purring to me even while I held him in my lap. But after three days, he died of his injuries, and the remaining three hens were so traumatized they refused to go back into the coop. They slept in the big barn at the very top of the haymow and, during the day, pecked at the barn floor, afraid to go outside. I wouldn’t get chickens again until my present flock. So when my long-promised new, improved chicken coop materialized, I wanted to fill it with birds that were worthy of its splendor. The windows and door are from my husband’s grandfather’s chicken barn, and the door handle is a lovely throwback to the days when Grandpa Brooks’ own hand worked the latch. Even the vintage feeders and nest boxes hail from the old chicken barn in Stone Ridge; my coop is true “chicken farm chic.“ The genius is the ventilation in the summertime and how the windows catch both the cool summer breeze and warm winter sunlight. When it was complete, we stood inside and debated if we wanted to rent out the house and move into the coop. It’s that beautiful.

When I was deciding what variety of chickens I wanted to populate my coop, it felt like an endless number of choices were at my fingertips. I pored over hatchery catalogues, searched online, and kept my eye on classified ads in farming journals. The breed I settled on took some convincing of my other half. What I chose is American Bresse, a heritage breed originating in Bresse, France. The “American“ comes in because in France, these are a protected breed (just like our Wagyu cattle in Japan), and since they weren’t born in Bresse, we are required to make the distinction. Called “poulet de Bresse“ in France, these are the Wagyu of the poultry world. They’re also what is known as “dual purpose“ – a breed of chicken we can raise for both eggs and meat – practical, good providers. If I sound like I’m trying to justify my choice, well, I just might be.The chicks are some of the most expensive available for sale, but I considered it an investment since I will grow my flock by breeding them rather than purchasing more.

By carefully selecting the best birds of each gender, I am able to breed selectively from my own flock. I have a small incubator, which I set up on our farm store counter in early spring, and I gently fill it with eggs from my hens. It doesn’t matter if the eggs were laid ten days apart: when placed in the incubator on the same day, they will all hatch together twenty-one days hence. The incubator simulates the exact conditions the eggs would experience in a nest under a setting hen, from temperature to humidity to movement. My incubator reduces to zero the chances of the setting hen breaking the eggs, sudden cold temperatures halting the incubation, or rogue hens killing the hatching chicks. If you want to see who I was as a small child, visit me on hatch day. It is thrilling to watch little pips appear in the eggs and hear peeping emit from inside them, well before the chicks appear. It’s painfully difficult to let those tiny, frail-looking creatures fight their way out of that hard shell without helping them, but it’s important to let them. Their survival depends on their ability to break apart the shells sufficient to free their little bodies and stand on their own. It is birth and life and death and resurrection. The hatching eggs are simultaneously mysterious and straightforward, wild and artless, strong and fragile.

The perfection of a simple egg cannot be overstated: to us, it is nature’s truth wrapped into a drama story, much like a Passion play. My husband likes to say it’s the “perfect little package.“ Every female chick hatches with all the eggs she will produce in her lifetime neatly lined up in her reproductive tract. When she starts to lay eggs, she is called a pullet, a word my husband uses to describe pretty young women, or he might say, “That’s a nice young heifer“ – believe me, it’s the highest praise coming from a farmer. When a hen produces her first eggs, a huge amount of noise issues from the coop. I haven’t decided if it’s pride or pain that causes them to squawk so, but one thing I do know: when I collect eggs from pullets, those little hens are protective of their eggs and make just as much noise when I fill my egg basket. So perhaps it is pride, given that all the noise is also accompanied by an attitude of imperiousness. They are French, after all.

Pullet eggs are small but complete with everything needed for a chick to hatch – as long as it’s fertilized. Eggs have a coating called “bloom“ that provides lubrication as the egg is laid and protects its contents. You see, eggs also have pores, and the bloom seals them up against pathogens, only degrading away in the moist incubation of the nest. Bloom has antimicrobial qualities, thereby acting as a shield against disease in the nest. The timing is perfect: by the time a chick hatches, the bloom is mostly gone, allowing for gas exchange between the outside world and the vulnerable egg-bound chick – oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. The chick feasts for all 3 weeks of incubation on rich, amino-acid-laden yolk while protected by the albumin (or “egg white”), which deters pathogens inside the egg once the bloom deteriorates. The perfect design and function of every part of one small egg stops us in our tracks literally every time we collect them.

There are so many more details I could describe: why we store eggs pointy end down, how a delicate chick’s tiny beak can crack the shell from within, how the nutritional combination of the yolk and white is the perfect food, how to candle an egg to see the embryonic chick inside. It’s miraculous, I’m telling you. I could also preach about the escalating price of eggs and our thoughts on the bird flu. Instead, I must give my chickens their due: those little omnivorous dinosaurs who mimic the French flag (and ours) with their bright red combs, fluffy white feathers and steel blue legs. The hens are special – a gaggle of gossipy ladies who I imagine cackle on about my wardrobe choices with great disdain en francais (they don’t know I had two years of college-level French – I know what they’re saying). I have three roosters who watch over the hens; I need them to protect and breed the number of hens I keep. When I enter the coop, all the roosters come running and stand in a line in front of me until they’ve determined I’m friend, not foe. They’re spectacular, my roosters. I watched them inside their eggs, hovered over them as they hatched, helped them dry their baby down, and snickered behind their backs as they learned to crow. Their large combs stand up straight; their chests are broad, and their tail feathers are long and droopy. They’re massive in stature. I can’t help but notice the similarity: they look just like the Notre Dame weathervane.

To the French, the rooster is the symbol of hope and resilience. For a few days after the fire at the cathedral, I held out hope that the weathervane survived. It wasn’t long before it was found, wrecked beyond repair. Today, it sits in a museum, a reminder of the destruction, but also of hope. A golden rooster now crows from the newly built spire, designed to create the illusion of a phoenix rising from the ashes while still retaining the essence of a rooster. The new sculpture is too contemporary for my taste. But that’s okay. I’ve got my classic heritage birds outside waiting for me, where I can go savor their splendor to my heart’s content.

Photos courtesy of Rebecca Collins Brooks 

Rebecca Collins Brooks is a farmer, writer and farmstead cheesemaker at Hilltop Farm in Accord, NY.  She is the creator and founder of The Meeting of the Milkmaids, a gathering of women working in the cheese and dairy industry. In addition to a small herd of dairy cows, she and her husband Barton raise Wagyu beef, selling meat to customers directly off the farm. Her best friends are two terriers, Winston and Molly; and Sylvie, a truly brilliant barn cat. You can visit the farm by appointment to see where truly good food is grown.

Connect with Rebecca via Instagram @catskillwagyu, on Facebook CatskillWagyu

Check out > INSIDE+OUT’s Spotlight on Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm