No 22. Hens and their eggs.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
CHICKEN AND THE EGGS.
Until I wrote of hatching the chickens I did not realize there was so much to our poultry farming yesterday. So we come to the pullets beginning to lay, and the whole keeping of hens when we were young. The hen houses were made of wood, sometimes made on the farm by a handy worker, simply constructed but strong. They were built on a base of two heavy wooden runner beams which kept the floor about 6 inches above the ground. On one side was a nest box sometimes fitted with a lid opened from outside which made egg collecting easier, and that side usually had one window as well. Inside they would have pole perches called backs, easily taken out for cleaning. Feeding these hen houses was often outdoors with small wooden boxes if the weather was fine, but if the weather was unkind there would be a bunker in the henhouse filled with oats and with a feeding tray. Water was in shallow tubs, or in galvanized cylindrical containers with shallow trough rims round the bottom. A small heap of shell sand was always handy, it provided lime for stronger egg shells and grit for aiding digestion in the hen’s gizzard, it’s meal mill. Shell sand was also put on the floor when the house was cleaned out, made it easier to clean next time, straw being reserved for the nest boxes to encourage the hens to lay in them and not on the floor. Mostly it worked well.
The houses were mobile and could be skidded along the ground by a handy horse, or even from field to field on the under frame beams. There were some henhouses mounted on wheels, though we did not have any. This moving had two advantages, one was to move the henhouse onto fresh ground and pastures new, organic, the other was to eliminate the rats that seemed to home in under the houses almost as soon as they were shifted. Rats were in their heaven with henhouses, feed supplied, breakfast eggs available. To see how rats could move an egg from inside the henhouse to below it was incredible, but they did. Legend had a story that one rat would lie on its back and hold the egg to its stomach with its paws, while another rat pulled it by its tail with egg attached. We looked for this phenomenon many times, never caught one in the act, but were assured that it really was so. Certainly the evidence of empty eggshells below the hen houses was compelling. This moving of the houses also gave us a rat hunt armed with sticks but we had to be careful too. Rats were totally vicious and I once saw a rubber boot – not mine - torn completely through by a rat someone had partly stood on, though it missed his foot. They would turn viciously on one too so rat catching could be quite excitingly scary. The most amazing thing I ever saw in that regard was down at the old quarry at a corner of Barfea Field half way to the Village which was partly full of water, the quarry that built the Village. A rat escaped over the edge, falling into the water, and we thought it would drown. Not so, the water was clear and we watched it actually run across the bottom, not swimming at all, to emerge at the other side where it was suitably dispatched. It was at that quarry that we saw Wullie Peace many times put his hand into a rat hole after an escapee and dispatch it. He was fearless, but he gave us the shivers.
The henhouses were kept in various places around the farm, down at that old quarry, at the shore where they had access to the beach and shell sand, also carted from there by the horsemen to all the other hen houses. Some houses were kept in a field called Blackha next the steading, or on our way to school in a very well named clay field called “Scrapehard” . Some were kept in front of the house in the Front Park. But all were kept in fields well away from any growing crops of grain for obvious reasons, though a hen would walk a long way to get into such a field. Paradoxically, after harvest the henhouses were moved onto the stubbles, a very useful and profitable form of gleaning. Every henhouse was held down with wires attached to fencing posts well driven into the ground, keeping them secure against Orkney gales. Though not always I fear. In 1952 a most serious hurricane struck Orkney, hundreds of hen houses were demolished or blown away, hens were lost by the thousand. It was the beginning of the end for the famed Orkney egg production from which it never recovered. One true tale worth retelling was of the fishing trawler coming in through the String between Shapinsay and Kirkwall, seeing a henhouse floating in the sea, heard hens cackling, hauled alongside, a crewman hopped across and they had the freshest eggs for breakfast any man could wish for.
Feeding the hens was tedious, carrying pails of feed to the henhouses, water also, slopping about in the pail. Always carry two pails to balance the load on your shoulders and arms, even if you split the contents between them. Sometimes an armful of fresh straw to clean out and refill the nest boxes. Of course the pails also carried the eggs back home. In winter mash was made up, meal and bran and other niceties mixed with hot water and taken to the hens. At Whitehall we had two stone-built henhouses at the steading, each at one corner of the stackyard. While being closer to take care of and safe from gales, they were a rats’ paradise. However, being next the stackyard the hens also made very good gleaners of what remained after a stack was threshed. They also had so many places to hide away their eggs other than their proper nest boxes, and it was always a constant contest to watch a hen slipping off thinking she was unobserved, then finding her nest among the nettles.
Laying the eggs was the task of the hens, but the work had just begun for mother and her helpers. The baskets or pails of eggs came into the kitchen for washing in very lukewarm water, just enough hot to take the chill off, a slippery job with a little Vim and a rag to help. Check for any chipped ones which were kept for home consumption, pack them in cardboard trays holding 30 eggs to a tray, pack these in large wooden egg boxes for shipping from Stronsay to Kirkwall and Orkney Egg Producers Grading Station. On steamer day the Stronsay peir would be stacked high with boxes from all over the island which were put in rope slings, swung aboard and down into the hold. From Orkney Egg Producers in Kirkwall a ship load if not two was sent every week to Glasgow on the Elwick Bay, a ship owned by Dennison from Shapinsay. Or some other ship he owned.
Then there were the oddities to use at home. Double yolked eggs. We always wondered if they had been incubated would they have produced two chicks. Never did sort that one out. I think folklore held that it was unlucky, mother would never allow us to try it anyway. There were the tiny round eggs, said to be an indication that a hen was about to go broody, clucking we called it. Mother kept them until she had enough, hard boiled them. shelled them, and as they were tiny yolks only they ended up as a last minute addition to the chicken broth, a most tasty adjunct. We usually had fights over who was to get them.


So called factory egg production has finished all that, vastly efficient, target of the do-gooders. But at the price of eggs today we could not keep laying hens at all outdoors as we used to, feed costs are too high, labour too expensive, time too precious. Some do, however, and call them organic free range eggs. Good for them, I wish them the best of luck, but it is very hard work.