During my growing up years, we had a lot of hens as pets at home and it was a pleasure to hand feed the tame ones. My grand mom used to name each hen and will call them by their name. There was a rooster named Peeli who was a bit noisy around everyone except ammachy. So one Easter, ammachy's knife found him and we had delicious Naadan Chicken roast. Those days we never used to buy eggs or chicken. The shells of these eggs were given to the hens again as they are rich in calcium. Every once in a while grand mom used to let one of her hens to brood the eggs till the young chicks hatched and it was such a delight to watch baby chicks (yellow, white, black and brown) making a squeaky noise and always pecking at something.
This all happened a long time ago and for a long time my parents didn't have any pets at home. So this time when we (me and kids) went to visit them, it was a pleasant surprise to find a brood of chicks clucking and scratching and hurrying around.
There was a rooster too who was a bit aggressive and one day it ran after my little girl, pushed her down and pecked her. So what did we do? yes, killed the rooster the next day and made Chicken Biriyani!!!!
Lesson learnt- never keep aggressive roosters near small children.
Lesson Number 2: it takes 20 minutes in the pressure cooker and then 30 minutes on stove top to cook this meat (unlike the broiler chicken which takes only 10 minutes in the pressure cooker to get properly cooked)
While the rooster was still alive, the fertile eggs were put under a broody hen and in 21 days we got 8 lovely chicks... :)
Now that the rooster is no more, the eggs are not fertile but still the hens are producing eggs.
So this is black beauty getting comfortable in her favourite corner to lay eggs. The hen sits very quietly while laying its egg. But after laying the egg, it moves a little further and starts clucking. Thats when we run to get the eggs...
and yay!!! healthy brown egg (tho it looks white in the pic, it is actually a brown egg)
and we boil it and believe me, it tastes so much better than store bought eggs!!!
