WANDERLUST: The Golden Egg

Eric and I have been working at Neil's farm for a few weeks now and much of our effort so far has been focused on the 26 or so chickens. We spent the first the first days here expanding the chicken coup so it is now about two times as large as it was when we first arrived. Neil has had the chickens for about 8 months and as of a few days ago, a single chicken had yet to lay an egg. So after our blood, sweat, and tears (ok, not tears) went into building the new addition to the chicken coup, we were hoping that the chickens would appreciate our gesture and maybe start laying eggs. We have been checking the chicken coup daily to see if there are any news ones eggs among the white golf balls Neil placed in their to "fool" the chickens into laying. Day after day of no eggs the chickens were looking increasingly appealing for fried chicken, but we decided to give them a while longer. The day before yesterday, Eric went into the chicken house and found one egg! We were overjoyed and Neil was even more thrilled than we were. Neil did some quick calculations and came to the conclusion that after all the months of buying chicken food, materials for the coops, the cost of the chickens, the work put into the chickens, and other expenses, the total cost of the one egg they have so far produced is about 12,000 Baht, or approximately $350 US dollars! Truly a golden egg! Eric and I are both egg lovers to an extreme, so of course we volunteered to taste the first ever produced by Neil's chickens (of course, we needed to check if there were any diseases that might afflict the other eggs.... ;) ) We took the egg home, cooked it over-easy, and ate it with toast. It was fantastic! The yolk was especially orange. Apparently, this happens when chickens eat grass and bugs instead of grain. The orange yolk shows that the egg is high in beta-caratine. We decided that the chickens must be very pleased with the new coup we built them because yesterday they laid two eggs, and today they laid five! Our efforts are appreciated and the chickens have now successfully escaped the deep-fryer (but not by far.) We are looking forward to finding more and more eggs everyday.