Torre Catch-a-Chicken

We have chickens! But the darn things aren't laying eggs. There are five hens and a rooster. The rooster is a wyandotte, and the hens are red sex-links (they were bred in a cross producing red females) I'm feeding them laying crumbles, some corn for scratch and supplementing with oyster shells. I leave a light on in the chicken house, and have golf balls and fake eggs in the nesting boxes. If I let them out they follow me around. They come when I call. They seen happy, but I didn't get them as pets! I talk to them, nicely. Even when I threaten to cacciatore them I use a soft tone, and they look at me with their heads cocked making clucking noises. They have pea sized brains, and they often look at my feet as if they've never seen them before and wonder if they might not be edible.

In the meantime I guess I'll have to eat something else for breakfast, maybe I'll have some Farina. According to the OED Farina (fah-ree-nuh) is a noun meaning:
1 flour or meal made of cereal grains, nuts, or starchy roots.
2 (archaic) a powdery substance.
And the source is British, from the latin for grain.

Bull Shtuff. Farina means flour in Italian, and Farina (as a breakfast) came from Italy. In America it is mostly called Cream of wheat.

Here is a recipe "Per la Vostra Salute!" (To Your Health)
2 cups low-fat milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup farina (not instant)

Bring the milk and ¼ teaspoon salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Whisk in the farina. Reduce heat and simmer, whisking occasionally, until thickened, 2 to 3 minutes.

Farina, it's Italian!

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Update on the Chickens, We lost a hen a few months ago, and we bought 6 Cochin Hens that will begin laying in the fall, and we get an average of 2 eggs a day right now.


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This just in... black snakes were stealing our eggs, and the hot weather thwarted them. I caught one trying to eat a golf ball. We put golf-balls in the nest to induce the hens to lay, and apparently the heat wave warmed the golf balls up enough to confuse the snakes. I killed the one snake I found with the golf ball stuck in his mouth, I watched him trying to get it back up, but the curve of his teeth prevented him from getting it out, he just couldn't un-hinge his jaw enough. Perhaps he was just re-positioning for another swallow,  but it didn't look like it would end well for him, and a quick death seemed only humane. He was a black snack that I would gladly have relocated, so I felt bad. The next day two other golf balls were gone, and the egg production is now 3 to 4 eggs a day.