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Ozarks Folklore?
The Language of Chickens By James Bell Many
local farmers in My
neighbors, Terry and Cheryl Stewart, have a small farm just over the
hill from my own home in the woods. I have gotten chemically free
chicken eggs from them ever since this past spring, when they bought
some grown chickens for the eggs. But
when the snow and cold winds of winter arrived, the chickens stopped
laying. All amateur farmers,
like me, know range chickens stop laying eggs in winter.
If we want eggs for breakfast, we have to settle for the
commercially available variety. Or do we? I found out we do not. The secret of how to keep those chickens productive was revealed to me (until now, hidden from us transplanted city folks) by one of the farmers that meet regularly at the coffee shop in town. “When we didn’t even have electricity in these parts, we didn’t have supermarkets to run to if we wanted eggs in the winter,” he said. “We depended on our chickens to come through for us, and they did. All year long.” “How did you get them to lay eggs in the winter? From what I’ve heard, chickens have a mind of their own when it comes to laying eggs.” He looked at me solemnly. “You have to think like a chicken. You have to sweet talk them, much like you did when courting your wife,” he said. “You have to understand their language.” I suspected he was just pulling the leg of a former city dweller. “How do you sweet talk a chicken?” He laughed. “All you have to do is find a stream that has watercress in it, like Yadkin Creek, which runs through Steelville. Feed the chickens watercress during the winter, and they will pay you back with eggs. All winter long.” “Sort of like the biblical planting and reaping,” I answered. “I see you know your Bible,” he said dryly. “But try it. Watercress is a language all chickens understand.” I thanked him for the information. Half an hour later I slid down the steep bank of Yadkin Creek with two plastic shopping bags. The watercress grew in thick bunches all along the bank, and it only took a couple of minutes to fill the two full bags. I drove to Terry and Cheryl’s on my way home. They were gone, so I went directly to where a group of chickens were finishing off their breakfast of cracked corn. Throwing some of the watercress on the ground next to them, I stepped back to watch the feeding frenzy. The chickens attacked the peppery plants with a vengeance. They would have made a pack of sharks around a hapless swimmer look like amateurs. I called Cheryl later and told her about the watercress. “I left the rest of the watercress on the porch,” I told her. “Try feeding the chickens half a bag each day for the next two days. If that farmer wasn’t just playing with my feeble, city slicker mind, the chickens should be laying eggs in a week.” A week later, the eggs were coming with production line regularity, and I once again have a source of healthy farm produced eggs. Terry now feeds his contented, clucking chickens with the greenery they love. As the man in the coffee shop told me, watercress is a sweet talking language all chickens understand. Is
writer James Bell, who lives outside Steelville, pulling the reader’s
leg with this story? Ozarkers are inclined to do so every now and again.
The editors’ limited knowledge of egg production doesn’t include the
feeding of watercress. We were more inclined to think egg-laying had to
do with the length of the days, which is why the chicken farmers we’ve
known over the years have used artificial lights to fool the birds in
winter. This is the first we’ve heard of watercress, and Jim swears it
works. It surely makes a great Ozarks yarn, and we invite the
reader to decide whether it's agriculture or folklore.—The Editors More about Ozarks names, folklore and fun:
Nagogami means "Sandy Lake" in Algonquian Common sense: Some wisdom worthy of the Ozarks Three tall tales we couldn't resist passing along
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