Hens in Your Backyard and Fresh Eggs Every Morning!

My mom grew up on a farm in downstate Illinois. While my sister and I have pressed her for childhood memories on a number of occasions, it appears that she was distracted and/or had her nose in a book for the majority of her childhood, leaving us largely with just the images we can conjure up from a handful of black and white photos. One thing she has always made clear however, is that she did not like gathering eggs from the henhouse. I have always regarded that dislike as no more remarkable than someone asserting, say, I don't like sardines. Nor, despite an abiding love of the State Fair and the fact that I find watching cows to be an oddly zen-like experience, have I ever felt an urge to farm or keep livestock, being instead content with my urban/suburban existence. That has all changed, however, now that I have discovered the EGLU!

Here is the EGLU. Marvel at its modern and aesthetically pleasing design! Available in green, orange, red, blue or pink! See the happy suburbanites enjoying freshly laid eggs practically every morning! Oh, and the copy writing. "A stylish and practical addition to any backyard." "Designed to be the house the chickens themselves would choose." Check out the "grub and glug" food and water dispenser! Did you know that a single hen can lay up to 300 eggs a year! No rooster needed! What a concept!

Seriously, within half an hour of discovering the Eglu, I was checking out chicken-breed discussion boards, picking out breeds, and deciding whether chickens would be happier on the backyard grass or the wood chipped area by the swing set. I was thinking about who would feed them next time we were on vacation and contemplating strategies for keeping them alive during the winter (despite the Eglu claims that that the twin-wall insulation keeps them warm in winter, I still can't ascertain whether that means they would survive if it was negative 20 out). I was also busying myself drawing up an egg-collecting schedule for the boys since, after all, the "eggport, on the side of the lid, gives easy access to the nesting box and makes looking for and collecting the eggs a daily pleasure." Heck, maybe even my mom would want to give it another go!

I had all but settled on a pair of either Rhode Island Reds or Gingernut Rangers when I checked our Village Code and learned that CHICKENS ARE BANNED. Despair! Indignation! Outrage! My dream dashed, I may have even told Deanna that we needed to relocate the family to a more chicken-friendly and enlightened Village.

Having since worked my way through the various stages of mourning, I have regained some sense of reality and am now able to verbalize these thoughts and concede that keeping chickens may not be in my immediate future. For now. I guess. Maybe. Cluck.