Is an Egg a Chicken’s Period? And Other City-people Questions

Hey, I get it. I’m a city girl too. It’s just that some of us paid attention to animals and plants and nature and stuff. Some of us had other hobbies. It’s all good….

Once upon a time, years before the farm, my husband traveled to Fort Wayne, Indiana with a colleague, the kind of born-and-bred New Yorker whose last DNA memory of life outside New York City was at the great-great-grandparents generation. The kind who at age 30 had never learned to drive, or swim, because, New York. (I say this with love, OK? The rest of the country isn’t always sure New Yorkers are really American, but they’re, we’re, great people. Anyway.) They are driving from the airport through the endless agricultural fields and have this conversation:

My husband: I bet you’ve never seen that much corn before.

Colleague: That’s corn?

Later, this same colleague emerged from her first foray into a Walmart with a revelation.

Colleague: Now I know why people would want to buy groceries and chain link fence in the same place! They have CARS!!

Since we got the farm, we have had many conversations about country stuff with city-people. Some of the questions are perfectly valid. Some of them, wow.

Here are a few of my favorites in the latter category. (The valid ones, we’ll deal with separately.)

Q: Is it true that brown chickens lay brown eggs and white chickens lay white eggs?

A: Nope. The feather color doesn’t determine the egg color.

Q: See, I knew chickens weren’t racist.

A: You’re right about that.

Q: How do you know what color feathers and eggs a chicken will have?

A: They’re different breeds. Kind of like dogs. With chickens, each breed has particular feather colors and lays a particular color egg. You know – like robins, which have brown and red feathers and lay blue eggs.

Q: Robins lay blue eggs?? Get out!!

Q: Is your coop strong enough to protect the chickens if a deer or a bear attacks?

A: If a bear really wants to get in, not much is going to stop it. If a deer attacks – man, it’s been a rough winter.

Q: Is an egg a chicken’s period?

A: No. Chickens don’t menstruate. Birds are not mammals.

Q: Because I wouldn’t want to eat a chicken’s period.

A: Understood.