Today’s children hunt for eggs that were laid by a hen imprisoned in a mechanized building, most likely in a wire cage.
Chicks at
Woodstock
Farm Sanctuary
Easter Egg Hunt and Egg Gathering
The association of a hen’s egg with Easter and Spring survives ironically in
the annual children’s Easter Egg Hunt, for the origin of this ritual has
been largely forgotten.
Image from
Meat Free Zone
Traditionally, the finding of eggs was identified with the finding of
riches. The search for eggs was part of farm life, because a free hen
sensibly lays her eggs in a sheltered and secluded spot. Today’s children
hunt for eggs that were laid by a hen imprisoned in a mechanized building,
most likely in a wire cage. The widespread disappearance of the home chicken
flock in the 1950s ended the gathering of eggs laid by a hen in the place
she chose for her nest. Historian Page Smith writes in The Chicken Book,
“My contemporaries who have such dismal memories of chickens from the
unpleasant chores of their youth had experienced already the consequences of
putting living creatures in circumstances that are inherently uncongenial to
them.”
Wilbor Wilson provides the background to this change in American Poultry
History. He writes: “As the size of poultry ranches increased, the
chore of egg gathering became drudgery instead of pleasure. Rollaway nests
with sloping floors made of hardware cloth offered a partial solution, but
the number of floor eggs increased when the hens did not readily adopt the
wire-floored nests. This changed with development of the cage system which
left the hen no choice.”
The Hen as a Symbol of Motherhood
In our day, the hen has been degraded to an “egg machine.” In previous
eras she embodied the essence of motherhood. The First Century CE Roman
historian and biographer Plutarch wrote of the mother hen in De amore
parentis [parental love]: “What of the hens whom we observe each day at
home, with what care and assiduity they govern and guard their chicks? Some
let down their wings for the chicks to come under; others arch their backs
for them to climb upon; there is no part of their bodies with which they do
not wish to cherish their chicks if they can, nor do they do this without a
joy and alacrity which they seem to exhibit by the sound of their voices.”
In Matthew 23:37, the mother hen is evoked to express the spirit of yearning
and protective love: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I wished to
gather your children together, even as a hen gathers together her chicks.”
The Renaissance writer Ulisse Aldrovandi wrote of mother hens in the 16th
century:
“They follow their chicks with such great love that, if they see or spy at a distance any harmful animal, such as a kite or a weasel or someone even larger stalking their little ones, the hens first gather them under the shadow of their wings, and with this covering they put up such a very fierce defense – striking fear into their opponent in the midst of a frightful clamor, using both wings and beak – they would rather die for their chicks than seek safety in flight. . . . Thus they present a noble example in love of their offspring, as also when they feed them, offering the food they have collected and neglecting their own hunger.”
The Role of the Rooster
The family role of the rooster is nowadays less well known to most people than the motherhood of the hen.
Zeus at
Woodstock
Farm Sanctuary
The charm of seeing a rooster with his hens appears in Chaucer’s portrait of Chanticleer in The Canterbury Tales:
This cock had in his princely sway and measure
Seven hens to satisfy his every pleasure,
Who were his sisters and his sweethearts true,
Each wonderfully like him in her hue,
Of whom the fairest-feathered throat to see
Was fair Dame Partlet. Courteous was she,
Discreet, and always acted debonairly.
In ancient times, the rooster was esteemed for his sexual vigor; it is
said that a healthy young rooster may mate as often as thirty or more times
a day. The rooster thus figures in religious history as a symbol of divine
fertility and the life force. In his own world of chickendom, the rooster –
the cock – is a father, a lover, a brother, a food-finder, a guardian, and a
sentinel.
Aldrovandi extolled the rooster’s domestic virtues:
He is for us the example of the best and truest father of a family. For he not only presents himself as a vigilant guardian of his little ones, and in the morning, at the proper time, invites us to our daily labor; but he sallies forth as the first, not only with his crowing, by which he shows what must be done, but he sweeps everything, explores and spies out everything.
Finding food, “he calls both hens and chicks together to eat it while he
stands like a father and host at a banquet . . . inviting them to the feast,
exercised by a single care, that they should have something to eat.
Meanwhile he scurries about to find something nearby, and when he has found
it, he calls his family again in a loud voice. They run to the spot. He
stretches himself up, looks around for any danger that may be near, runs
about the entire poultry yard, here and there plucking up a grain or two for
himself without ceasing to invite the others to follow him.”
A nineteenth-century poultry keeper wrote to his friend that his Shanghai
cock was “very attentive to his Hens, and exercises a most fatherly care
over the Chicks in his yard. . . . He frequently would allow them to perch
on his back, and in this manner carry them into the house, and then up the
chicken ladder.”
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