“
You got the eggs in you; the world is fully ready to celebrate the chicks out of your laying labour. Never give up. Go and breed! Go and breed great dreams.
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (The Great Hand Book of Quotes)
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Never leave the egg in you not laid. Don't leave the laid eggs there not hatched. You deserve the best; you were created to use every gift in you!
”
”
Israelmore Ayivor (The Great Hand Book of Quotes)
“
As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.
The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. The president does this at a high rate and at a fast pace. One attempt during the 2016 campaign to track his utterances found that 78 percent of his factual claims were false. This proportion is so high that it makes the correct assertions seem like unintended oversights on the path toward total fiction. Demeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld.
The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. The systematic use of nicknames such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” displaced certain character traits that might more appropriately have been affixed to the president himself. Yet through blunt repetition over Twitter, our president managed the transformation of individuals into stereotypes that people then spoke aloud. At rallies, the repeated chants of “Build that wall” and “Lock her up” did not describe anything that the president had specific plans to do, but their very grandiosity established a connection between him and his audience.
The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction. The president’s campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict. It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches.
Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason. Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. One of his former students implored him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at present.” Twelve years later, after all the atrocities, and at the end of a war that Germany had clearly lost, an amputated soldier told Klemperer that Hitler “has never lied yet. I believe in Hitler.”
The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. I believe in the Führer.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
Winter was usually the slow season at the menagerie, with so many of the animals hibernating, but that year I was busier than a hen with a double set of chicks.
”
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Patricia C. Wrede (Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic, #2))
“
You say we came out of nowhere, but we sent you messages,” he said, his rifle swinging at his side. “When we took the hen and the chicks, it was to tell you we were going to take your women and children. When we took the ram, it was like taking your tribal leaders, and when we killed the ram, it meant we planned on killing those leaders. And the young lamb, she was your girls.
”
”
Nadia Murad (The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State)
“
Women are described in animal terms as pets, cows, sows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats, old hens, mother hens, pussycats, cats, cheetahs, bird-brains, and hare-brains…‘Mother Nature’ is raped, mastered, conquered, mined; her secrets are ‘penetrated,’ her ‘womb’ is to be put into the service of the ‘man of science.’ Virgin timber is felled, cut down; fertile soil is tilled, and land that lies ‘fallow’ is ‘barren,’ useless. The exploitation of nature and animals is justified by feminizing them; the exploitation of women is justified by naturalizing them
”
”
Karen J. Warren (Ecological Feminism (Environmental Philosophies))
“
From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.
The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice—no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant—let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother’s sake.
”
”
Emmuska Orczy (A Bride of the Plains)
“
HOW CAN A GOOD GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL? This question assumes that God sends people to hell against their will. But this is not the case. God desires everyone to be saved (see 2 Peter 3:9). Those who are not saved do not will to be saved. Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). As C. S. Lewis put it, “The door of hell is locked on the inside.” All who go there choose to do so. Lewis added: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it.” Lewis believed “without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”5 Furthermore, heaven would be hell for those who are not fitted for it. For heaven is a place of constant praise and worship of God (Revelation 4–5). But for unbelievers who do not enjoy one hour of worship a week on earth, it would be hell to force them to do this forever in heaven! Hear Lewis again: “I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will,’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’”6 God is just and he must punish sin (Habakkuk 1:13; Revelation 20:11–15). But he is also love (1 John 4:16), and his love cannot force others to love him. Love cannot work coercively but only persuasively. Forced love is a contradiction in terms. Hence, God’s love demands that there be a hell where persons who do not wish to love him can experience the great divorce when God says to them, “Thy will be done!
”
”
Ravi Zacharias (Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith)
“
But this was suddenly interrupted, William Bankes remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said "Pretty––pretty," an odd illumination in to his heart, Bankes had thought it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had married. After that, what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after a time, repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they met.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!’ “Miss
”
”
Tim LaHaye (Apollyon (Left Behind, #5))
“
There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings.
Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns.
Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours.
There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.
On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit.
The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died.
In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams.
No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.
”
”
Rachel Carson
“
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked. “That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth—we’re chickens.” So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that’s what he thought he was.
”
”
Anthony de Mello (Awareness)
“
It is an amazement of riches, glacé fruits and marzipan flowers and mountains of loose chocolates of all shapes and colors, and rabbits, ducks, hens, chicks, lambs, gazing out at me with merry-grave chocolate eyes like the terra-cotta armies of ancient China, and above it all a statue of a woman, graceful brown arms holding a sheaf of chocolate wheat, hair rippling. The detail is beautifully rendered, the hair added in a darker grade of chocolate, the eyes brushed on in white. The smell of chocolate is overwhelming, the rich fleshly scent of it drags down the throat in an exquisite trail of sweetness.
”
”
Joanne Harris (Chocolat (Chocolat, #1))
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I think that we are born into a time of great difficulty, he thought. I think any other time was probably easier. One suffers little because all of us have been formed to resist suffering. They who suffer are unsuited to this climate. But it is a time of difficult decisions. The fascists attacked and made our decisions for us. We fight to live. But I would like to have it so that I could tie a handkerchief to that bush back there and come in the daylight and take the eggs and put them under a hen and be able to see the chicks of the partridge in my own courtyard. I would like such small and regular things.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
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Bear with me a moment, now. Chicken-sexing. Since hens have a far greater commercial value than males, cocks, roosters, it is apparently vital to determine the sex of a newly hatched chick. In order to know whether to expend capital on raising it or not, you see. A cock is nearly worthless, apparently, on the open market. The sex characteristics of newly hatched chicks, however, are entirely internal, and it is impossible with the naked eye to tell whether a given chick is a hen or a cock. This is what I have been told, at any rate. A professional chicken-sexer, however, can nevertheless tell. The sex. He can go through a brood of freshly hatched chicks, examining each one entirely by eye, and tell the poultry farmer which chicks to keep and which are cocks. The cocks are to be allowed to perish. “Hen, hen, cock, cock, hen,” and so on and so forth. This is apparently in Australia. The profession. And they are nearly always right. Correct. The fowl determined to be hens do in fact grow up to be hens and return the poultry farmer’s investment. What the chicken-sexer cannot do, however, is explain how he knows. The sex. It’s apparently often a patrilineal profession, handed down from father to son. Australia, New Zealand. Have him hold up a new-hatched chick, a young cock shall we say, and ask him how he can tell that it is a cock, and the professional chicken-sexer will apparently shrug his shoulders and say “Looks like a cock to me.” Doubtless adding “mate,” much the way you or I would add “my friend” or “sir.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: Stories)
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If you wish to bludgeon badgers or beavers or remove peregrine falcons and hen harrier chicks from their nests, a way can be found. If you wish, on the other hand, to restore fading species for nature conservation purposes, then you have to fill in 90-page documents which will be thoroughly scrutinized eventually and returned to you with a further suite of impossibly complex questions.
”
”
Derek Gow (Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species)
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Most chickens, though, grow fast – and are slaughtered at just six weeks old. When we eat chickens, they’re really just overblown, overgrown, big chicks. The ends of their bones haven’t even begun to turn from cartilage to bone yet. A single great-grandmother hen, back in the pedigree flock, can have an astonishing 3 million broiler-chicken descendants – who never make it to adulthood.
”
”
Alice Roberts (Tamed: Ten Species That Changed Our World)
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When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. "Spread your lips, sweet Lil," they'd cluck, "and show us your choppers!"'
This same Crystal Lil, our star-haired mama, sitting snug on the built-in sofa that was Arty's bed at night, would chuckle at the sewing in her lap and shake her head. 'Don't piffle to the children, Al. Those hens ran like whiteheads.'
Nights on the road this would be, between shows and towns in some campground or pull-off, with the other vans and trucks and trailers of Binewski's Carnival Fabulon ranged up around us, safe in our portable village.
After supper, sitting with full bellies in the lamp glow, we Binewskis were supposed to read and study. But if it rained the story mood would sneak up on Papa. The hiss and tick on the metal of our big living van distracted him from his papers. Rain on a show night was catastrophe. Rain on the road meant talk, which, for Papa, was pure pleasure.
'It's a shame and a pity, Lil,' he'd say, 'that these offspring of yours should only know the slumming summer geeks from Yale.'
'Princeton, dear,' Mama would correct him mildly. 'Randall will be a sophomore this fall. I believe he's our first Princeton boy.'
We children would sense our story slipping away to trivia. Arty would nudge me and I'd pipe up with, 'Tell about the time when Mama was the geek!' and Arty and Elly and Iphy and Chick would all slide into line with me on the floor between Papa's chair and Mama.
Mama would pretend to be fascinated by her sewing and Papa would tweak his swooping mustache and vibrate his tangled eyebrows, pretending reluctance. 'WellIll . . .' he'd begin, 'it was a long time ago . . .'
'Before we were born!'
'Before . . .' he'd proclaim, waving an arm in his grandest ringmaster style, 'before I even dreamed you, my dreamlets!'
'I was still Lillian Hinchcliff in those days,' mused Mama. 'And when your father spoke to me, which was seldom and reluctantly, he called me "Miss." '
'Miss!' we would giggle. Papa would whisper to us loudly, as though Mama couldn't hear, 'Terrified! I was so smitten I'd stutter when I tried to talk to her. "M-M-M-Miss . . ." I'd say.'
We'd giggle helplessly at the idea of Papa, the GREAT TALKER, so flummoxed.
'I, of course, addressed your father as Mister Binewski.
”
”
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
“
I'm afraid I've got to leave for a while. Will you be all right while I'm gone."
"I'm pregnant,Ethan,not dying of the plague.I'll be quite all right while you are away."
He seemed to miss the humor. "Are you certain?"
"Actually,I could use a moment to myself.You've been hovering over me like a hen with a chick since the day you came home."
His mouth faintly curved. "And I shall continue to do so until your babe has arrived.
”
”
Kat Martin (The Devil's Necklace (Necklace Trilogy, #2))
“
There are some things even God cannot do. He cannot force anyone to freely accept Him. Forced freedom is a contradiction in terms. This is why Jesus said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. (Matthew 23:37) So the only way God could literally destroy all evil is to destroy all freedom.
”
”
Norman L. Geisler (If God, Why Evil?: A New Way to Think About the Question)
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The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction. The president’s campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict. It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches.
”
”
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
“
Jesus wants to fix everything that’s broken about us and everything that’s broken around us. But before he does this, he wants us to know that he is with us and for us in what’s broken about us and around us. He shares our situation. He is a warrior and a champion against the bully, but also much more. He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, a mother hen who gathers her fragile chicks under her wings, and an advocate who shares our grief and our tears—especially, and ironically, during the times when he seems most distant. He is a sympathetic realist.
”
”
Scott Sauls (Jesus Outside the Lines: A Way Forward for Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides)
“
A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air. Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.
”
”
Anthony de Mello (Awareness)
“
They noticed that the hen used a fourfold vocal pattern to communicate with her chicks. 1. She had a common call she used all throughout the day. 2. She had a special call which she only used once in a while. 3. She had a brooding note. (O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that didst kill the prophets and stone those who are sent unto thee, how often I desired to gather thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! – Matt. 23:37) 4. She had an outcry. “Now,” said the Interpreter, “compare this hen to your King and these chicks to his obedient ones. For just as the chicks are answerable to the hen, the King himself has methods which he uses to call his people. By his common call he gives nothing, and by his special call he always has something to give. He also has a brooding voice he uses for those who are under his wing and an outcry which sounds the alarm when he sees the enemy coming. I am going to lead you into the next room where such things are, because you are women, and they are easy for you.
”
”
John Bunyan (Pilgrim's Progress)
“
You had a right to vent. I was behaving like a mother hen."
"A very sweet mother hen with too many chicks."
"I promise to back off." He offered her another bite of pizza. "But I can't promise not to worry."
"Fair enough." She kept her hand on his. "It's natural to worry.But you have to trust,too."
"You know what I've decided?" He plumped up a pillow and stretched out beside her. "You're even more of a rebel than I am."
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
"Next you'll be loaning me your Harley."
"I could be persuaded." He linked his fingers with hers.
She stared at their joined hands and sighed. "This is nice."
"Yeah.I was just thinking the same thing." He leaned his head back and began chuckling.
"What's so funny?"
"I've been a bear for the past week. I'd have happily snapped off anybody's head who dared to cross me."
"I know what you mean.Fortunately, there was nobody around for me to snap at. I had to content myself with yelling at the talking heads on TV." She paused. "How're you feeling now?"
He looked over at her. "What a difference a week makes. The thunderstorm's gone. The cloudy skies. The nasty rain. I'm all sunshine and blue skies and sweet-smelling flowers, thanks to you."
"Me,too." She set her wine on the nightstand and leaned over to brush a kiss over his mouth. "I'm so glad you're here,Wyatt.This has been the longest week of my life."
His arms came around her,gathering her close.Against her lips he whispered, "Speaking of which, you make me weak."
"And you make me..."
His kiss cut off her words.
As they rolled together, one word played over and over in her mind.
Content.
Wyatt McCord made her feel content. And safe.And absolutely, completely, thoroughly loved.
”
”
R.C. Ryan (Montana Destiny)
“
Sancho asked the landlord what he had to give them for supper. To this the landlord replied that his mouth should be the measure; he had only to ask what he would; for that inn was provided with the birds of the air and the fowls of the earth and the fish of the sea. "There's no need of all that," said Sancho; "if they'll roast us a couple of chickens we'll be satisfied, for my master is delicate and eats little, and I'm not over and above gluttonous." The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them. "Well then," said Sancho, "let senor landlord tell them to roast a pullet, so that it is a tender one." "Pullet! My father!" said the landlord; "indeed and in truth it's only yesterday I sent over fifty to the city to sell; but saving pullets ask what you will." "In that case," said Sancho, "you will not be without veal or kid." "Just now," said the landlord, "there's none in the house, for it's all finished; but next week there will be enough and to spare." "Much good that does us," said Sancho; "I'll lay a bet that all these short-comings are going to wind up in plenty of bacon and eggs." "By God," said the landlord, "my guest's wits must be precious dull; I tell him I have neither pullets nor hens, and he wants me to have eggs! Talk of other dainties, if you please, and don't ask for hens again." "Body o' me!" said Sancho, "let's settle the matter; say at once what you have got, and let us have no more words about it." "In truth and earnest, senor guest," said the landlord, "all I have is a couple of cow-heels like calves' feet, or a couple of calves' feet like cowheels; they are boiled with chick-peas, onions, and bacon, and at this moment they are crying 'Come eat me, come eat me." "I mark them for mine on the spot," said Sancho; "let nobody touch them; I'll pay better for them than anyone else, for I could not wish for anything more to my taste; and I don't care a pin whether they are feet or heels." "Nobody shall touch them," said the landlord; "for the other guests I have, being persons of high quality, bring their own cook and caterer and larder with them.
”
”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
“
Though it’s best not to be born a chicken at all, it is especially bad luck to be born a cockerel. From the perspective of the poultry farmer, male chickens are useless. They can’t lay eggs, their meat is stringy, and they’re ornery to the hens that do all the hard work of putting food on our tables. Commercial hatcheries tend to treat male chicks like fabric cutoffs or scrap metal: the wasteful but necessary by-product of an industrial process. The sooner they can be disposed of—often they’re ground into animal feed—the better. But a costly problem has vexed egg farmers for millennia: It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between male and female chickens until they’re four to six weeks old, when they begin to grow distinctive feathers and secondary sex characteristics like the rooster’s comb. Until then, they’re all just indistinguishable fluff balls that have to be housed and fed—at considerable expense. Somehow it took until the 1920s before anyone figured out a solution to this costly dilemma. The momentous discovery was made by a group of Japanese veterinary scientists, who realized that just inside the chick’s rear end there is a constellation of folds, marks, spots, and bumps that to the untrained eye appear arbitrary, but when properly read, can divulge the sex of a day-old bird. When this discovery was unveiled at the 1927 World Poultry Congress in Ottawa, it revolutionized the global hatchery industry and eventually lowered the price of eggs worldwide. The professional chicken sexer, equipped with a skill that took years to master, became one of the most valuable workers in agriculture. The best of the best were graduates of the two-year Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School, whose standards were so rigorous that only 5 to 10 percent of students received accreditation. But those who did graduate earned as much as five hundred dollars a day and were shuttled around the world from hatchery to hatchery like top-flight business consultants. A diaspora of Japanese chicken sexers spilled across the globe. Chicken sexing is a delicate art, requiring Zen-like concentration and a brain surgeon’s dexterity. The bird is cradled in the left hand and given a gentle squeeze that causes it to evacuate its intestines (too tight and the intestines will turn inside out, killing the bird and rendering its gender irrelevant). With his thumb and forefinger, the sexer flips the bird over and parts a small flap on its hindquarters to expose the cloaca, a tiny vent where both the genitals and anus are situated, and peers deep inside. To do this properly, his fingernails have to be precisely trimmed. In the simple cases—the ones that the sexer can actually explain—he’s looking for a barely perceptible protuberance called the “bead,” about the size of a pinhead. If the bead is convex, the bird is a boy, and gets thrown to the left; concave or flat and it’s a girl, sent down a chute to the right.
”
”
Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)
“
And for this reason he (the Father) needs his child, he is waiting for him, he loves him, he looks for him, he forgives him, he wants him close to him, just as close as the hen who wants her chicks.
”
”
Pope Francis
“
Nest box curtains provide the hens extra privacy when laying. They can also help keep drafts away from the eggs and any baby chicks a mama hen might be brooding. In addition, nest curtains can help block the view and thus keep hens from fighting and harassing each other over a box.
”
”
Anne Kuo (The Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens: How to Raise a Happy Backyard Flock (Raising Chickens Guide))
“
Will you look after Finder?”
“Finder,” said the dust-wife in a tone that did not invite further comment.
“The dust-wife looked at her, then back at the little black chick, then back at Agnes. “Finder,” she said again.
“Because that was the blessing. That he’d help us find somewhere safe.”
“You named the chicken.”
“Well, of course! Doesn’t your chicken have a name?”
The dust-wife looked at the brown hen, who glared back. “First of all, no, and second of all, she’s got a demon in her, so I would be naming the demon, which already has a true name. I am not going to go around naming demons. It gives them ideas.”
“I name all my chickens,” said Agnes. “Specks and Buff and Milady and Jonquil and Shadow. Don’t you name any of your chickens?”
“No. They’re chickens. They don’t come when they’re called.”
“Well, no, but it’s easier if you’re going to talk about them to other people. You can’t always be saying ‘the big tan one with the feathered feet’ and whatnot.”
“I do not talk about my chickens to other people,” said the dust-wife with an air of finality.
“I’ve heard you talk about other people to your chicken, though,” put in Fenris.
“For the first time,” said the dust-wife, mostly to the ceiling, “I am beginning to question the sense of this entire enterprise.”
“I’ve been questioning it since day one,” said Marra.
“I have not,” said Fenris. “I have faith in all of you.”
“You would,” muttered the dust-wife. “Fine. I’ll watch…Finder.
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T. Kingfisher (Nettle & Bone)
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She shaded in more of the tornado, a little fiercely, then turned back a few pages and let herself be pulled into the world of Carleen, the least popular chicken in her high school, pecked down by plumper hens and scorned by cocky roosters.
Carleen's story wasn't hers. Amanda had been quite well liked in high school---mostly because she stayed resolutely in the middle of the road, dressing like everyone else, doing the things everyone else did. Amanda had made those choices thanks to Mae, who had already made all the mistakes. Unlike Mae, Amanda did exactly what was expected of her and not anything more. She was a good girl.
Carleen was not a good girl. She was the dark chicken of her small town, pulling the other chicks in with her schemes and plans when they were young, then finding herself alone as a teenage chicken with a lot to prove and only her mysterious telekinetic powers, powers the others in the flock didn't share, to do it with. Carleen had been thoroughly rejected and cruelly humiliated by her peers, and would continue to be until she allowed the forces within her to burst free---at prom, of course, in homage to Carrie, one of Amanda's favorite books---and annihilate the chickens around her in a rampage of oil and flames.
Carleen, Amanda thought, would end her prom night with a fried chicken dinner.
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K.J. Dell'Antonia (The Chicken Sisters)
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In a week, however, the strangeness was gone, and when she crumbled pepper bread by the pond at noon the hens came with their speckled broods that cried ‘pee pee pee’. There were five or six hens, each with fifteen or twenty chicks. Ellen’s orders came from Ben who conveyed messages from Miss Tod. ‘Was the old bronze hen a good mother?’ She must be sure to keep the drinking pans clean. Going about her labours Ellen carried pepper bread in her apron pocket and she would give some of this to the chicks whenever she met them.
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Elizabeth Madox Roberts (The Time of Man)
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I’m such a mother hen. If my chicks are doing well, I cluck happily. And you can be the rooster, darling. To love a child is to let go of the child you dreamed of having and accept the one you’ve got, as they are, not as you want them to be.
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Lorraine Fouchet (A Bucket List To Die For)
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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem [...] how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” The disciples had proposed that Jesus call down fire on unrepentant cities; in contrast, Jesus uttered a cry of helplessness, an astonishing “if only” from the lips of the Son of God. He would not force himself on those who were not willing.
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Philip Yancey (The Jesus I Never Knew)
“
You don’t want one cold night to be the end of the lovely chickens you call by name. So continue to harden them off in steps. When nights are chilly, leave them in their pen all day, and bring them indoors to a temperate brooder to sleep. Replace the old 250-watt heat lamp with a 75-watt bulb, and let them learn about cooler nights in stages.
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Jenna Woginrich (An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Backyard Chickens: Watch Chicks Grow from Hatchlings to Hens)
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When your birds are three to six weeks old, place them on the kitchen floor and let them mill about for a minute or two. Then drop a hat in the middle of the floor. The hens will shrink down or run; the males usually lift their heads and look around. It’s their most basic protective instinct shining through.
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Jenna Woginrich (An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Backyard Chickens: Watch Chicks Grow from Hatchlings to Hens)
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Australorps are an Australian invention. Hailing from a heritage of Rhode Island Reds and Black Orpingtons, along with a few other high-production breeds, these black birds are serious about laying and have a reputation for high production and sweet temperaments.
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Jenna Woginrich (An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Keeping Backyard Chickens: Watch Chicks Grow from Hatchlings to Hens)
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When your chicks first arrive, prepare a special place for them in the hen house. Depending on how many chicks you have, this can be a large cardboard box or a set of boards to partition the hen house floor. Cover the floor with least 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) of wood shavings, rice hulls, sand, or straw. Don’t use cedar shavings, fine sawdust, or treated wood chips. Cover the floor with newspapers the first day so the chicks will eat the feed and not the litter.
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Adams Media (Backyard Farming: From Raising Chickens to Growing Veggies, the Beginner's Guide to Running a Self-Sustaining Farm (Self-Sufficient Living Series))
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Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people who are capable of loving, of not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality as a mother hen embraces all her chicks, with two fully spread wings.
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Thich Nhat Hanh (The Sun My Heart)
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Yo, yo, her name is Apple, and I can’t grapple with how fine and kind, you’d hafta be blind, yo, blinded by the shine of her mind.
Gotta post a sign sayin’
beware the glare of that fair hair. Can’t bear the care of her stare.
One glance and you’re tranced,
pierced by her lance, made to dance
to the boon of the tune of the girl
with the skin of pearl and golden curl.
She’s Apple, yo,
and this be Humphrey on flow
with mo’ rhymes I can throw
till the day she becomes Snow
till the Happily Ever then
till the chick ’comes a hen.
The.
End.
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Shannon Hale (The Storybook of Legends (Ever After High, #1))
“
37‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 38Look,
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Anonymous (NIV Bible: The Gospels)
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Ankh-Morpork’s underworld, which was so big that the overworld floated around on top of it like a very small hen trying to mother a nest of ostrich chicks, already had Big Dave, Fat Dave, Mad Dave, Wee Davey, and Lanky Dai. Everyone had to find their niche.
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Terry Pratchett (Hogfather (Discworld, #20))
“
Atop the coop is a “green roof” covered with selected plants like sedums and hens and chicks (Sempervivum tectorum), and a nearby bog garden has carnivorous plants that eat any flies coming from the coop area.
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Jessi Bloom (Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard)
“
He told how He longed to gather them all beneath His ‘wings’ (pinions) as a hen would gather her chicks to protect them, but that ‘they would not’. During the Tribulation period, Christ will supernaturally protect His own
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Josh Peck (Cherubim Chariots: Exploring the Extradimensional Hypothesis)
“
Ramana Maharshi’s message was clear—we must first seek to understand ourselves. Without knowledge of our superior spiritual nature, we will remain tied to the trivial and mundane. In our present bodily consciousness, our situation is like the eagle in the story below. An eagle’s egg was placed amid a brood of chickens. Thinking it to be one of their own, the hens lovingly hatched it along with their own eggs. Consequently, the baby eagle which emerged from it grew up in the company of little chicks. The result was ‘monkey see, monkey do’. The chicks would say, ‘Cluck, cluck, cluck’, and the baby eagle would also cackle along. The chicks would flutter their wings and hop clumsily on the ground. The eagle would do the same, unaware of its God-given ability to fly at altitudes of 10,000 feet above the ground. One day, an adult eagle flew by. The baby eagle looked at it with amazement, and exclaimed, ‘Wow, what a majestic bird! How is it flying at such a glorious height with so much elegance?’ ‘That is an eagle’, replied the chickens. ‘It is the king of birds; naturally, its abilities are far greater. We cannot do what it can do.’ The baby eagle believed the chickens’ sermon, and it continued its pathetic life, fluttering and cackling like them. What a pity! It was born to rule the skies but had become conditioned to flutter on the ground. Like the eagle, we too were fashioned to sparkle in the magnificence of our spirit but became illusioned to wallow in the mediocrity of bodily conceptions. As a poet said: phūla chunane āye the bāge-hayāt meṅ, khāra jhāra meṅ dāmana ulaphā kara raha gaye ‘We had come to pluck flowers from the garden of life, but in the ensuing hustle and bustle of human existence, we ended up entangled in thorns.’ On realizing our soul nature, what becomes our potential? The next section provides the answer. The
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Swami Mukundananda (7 Divine Laws to Awaken Your Best Self)
“
will the crocodile not feed if there are no fishes in the river? will the hen not peck its chick if its does not heed to her warnings? he stopped at his heels and started singing a very strange song.
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Jovita Efehi Obadolagbonyi (Tales of an African Child)
“
There is a Buddhist term that means ‘mutual pecking’. It means that as a chick pecks from inside its egg, the mother hen simultaneously pecks the shell from outside to break it. All of your pain in Saturn Return helps you break out of your egg. When you break through your shell to come out into the real world, you can use fortune to the utmost to change your life.
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Suh Yoon Lee (The Having: The Secret Art of Feeling and Growing Rich)
“
Then how did he come to learn that I was back in town?” Buster said. “It’s a small town, Buster,” Mrs. Fang answered. “When you got here, you had a grotesquely swollen face. It attracted attention.” When they first arrived back home, Buster, still adjusting to the high dosage of the medication he had given himself, woke in the van and demanded that they stop for fried chicken. “Buster, I don’t think solid food is a great idea yet,” his mother had told him, but Buster had leaned into the front of the van and reached for the steering wheel, saying, over and over in a strange monotone, “Fer-ide chick-hen.” The Fangs pulled into a Kentucky Fried Chicken ten minutes later and walked inside the restaurant. Buster swayed unsteadily as his parents directed him to a table. “What do you want?” they asked him. “Fer-ide chick-hen,” he said, “all-you-can-eat.” They left the table and returned a few minutes later with a breast, wing, thigh, and leg, a mound of gravy-soaked mashed potatoes, and a biscuit. Everyone in a five-table radius was staring at the Fangs by this point. Buster, oblivious, unpacked some bloodstained gauze from his mouth, picked up the chicken leg, extra crispy, and took a ravenous bite. He felt something come loose inside his mouth, his muscles stretched beyond comfort after so much time in atrophy, and he began to moan, a funeral dirge, dropping the leg back onto the tray. The barely chewed scrap of chicken fell from his mouth, stained a foamy red with Buster’s blood. “Okay,” Mr. Fang said, sweeping the tray off of the table, dumping it into the trash. “This little experiment is over. Let’s go home.” Buster tried to pack the gauze back into his mouth, but his mother and father were already carrying him into the parking lot. “I’m a monster,” Buster bellowed, and his parents did nothing to dissuade him of this belief. “Well, I’m not going to do it,” Buster said. “I think you should,” Annie said. Mr. and Mrs. Fang agreed. Buster did not want to talk about writing. It had been years since his last novel had been published, a spectacular failure at that.
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Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang)
“
For example, God’s call to Israel was, “‘This is what the LORD says: ‘… Come home to me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you rebelled against the LORD your God. … Return home, you wayward children’ says the LORD, ‘for I am your master’” (Jeremiah 3:12–14). Never does God agree to reconcile while Israel continues in sin. There can be no reconciliation without repentance. In the New Testament, Jesus expressed the same reality when He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now, look, your house is abandoned and desolate” (Matthew 23:37–38). God cannot be reconciled to those who are unwilling to turn to Him. There is no scriptural evidence that God ever forgave anyone who did not repent of sin and turn in faith to Him.
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Gary Chapman (Anger: Taming a Powerful Emotion)