Chickens & Their Eggs

Food Chain Radio Podcast with Michael Olson

Lisa Steele, Chief Chicken Influencer, Fresh Eggs Daily

Which should come first: the chicken or its egg?

Having spent the summers of my early youth on the grandparents’ farm, I became well acquainted with chickens.

When old enough to put on a pair of shoes I was taught how to feed them, and later, how to collect their eggs, and later still, how to butcher them and process them for grandmother’s kitchen.

And by the way, grandmother fried chickens in real lard. Today’s, chickens are fried in some kind of cheap plant fat. We’ll probably never get to taste fried chicken like that served from grandmother’s kitchen again. The real deal fried chicken is now just another lost taste.

As I grew out of my youth, and out into the world, I pretty much forgot about chickens and the role they played on sustaining life on the farm. I became fascinated with the tastes of city foods and the colorful packages in which they came.

It wasn’t until I started exploring the developing parts of the world that I became reacquainted with chickens. Wherever I went I found chickens waiting to greet me. The reason chickens are here, there and everywhere is that they are so good at providing for us. A chicken that identifies as a hen can eat almost anything that once enjoyed life and turn it into the perfect food – its egg!

That the chicken has been so fundamental to sustaining our species leads us to ask:

Which should come first, the chicken or its egg?