About twenty years after the experience of rearing chickens in Silver City, my son and I found ourselves a few hundred miles away in a big island in the town of Seldorado. We bought a few chicks available that are flown in from some city weekly, and we proceeded to rear chickens again. After two and a half years, we gathered eight hens who lay more than enough eggs for personal consumption. We would sell individual egg for $1.50 to church friends. But one month before either of us fly back to the Klang valley, we would save all the eggs to be hand carried back in the plane.
Then suddenly, my marching order arrived and I was to return to the home town. Within a month I gave away lots of stuff I accumulated over some twenty months. The hardest thing to part with were my healthy and good looking egg layers. Most of them were laying one egg per day. I prayed and told God I didn't know what to do with the hens, it would be such a pity to kill them. Three of them just started laying a week ago. There were to be about a productive two year period of egg laying. The following Sunday the quiet holy spirit whispered, " Go ask the lady who make tea if she keeps chickens." I was too shy and scared to ask, the moment passed.
The following week I turned up earlier in church and met that lady face to face in front of the kitchen. This time I drew enough courage and told her I have chickens to give away as I was leaving town. My son was going to move to the second floor of a shop lot and he could not keep pets. The next day we caught the chickens and kept them in rabbit cages and loaded three cages of 8 chickens in the back of our truck. We found that our new friend squat on the hilly slope of Trick Hills. They live in two small cottages on two levels of the 30 degrees slope. Their native black chickens live in "apartments": each hen has a room with one window and one door each. There were like twelve units on three floors. At a glance we know that any one of our fat chickens could not fit into any of the units.
Later we heard that the husband of our new friend is a carpenter. He was so tickled with the big fat hens that he used old lumber to build the eight hens a detached house coop. He placed the coop strategically to block the big hole in his old fence. I gave one condition before handing over the hens: the new owners should not kill any of the animals until it stopped laying eggs. As each of the chickens was given a name by Elizabeth, they should be allowed to live as long as they are productive layers. That was almost three years ago.
Last Sunday I met my friend and heard that there is one chicken left, it still is laying eggs. It warmed my heart that my God cared not only for me, He cared enough for my chickens to find them owners who would take care of them and let them live out their happy lives.
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