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Poultry Farm

Edda was born a little over nine months after our parents wed. Soon after
her birth she moved to “La Granja” (Chicken Farm) in San Germán where her
father awaited. Aldo was born eighteen months later. Pura, our mother, had
gone to her mother’s home to await the arrival. Sometime in the early
morning hours, I arrived on the scene. After a couple of week’s recuperation
time at our grandmother’s, my mother and I moved back to our home in San
Germán. I joined Edda and our parents at the family farm which was
adjacent to the western outskirts of the town. My father, Charles, was a
college professor an administrator at the local private college. Although a
native of the Midwest, he had come to San Germán to help the school's
founder to develop the school into a college.

My father, being a Midwest farm boy kept over five hundred laying hens on
the farm with which he earned a supplemental income. Chickens in Puerto
Rico were range chickens and simply ran around on the ground
unsupervised and lay their eggs wherever they could. The eggs could be
found, of course, but being in the tropics, the chicken droppings created
parasites that found their way back into the chickens as they walked over the
ground. Ever the inventor, he hit upon the idea of keeping the chicken in
coops with wire mesh floors. Droppings would fall right through to the
ground underneath where they could be scooped up regularly. Meanwhile, the
chickens continued to walk on a clean floor.

My father had experienced the frustration of trying to gather eggs from under
laying hens back on the farm as a child. So, he incorporated another new
wrinkle into his chicken coop. He slanted the chicken wire floor so that the
eggs would roll along the floor and under an opening on the side of the coop.
This gap was just large enough for an egg to roll onto a trough just outside
the coops. He could, then, just walk along the outside of the coops and pick
up the majority of the eggs. Having chickens in a coop also allowed you to
feed them easily by placing some troughs inside the coop with feed in it.

I was fascinated by the chickens and can remember playing around the
coops. When I managed to learn to crawl and toddle about, Edda and I
worked our way to the chicken coops, found the small door and we both
crawled inside and began scooping up handfuls of that tasty chicken feed!

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