India, May 2 -- "I waited and waited, but they didn't lay more than two", he said. That through our breakfast plans for a toss, because between three of us, we eat eight eggs.

"They" were the ten hens the farmer kept, along with two roosters, in a 4,000-sq-ft grassy patch adjoining his house, a short walk from where my family and I were staying, while on holiday in Kodaikanal this week. A few days ago, the chickens had been generous: ten eggs, one from each hen. But today, they'd gone on strike. Each hen laid an egg a day for roughly 15 days each month, he said.

The eggs themselves were tiny, far smaller than the supermarket ones, and warm-fresh from hen to hand to stove. The thick shells had the colour of biscuit dunked in milk, and wh...