The Hen Is Killed for Her Golden Eggs

The Hen Is Killed for Her Golden Eggs is a fable about a couple who destroy a dependable source of daily gain because they mistake its steady yield for evidence of a hidden fortune. When the hen proves ordinary inside, their attempt to become rich at once has cost them the benefit they had already received each day.

The Hen and the Couple

A cottager and his wife own a hen that lays one golden egg every day. The repeated, regular gift gives them a secure source of gain, but they interpret it not as the hen’s entire production, but as a sign that she must contain a great lump of gold inside her.

That supposition drives the decisive action: the couple kill the hen in order to obtain the imagined treasure. Their expectation is specific and immediate; they hope to turn a daily return into sudden wealth by taking the supposed gold all at once.

The Reversal and Its Cost

The discovery reverses their calculation. Once the hen is killed, the couple find that she differs in no respect from their other hens. There is no hidden store of gold to compensate for the loss of the animal that had laid a golden egg each day.

The outcome is not merely disappointment at an incorrect guess. In seeking a larger, immediate reward, the couple deprive themselves of a gain that had been assured day by day. The contrast between the actual daily eggs and the imagined lump of gold makes the consequence plain: their attempt to accelerate their enrichment destroys the continuing source of profit.

Moral and Fable Form

The fable presents greed and short-sightedness through a compact chain of cause and consequence: regular gain prompts an assumption of concealed abundance; that assumption leads to killing the hen; the search for a greater fortune ends with the loss of the known one. Its lesson rests on the reversal rather than on an additional explanation of how the couple might have profited.

The preface to the collection describes the fable as a brief narrative in which fictitious characters carry instruction, with the moral closely dependent on the action. This tale follows that model: the hen’s daily eggs establish the value at stake, and the couple’s mistaken expectation makes their own action the cause of its disappearance. The story’s force lies in the difference between what they possess and what they imagine they can obtain.