Egg rebellion

In the depths of winter, as food supplies dwindled and the farm faced starvation, Napoleon made a calculated decision to trade with the human world. Through Mr. Whymper, a solicitor who served as intermediary, he accepted a contract for four hundred eggs per week. The eggs would be sold to pay for grain and meal to sustain the farm until summer. One Sunday morning, Squealer announced that the hens, who had just begun to lay again after the winter, must surrender their eggs. The hens had been warned earlier that this sacrifice might be necessary, but they had not believed it would really happen. They were preparing their clutches for the spring sitting, and they protested that to take the eggs now was murder.

For the first time since the expulsion of Jones, something resembling a rebellion arose. Led by three young Black Minorca pullets, the hens made a determined effort to thwart Napoleon's wishes. Their method was to fly up to the rafters and lay their eggs there, smashing them to pieces on the floor. Napoleon acted swiftly and ruthlessly. He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For five days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting boxes. Nine hens had died in the meantime.

Their bodies were buried in the orchard, and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis, a disease of poultry. Mr. Whymper heard nothing of this affair, and the eggs were duly delivered, a grocer's van driving up to the farm once a week to take them away. The rebellion was thus hidden from the outside world, and the food shortage was temporarily alleviated at the cost of the hens' lives and the destruction of any open dissent.