Chicken Co-op News

Winter settles in at the coop. The temperature outside this morning was 5 degrees, inside the coop it was about 18. Needless to say the water was frozen again. Even with the heat light on it, we usually have to thaw it out a bit in the morning. Sometimes the water can has to come inside for a shot of hot water. Esmeralda's water is also usually frozen. The chickens are still anxious to get out of the coop and explore the small amount of ground they have under the porch roof, no matter how cold it is. We now have a timer on the heat light in the coop, which seems to be regulating their egg production somewhat. The light goes on at 5 PM, off at 8 PM, back on at 3 AM and off at 8 AM. By the time we get there in the morning to let them out, they have laid between 12 and 16 eggs already. Then they drop the rest throughout the day. Esmeralda lays her pretty blue egg every day in the afternoon. It takes some gymnastic skill to get into her hotel room to get the egg without falling into the temporary pen. Her wound is healing very well. Today she made a point of showing it to me. She turned that side to me, ruffled up her feathers and lifted her wing out of the way, so I got a good view. You can hardly see it now, and she may be ready to go back. She is putting on weight with all the private food and is quite perky. There is another Araucana who is losing lots of feathers on her tail end and showing too much bare skin for this weather. Not clear whether the others are picking her feathers off, or she is, or she is molting. Bad timing if it is the latter. She does not have a wound yet, but she may have to join Esmeralda in the garage for re-hab. We are keeping an eye on her.

There is definitely more attention needed to them in the winter if we are going to keep up the egg production and prevent boredom. We are still getting between 18 - 21 eggs a day, usually 20. The interesting thing is that every Sunday for the last month we have only gotten exactly 17. It's the only day we get that few. So we have 7 hens who think Sunday is a day of rest, which it used to be when I was young. Not a bad idea really. A day to pause from the frantic life we all seem to lead and just hang on to our eggs for a moment.

We are engaged in a self-examination process right now as a co-op. After the long summer of building coop and pens, feeding and nurturing them all and waiting for the eggs to start, and after two months of production, we are feeling a need to look at our various roles and needs, to determine a fair way to share the work and distribute the eggs. We are looking to make sure no one feels there is too much of an unequal level of participation in the daily work, or an unequal distribution of the products. We are also trying to make sure that feed and other things get paid for in a shared way. Selling extra eggs has been one way to try to cover expenses, but we are finding that a few people are putting up the money for the other little things we need, like timers, light bulbs, straw, grit, etc. Almost all of the initial expenses for the coop itself and the feed and supplies for the first five months were covered by Jeanne and Peg, with some help from Matt. Now it seems that the co-op part of the thing needs to function in the daily work as it did in the building phase, so we are trying to sort that out internally. We would welcome any advice from any others who have tried a co-op approach. How much work should members expect to do to support the operation? What is the best way to make sure we have the money to pay our way in the future? How do we determine how many eggs each family should get? Does it relate to what they put into it? Is there another way to decide? These are the questions we raise now and try to answer. For the moment there are enough eggs for each family to take two dozen a week and if they want to sell what they don't need they are putting the money into the egg jar and we are using it for food. Plus we have a few more dozen to sell as well, so we are currently breaking even on supplies, almost. We want to know how to operate when production goes down, which we assume will happen sometime. Since this is new for us, we expect it will take some time to work it all out so everyone feels good and the girls stay happy. Pete is still with us because no one has felt strongly enough about his removal to find a place for him to live or a pot for him to end in. He is mostly behaving himself, so he hasn't convinced me to end my ambivalence.

Jeanne is in Florida for five weeks, so it has been really good that Matt and Wendy show up every morning to help with chores and then return several times during the day. All visits are welcome. We have to collect eggs several times a day to keep them from freezing. Also we take bread and scratch to the girls several times to keep their energy levels up and keep them amused in their confinement. Once the sun gets around to the south I let them out of the pen. They like to sun themselves on the coop steps or perch on the compost bins to sun. Wonder how they will relate to the pending ice storm?

from Peggy