Today the girls went all out and for the first time it looks like every hen laid an egg. We had 23 in all, and that's all the hens we have. The last was put out late this afternoon. Pete probably needs an award too, as he has obviously been busy judging by the look of the backs and sides of some of the hens. A number of them are getting quite bald in some places. Yesterday the girls only left us 14, so they must have had a meeting to increase production today. Who says chickens slow down in winter? Our girls spent the afternoon outside in the sun, rumaging in the compost bins. But they took the time to get in there and lay also. Twelve of the eggs were there when we arrived this morning, so having the light go on at 3AM seems to be working well for them. A few of the Buffs have taken over the job of brooding, and tend to spend the day sitting in the boxes on top of any eggs left there. Often when a hen wants to lay she will just climb in on top of another hen and drop the egg. The broody types just keep them all warm no matter who it belongs to. The kids really look forward to that bedtime snack of scratch I have been putting on the floor of the coop. No problem getting them all in for that so I can close the door. We need to find a source of roughage for the winter. They went nuts over the lettuce we bought for them the other day and seem to really need such things. Maybe they won't eat so much of the straw if we give them more green stuff. All contributions welcome. I hope we can eventually find a store to give us leftovers.
Peggy, happy egg collector
Cool Blog!
ReplyDeleteI know a guy who works at a local grocery and brings home LOTS of outdated produce and bread for his chickens and goats. The bread he gets by negotiating with the bread delivery guy directly. This also nets many packages which are not out of date but have been pulled, and he shares with friends and others in need. You may be able to get such a deal locally, too.