Tag: chicken

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On January 27, 2015

I am not sure I have even seen the chickens except from a distance this week. Praise God for my lovely wife who has mostly taken care of them. It has been a bit of a chaotic week that ended with me feeling a bit under the weather. Thankfully I think that has mostly passed now.

The ladies aren’t feeling under the weather though, it seems. I have been pleasantly shocked to see more of the Easter Eggers’ eggs in the egg cartons this week. Even though the days are still short, perhaps they are itching to start laying again. When I gather eggs I remind them, “I either have egg layers or meat birds, one of the two!” This reminds me of a cute cartoon I saw sometime back:

Why the Chicken Crossed the Road

I decided to validate that they are laying more, and I was wrong! The Rhode Island Reds have had a good week (20 last week, 22 this week), but the Easter Eggers are actually down from last week (9 last week, 8 this week). That being said, they are laying more than they were just two weeks ago (2)

One of the big projects I need to get done is expanding the chicken run. Our birds are fortunate in that we have a decent sized run for them, but they sure do enjoy getting out of the run and stretching their wings. You ought to see these little ladies when they find some new bugs or worms – it is like Christmas morning to them! Of course, expanding the run isn’t going to replace that free time out in the yard, but it sure will help us feel a little better about it when we aren’t home to let them out.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On January 20, 2015

As mentioned yesterday, this was a big week with the chickens – the annual changing of the litter! (listening for hens everywhere to start cheering) It isn’t quite as gross as it sounds. We use the deep-litter method with our hen house, which means I fill the coop with a very thick layer of oak leaves once a year. During the year the hens poop in it, stir it up, aerate it, tear it up, and cause it to compost. This means you never really have a strong smell, but instead you have soil being built. However, you must change that out periodically, not only for the hens, but for you to have the benefits of it. This past weekend was that time.

Okay, here is what it looked like before we began:

Year-Old Chicken Litter

You may notice it was not thick everywhere. That is because of the hole in the floor. The silly ladies knock the leaves down into the bottom of the coop, into the run, over time. I typically then use a pitchfork to move it from the run back to the coop to keep a good thick layer there. I haven’t really stated it yet, but as I understand it, the thick layer is essential to give enough dry brown material to keep the stench down. It is really much like composting.

I first moved all the old chicken litter out of the coop and the run while the ladies were out stretching their wings:

Chicken Litter/Compost

You can see how much compost this created in a year, and this is far better compost than you might get from any store. It is all organic, all homegrown. I know what is in this compost, and I know it is good.

I then took a large pile of leaves that were good and dry, and I move them into the coop and run. I know this looks like it would be uncomfortable for the chickens, and it may be, but it won’t stay this way for long. I happen to think they enjoy it though, digging through all this new material looking for any sort of life (read: bugs) that might be in it. As I said, it won’t stay this way for long though. Soon the leaves will become shred under their constant picking and foraging, and it will pack down. Anyhow, here is what it looks like in the coop:

Fresh Oak Leaf Chicken Litter

I also put it in the run because I need plenty of material to add to the coop throughout the year. It is essential to keep a thick layer there. As the litter in the coop runs this, I will scoop some from the run up into the coop. Believe it or not, this will all be smashed down to a thin layer in just a few days.

The only other thing going on with the hens this week is a bit of an upswing in egg product. Last week was eggs, whereas this week we had 29, and 9 of them were Easter Eggers! If we compare that to last week, we see the Rhode Island Reds laid the same amount (20) and the Easter Eggers upped their production by 7 eggs! Go Easter Eggers! It won’t be long until we see those numbers really jumping up. I am very anxious for that.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On December 2, 2014

After yesterday’s post on the BIG weekend, I am sure you know the chickens had an eventful weekend too. The poor ladies started out pretty scared of all the work that was going on, even staying upstairs in the coop for a while. After they got used to the front-end loader, they began venturing downstairs, and were as exuberant as ever to get out and run around. They curiously watched to try to figure out what was going on, but in the end, all they cared about was finding treats amount the wood chips. 😀

The laying is still slow, as I am sure it will be until the days start getting longer, though the Rhode Island Reds are real troopers. The four of them laid 24 eggs this week, whereas the six Easter Eggers only laid 8 eggs. This was the whole reason added the Rhode Island Reds to the flock though, as they should continue laying most all winter.

Charity noticed a problem below the coop though. It seems the ladies are thinking the insulation foamboard I put there is for their dining pleasure. SIGH. I don’t think I will work on that today, but sometime I will have to cut it out where it is not within their reach.

One of the next big projects I have it to get a portable chicken run built, so I can actually let them stay out in the yard for extended periods of time without someone watching them. Ideally, this would allow me to let the work the unplanted garden areas as well, with the chickens aerating and fertilizing the soil while they have fun. I am thinking of building something out of cattle panels, but I need to work on this more.

There’s never a shortage of things to do, is there?

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On October 28, 2014

Can you believe our chickens are still laying well? This week we had a total of 47 eggs, with the Rhode Island Reds laying 22 of them! Good girls! 😀

You may be wondering what we do with all those egg shells. Or maybe you don’t care. 😀 I’m going to tell you anyhow though. Though I am not good at it all the time, I like to use everything I can of what I have at my disposal, egg shells included. Egg shells are a great source of calcium, which happens to be a mineral that is needed in the soil. We save all our eggshells, and then we dry them in the oven before crushing them up to spread over the yard.

Recently Dried Egg Shells

I mentioned above that the ladies are laying well still, but that doesn’t mean we have a lot of eggs around here. Besides giving some to the neighbors, it seems my boys have turned into egg eating machings. We are going through them like there is no tomorrow right now, which doesn’t bother me a bit. I think they are one of the healthiest foods there are.

I know it is a little early to be thinking about this, but I am seriously considering getting some more chickens next year, though probably only two. I would like to supplement the flock by two a year, with a maximum of 16 birds. This would help account for reduced laying as the birds age, and the unfortunate death of a bird or two, which will likely happen over time.

Speaking of that, I think we may have a predator trying to get into the hen house. We are noticing some digging around the edge on one side. For now I have covered this with a heavy board and brick, but I have plans to fill the hole up soon. Thankfully, even if they got into the run during the night, they couldn’t get to the hens, as we lock them in the coop during the night.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On October 21, 2014

A few weeks ago I had my first egg-bound hen, and this week I have my first double-yolked egg. Check this mammoth out:

Double Yolk Egg Compared to Regular Egg

Obviously, the egg on the left is the double yolk egg and the egg on the right is a single yolk egg. I know some of you are wondering if we cracked it yet, and we have:

Double Yolks

So you might be wondering, can a double yolk egg produce two chickens if it is fertilized? Yep! Check it out in this hatching video. Apparently, it is rare for them to hatch, but as you can see, it is possible. Mine, of course, aren’t fertilized, so that was never a consideration. 😀

The ladies are producing well still, laying 46 eggs this week. I am still amazed that the Easter Eggers are outlaying the Rhode Island Reds. The Rhode Island Reds are supposed to be the heavier layers and winter layers, but they are only averaging 0.71 eggs a day per bird, whereas the Easter Eggers are averaging 0.62 eggs a day. Wait, did you read that? It just goes to show we can’t always go by what our minds tell us. I was sure the Easter Eggers were outlaying the Rhode Island Reds per bird, but the facts this week do not show that. That means the Rhode Island Reds are laying almost five eggs a week each, and the Easter Eggers are averaging just 4.3 eggs a week. I’m not complaining, that is for sure.

Speaking of that, look at the variety of colors we are getting:

Color Variety in Our Eggs

Both of the two on the left are the “pink” eggs, which we think are laid from Easter Eggers, but they could be laid from Rhode Island Reds. You can see a normal Rhode Island Red egg in the two eggs second from the right.

I think that is all the exciting egg news for the week other than the neighbors sure are loving the free fresh eggs. One lady returned the favor this week with a fresh loaf of sourdough bread. The boys said it sure tastes good.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On September 23, 2014

What a week it has been – one of the busiest in a while. Last week I was out of town. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean things around the house slow down.

Speaking of not slowing down, let me tell you about the ladies. You may remember last week that I wondered if their egg production had maybe begun to slow down for the winter, but I am happy to report that it is not seeming to be the case yet. As a reminder, last week they laid 36 eggs for the week, which was 2 less than the week before. This week, however, they broke a record and laid 39 eggs. Go LADIES!

We blessed our neighbors with eggs this week. We blessed a few neighbors the week before last, but this week we were able to give each of the neighbors whose property is adjacent to ours half a dozen eggs. It isn’t enough for most people to not have to buy eggs, but in each case they seemed appreciative. One of the neighbors also shared an interest in getting hens themselves, which made me smile.

Interestingly enough, it seems the Easter Eggers are outlaying the Rhode Island Reds, which has not been the case up to this point. There are two more of them, but the Rhode Island Reds have been egg-laying machines up to this point.

Now that the sun is rising later, we have been opening the door to the run before the ladies have really woken good for the day. Charity was laughing about it several days this week, sharing with me how they were kind of staggering around like children who are woken from their sleep in the middle of a good dream. 🙂

Over the weekend I was having fun poking a cherry tomato into the run and the ladies would all run over after it. Whoever got it would quickly run to the other side of the run, hoping to escape the others who wanted that tomato as bad as she did. I think I finally poked enough of them in there that all the ladies that wanted one got one.

There is much more to write, but time is short here.

Be blessed.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On September 16, 2014

I knew it was bound to happen. This is the first week that the ladies have went down in their egg production. Last week the ladies laid 38 eggs, and I had hoped for about 42-44 this week, but they only laid 36. I am not sure if this was just an off week — they did have two days where the numbers were low, or if the time of year has come where the amounts will begin to decrease. That said, today was a seven egg day.

OH! Speaking of today’s eggs – I have long had a suspicion that one of the Easter Eggers is laying a “pink” egg. I put that in quotes, because it looks quite similar to the brown eggs of the Rhode Island Reds, just lighter in color. I have been waiting for the day where five brown eggs show up because that would mean that lighter one is indeed a pink egg from an Easter Egger. That has yet to happen, but today something just about as good happened. Four brown eggs were laid today and none of them were lighter in color. This almost certainly means that the lighter colored egg is from an Easter Egger.

I kind of dread the winter with the girls. Even now, when we don’t get out there as soon as the sun is up, they have their coop in a mess. We could leave the door to the run open, but I like the added protection it offers. Even so, come winter we may have to leave it closed some to keep the warmth in with the hens. Only time will tell, I suppose.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On September 2, 2014

The ladies have really stepped it up this week. Their previous record on eggs was 25 a week, and this week they layed seven more, upping that record to 32! The most interesting thing is the Easter Eggers are hardly laying at all yet. They are only averaging 2.3 eggs a week per bird, and once they are laying at full capacity this should be around 5 eggs a week per bird.

Oh, I do have an egg pic to share this week. This is from their record day of SEVEN EGGS!

Seven eggs! This is the most we have gotten in a single day to this point.

Even though the run is secure, we have always locked the ladies in their coop at the end of the day. I figure that this is an added layer of security if a raccoon or opossum gets into the run during the night. Well, about a week or so ago we found two birds hanging out below the coop in the run when we went down to let them out in the morning! These two ladies had presumably suffered all night outside of the coop. Determined this would never happen again, we have been diligently watching for this at night. Well, on Saturday night when we went down to shut the door, there were two of the Easter Eggers sleeping on a roosting pole in the run! Those silly ladies! We ended up leaving the door open that night, but going forward we will pull that roosting pole out toward the end of the day to prevent this from happening again.

The ladies are getting more brave. I might have mentioned this last week, but I will say it here again. In the past, they would stay all together and relatively close to the run when we let them out to stretch their wings and eat some grass. In fact, let me back up. In the beginning, we would move them from the run to a dog cage, where they could get fresh grass, but be protected. As soon as we were confident that they could take care of themselves, we began letting them run in the yard, but what did they do? They ran to the dog cage! Finally they got past that, and then they would all hang close to the run together. Then they started wandering a little further away, but generally together. Now they are going all over the back yard, and sometimes they are going solo. It’s nice to see them getting more brave, but it also makes it harder to round them up to go back in the run.

All this typing about them running around the yard is making me long for the proper homestead property even more. One day …

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On August 20, 2014

While I was out of town last week, I began to get really excited. It seemed the egg production was increasing after two days in a row with five eggs each. Since then it has been relatively quiet though. I think we had three eggs on Friday, one on Saturday, two on Sunday, and two on Monday.

Speaking of eggs, we have had two oddities lately. The first is a spotted egg. Apparently one of the Rhode Island Reds is feeling some pressure to match the Easter Eggers for their unique eggs. Look what she laid:

Spotted Egg

That has not been our only oddity though. We have also had a shell-less egg laid:

Shell-less Egg

Saturday I was sure we were going to have several eggs. I was out roasting coffee and heard that egg laying clucking going on all morning. Come to find out, I think it was a first time layer. When we checked for eggs later, there was only one there, and it was smaller than what we’ve been getting.

The ladies sure are getting brave. When we let them out to run in the yard, they used to all stay together, but now they just go off on their own exploring. That is fine unless we see a neighbor dog coming around. Even so, we have yet to have an issue. Yesterday, though, the chickens nearly went to the front yard, which is the furthest I have seen them go. Brave ladies they are!

I am using the deep litter method in the coop, and yesterday I was noticing how well this seems to be coming along. Basically by keeping a deep layer of litter in the coop, the smell is minimal and fantastic garden compost is being created. Charity and I have neither one smelled the coop much. Charity’s nose is ultra sensitive, so I think that is a good sign. I think after the leaves fall for the year, I will clean out the coop and move this fantasic compost to one of the garden beds for next year, and restock the coop for the winter with fresh litter (oak leaves).

I am curiously awaiting the slow down of egg production for the year. I don’t know when that happens for my area yet, though there are some reports that it slows down when the sunlight becomes less than 14 hours a day. We are already less than that, so it may be soon. Perhaps that is why they seem to be laying slower than I had hoped right now. Even so, the Rhode Island Reds are supposedly winter layers. Hopefully that means we will see a steady flow of eggs from those four ladies all winter long.

A Few More Eggs

Posted by Steve On August 5, 2014

WOW! I can’t tell you how excited I was yesterday to find out that we had not just one more egg (see: My Surprise for the Day), but THREE MORE EGGS! Not only that, but one of the Easter Eggers, we believe it was Blondie, laid an egg!

Three New Eggs

Henry Ford, referring to the Model T, reportedly once said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” That is much like eggs, isn’t it? Almost all of them are white, though the stores have found ways to upsell anything brown in color. The one thing that I haven’t seen in the stores yet, however, is a blue/green shade of egg. Even so, there are breeds of chickens which lay this color naturally.

You will notice four eggs in the picture, the largest of which is a store-bought, large, white egg that I placed in one of the laying boxes to encourage the chickens to lay there. The other three, however, were all from yesterday. The one at the 7:00 position in the picture looks identical to the one yesterday in color and size. The next one going clockwise, at about the 10:00 position, is the first Easter Egger egg. The next one going clockwise is perhaps a little smaller than the other ones, and it is a little more elongated. I would say all three are similar in size to a small store-bought egg.

If I understand it right, there are probably three hens laying right now, one of which has layed two days in a row. I expect all three will now start giving 5-7 eggs a week, or a total of 15-21 eggs a week. The other seven hens should start laying soon, perhaps more will even lay today.

My family thinks I am a complete dork, but I am so excited about this.

365 Days of Me