Tag: hens

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On June 2, 2015

There is not a whole lot of new things happening with the chickens. The biggest news right now is the babies (Welsummers) and the older ladies (Rhode Island Reds, primarily). The Reds sure do pick on the Welsummers, so much so that they Welsummers stay in the coop away from the other hens. This week we have taken the step of putting the babies back in the baby coop and a separate run when we can. It doesn’t work so well when it rains, which it has been doing this week, but it is nice to get them outside.

One thing that is encouraging is to see the Welsummers testing one another. No, I don’t relish the fact that they are establishing a pecking order amongst themselves, but I do like knowing that they are getting tougher and stronger, which means they will be able to hold their own with the older ladies soon enough.

The biggest problem with the Welsummers is they are roosting on top of the nesting boxes, and in fact they stay there much of the time, which means their droppings are falling into the nesting boxes. We have to make changes because of this. It isn’t hurting anything, but it is making the eggs more dirty.

One of the nice things about the hens right now is how they are fertilizing the garden for us when they are out running. I like one way I have heard it said: chickens are a compost factory that just happen to lay eggs. Surely they are not providing all the compost we need, but they are helping.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On May 5, 2015

As I mentioned yesterday, the chickens are earning their keep this time of year as they are becoming the fertilization factory. The portable coop is helping with this tremedously. Next I need to get the next phase of the project done which will allow them to run about in other spots in the garden more freely, yet with protection. I can’t wait to share more on this.

The babies, the Welsummers, are doing very well, though I cannot wait to get them in with their sisters. They are still too small to intermix them without supervision though, as the other hens will have some motivation to show them who is boss. That is, to establish the pecking order. I am writing this part of this on Sunday, and today we plan to let them all out to play together in the yard to see how it goes. Update: we let them out to play together with the older hens, and overall it went very well, though one of the Reds was taking every opportunity she could take to peck at one of the Welsummer’s heads. SIGH.

Egg laying is still not showing an impact from the loss of a bird, so I am thinking she might not have been laying a lot of eggs. We are still getting 51 eggs per week, or 5.67 eggs per week per bird. Not bad. This year we havn’t given as many away because are going through them like crazy in our house. I guess everyone is enjoying the fresh eggs.

The Chicken Chronicles

Posted by Steve On November 11, 2014

The shorter days seem to finally be making a difference in the egg production here at the homestead. Even so, we still had 38 eggs layed this week. The Rhode Island Reds are showing their winter laying ability though, with twenty two eggs for the week, or 5.5 eggs per hen. The Easter Eggers are really beginning to drop off, as they only laid 16 eggs, or 2.7 eggs per hen for the week.

Speaking of the Easter Eggers, Snow White didn’t suffer from being eggboung this week, but one or more of the Easter Eggers have decided laying eggs in the chicken run sounds like fun. Grrr.

We are expecting the coldest weather of the season this week, getting into the mid-twenties by Thursday. I am not worried at all about the birds at that temperature, but I am thinking ahead to when it gets down in the teens later in the year and what I will be doing to help protect them.

If you have never owned chickens, you might find it hard to believe how entertaining they can be. Yesterday Charity put some leftover spaghetti in the run, and one of the ladies ran in there and starting eating it. Charity said she was eating it like she would a worm. She would pick it up, swing her head around with it in her mouth, then eat it. I am supposing she either thought it was a worm, or she thought it was fun to pretend it was a worm. Silly hen.

Speaking of personality – when Charity let the hens out yesterday, one of our cats decided to go check out the chicken run. Charity laughed as she told the story because the cat didn’t stay in there long at all. It is funny because this cat is a bird killer, but she won’t touch these chickens. I sometimes wonder if she is thinking God might be punishing her for killing all those birds throughout the years by surrounding her with ten large birds that are bigger than she is. 😀

The Chicken Chronicles, August 11, 2014

Posted by Steve On August 11, 2014

I am traveling for work today, and I will probably schedule this post to go live sometime while I am in the air. It is Sunday morning as I write this, and I am thinking ahead to my week, realizing I am not going to be able to check each day while I am gone for eggs. My wife doesn’t quite get the same excitement from this that I do, but I will have to bribe her to be sure and let me know the egg update each day while I am gone. 🙂

Sometime during the day on Saturday, perhaps after I collected the eggs for the day, I decided I probably needed to weigh the eggs to help me better determine how they are growing in size. I had a total of seven uneaten eggs in the kitchen from our birds, so I took some weights. Here are the results:

Rhode Island Red Eggs: Average of 1.47 oz (4.4 oz/3 eggs)

Easter Egger Eggs: Average of 1.35 oz (5.4 oz/4 eggs)

Store Bought Large Egg: 2.2 oz

So, as you can see, right now our eggs are less than half the weight of a store bought large egg. This is a little smaller than I had estimated, but nothing that worries me. I understand that their eggs will get larger over time.

The disappointment so far has been the number of eggs that have been laid. The best I can figure, we have a minimum of four birds laying: two Easter Eggers and two Rhode Island Reds. I come to this conclusion because there have been days where two eggs from each type of bird have been in the nesting boxes. There could be more than this, but this is the minimum. On average, we are getting two eggs a day now. I had wrongly assumed that they would become egg-laying machines as soon as they started laying, but it seems their bodies need to gear up for this some too.

I had to chuckle some on Saturday when I went down to check the eggs. I always peek in the window first to see if there is a bird in the nesting box, and there was. There were also two others peeking their heads up through the chicken ladder hole in the floor as if they needed to see what was going on. 😀 Blondie is still the only one I can for sure identify that has been laying eggs.

Blondie

I haven’t seen another Easter Egger yet, though there has to be one, and I can’t tell the Rhode Island Reds apart.

I have also been intrigued by the ladies’ choice of food. I thought chickens would eat anything, but ours have not been that way so far. Even so, there are some scraps they absolutely love. One of those being tomatoes, and the other being watermelon. Last night when I went down to check on the ladies I noticed they had cleaned a watermelon rind down to the thinnest green sliver. It almost looked like leather it was so thin. They also love most other kitchen scraps, but they aren’t fond of peppers and onions at all, that I can tell. I suppose this is good, since I can’t imagine this has a good impact on egg taste.

365 Days of Me