Winter Update

The winter has been snowy and cold. The chickens are still in their old coop. We currently have one rooster and twelve hens (three Americana and nine Pearl White Leghorns). The rooster (the kids call him "Bill") is a Pearl White Leghorn with a big single comb - we have had a couple of cold nights, and he has gotten some frostbite.

We were getting four eggs per day (all white - no eggs from the Americanas). I put a light in the coop on a timer. I am giving them a couple hours of light in the morning and several hours in the afternoon/evening. Within a few days, production rose 50% to six eggs per day (including 1-2 blue eggs from the Americanas).

The chickens don't seem to mind the cold very much. If it is cold, they just fluff out their feathers and sleep with their heads under their wings (except for the rooster, who insists on keeping watch on everything). The snow is a different story - they do not like to walk on the snow. If one of them gets startled out of the coop, she flies as far as she can (about 15 feet), lands in the snow, and stands their looking confused. Eventually she takes off back toward the coop door where she lands in a cloud of dust.

Production is Falling (with the leaves)

The days have gotten short enough that the hens are laying far fewer eggs. The Araucana's stopped laying entirely about two weeks ago. The Pearl White Leghorns are laying at about half-speed. I plan to get production back up again by putting a light on a timer in the coop to extend the day for them. I just need to get electrical issues in the barn worked out (which actually is dependent on some plumbing work in the house...it is a long story).

The @#$&%&#*! dogs were outside for a long time today (to keep them from bothering/eating the painter that is working in our dining room). They got bored and decided that instead of digging holes they would hunt chickens. They caught and killed one of the Pearl White Leghorn hens. Actually, she was not dead when I got them away from her, but she had died by the time I got the dogs in their crates in the house and got back out to put her out of her misery. I am so sick of the dogs.

I think we are now down to 11 hens and one rooster (Bill). This is down from a total of 75 last Fall. That is some serious attrition.

Update on the Summer's Happenings

It has been a while since my last update. Some of the happenings in the last couple of months:

The last of our New Hampshire Reds are no longer with us. The second to last disappeared without a trace. Something must have snagged her in the woods, because I didn't even see the telltale scattered feathers that usually accompanies an attack. The last one didn't lay an egg for three days. She was kinda moping around. Then she laid the biggest, fatest egg I have ever seen. After that, her laying-end did not look good and she died in the coop three days later. So, now we are not getting any more brown eggs.

This summer, the colored eggs have been popular. We have seen an increase in egg sales during the tourist season and have sold out of the araucana (blue) eggs a couple of times. We have not yet sold out of white eggs, but our backlog is only a few dozen.

Our sales have been pretty sporatic - we sometimes don't sell any eggs for 3-4 days, and then we sell eight dozen in one day. Weird.

I will be redoing my cost model soon - the reduced feed consumption during the summer (due to free-range foraging) has led to a significant deviation from my original model. During these summer months, we are showing an operating profit. However, we still probably are showing an overall loss due the the fact that I fed 75 chicks for several weeks just to have the majority of them wiped out by a weasel.

We are talking seriously about building a new coop. We want to address a couple of important deficiencies of the current coop that we inherited from the previous owner:

1. It sucks in so many ways. It leaks (the roof doesn't extend all the way to the exterior walls). It is not predator-proof. The door is too narrow to walk through while carrying a fifty pound bag of feed. The door opens in and extends low enough that every time you close it, you pull a bunch of chicken poop out the door. Very nasty "mud" when it rains.

2. It is at the top of a hill far from the house and barn. This is not bad in the summer, but in the winter it is too steep to snow-blow a path. And the path gets icy anyway. And it is a long way to carry water on a steep, icy path.

3. We want a dual-coop. We want to be able to run two flocks in the coop at once. Typically, the second half will have broilers (but will also have layers occasionally when we want to "reboot" our laying flock). The idea would be to have a wall across the middle of the coop with a door in it. The "wall" will probably just be chicken wire.

We will probably build a new coop right behind the barn. It will share a wall with the new sheep shed that I need to build. Supposedly, sheep and chickens are quite compatible. The sheep will be in this shed and adjoining pen during the winter months when there is no pasture for them to eat. I have a vague hope that with the sheep stomping down the snow in the pen, the chickens might be able to have an outdoor area where they can be free-range even in the winter. And maybe they can forage for some of their own food among the bugs attracted to the sheep, the sheep poo and the hay/bedding for the sheep.

Foraging for Profit

The weather has been great for the last few weeks, and the flock has been out foraging all day. They have been primarily feeding themselves (for free!) outside in the yard and woods.

During the winter, a 50 pound bag of layer pellets was lasting about eight days. Lately, a bag has been lasting about 20 days. That is a huge cost savings, especially since the cost of feed has gone up so much. There has been no decrease in egg production or quality. However, the number of double-yolk eggs has decreased - I am not sure if this is due to the change in diet/exercise, or just a function of the hens getting older.

We have been selling eggs at $2.50 a dozen at the street and to friends. Business has been steady, and we expect demand to pick up some once tourist season hits.