Thursday, January 6, 2011

A Three Dog Night & A Three Egg Day

This past week and a half or so were bone-chilling cold here in the South Sound. Western Washington is typically overcast and drizzly, often windblown and always some form of wet throughout the Fall & Winter seasons, but it's mercifully rare that our temps dip into the teens and low twenties for extended periods of time, as they did last week.

Chipping and changing out all of the critters' water dishes every morning and night was a pain, but otherwise all critters and farmers came through this cold snap just fine, though ruffled.

So here we are, in the relative dead of Winter, and I had reluctantly resigned myself to store bought eggs and veggies for a few more months yet, when all of a sudden, my hennies start laying again. We've been getting one egg every other or day or so this week, and today for this first time this year, we had three. :)

We have just the 6 hens now, no roosters and no babies. Once all of our remaining girls are up and running, we could get as many as 3 1/2 dozen eggs per week. I'm so thrilled/relieved to have our girls laying again. Those store bought eggs don't even come close! I'd like to get our laying flock up to at least a dozen girls so that we would have plenty of eggs to share and sell, because all of our friends and family love our chickies' eggs every bit as much as we do. But, our girlies have been through alot with the move, the evil roosters, the pox scare and a really intense molt that left them all half-dressed in the freezing cold, so I'm not going to throw any new hens into the mix just now. But - Spring is coming! 'Til then, I'll just have to bide my time knitting like a maniac and helping Bill design & build the new, ultra-deluxe chicken coop for all those sweet chicky-babies that we'll be getting. Happy, happy, Joy, joy!

1 comment:

  1. Thats wonderful news. My father has made his chicken house with multiple rooms for the various groups of chickens. This lessens the pecking order a little. So the chooks you have now would have one room and then the new spring ones would have another and maybe you could do one for the bantams etc. If your chooks are free range then its every lady for herself once let out but if you keep them in a run you could consider having seperate runs as well.

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