February 11, 2008

Eggcitement!

Once the hens began laying two weeks ago, it was as if the floodgates had opened. Above is the last three days worth of output.

It started slowly. For about a week we got five or six a day. The older hens that I got last spring who were chilled during shipping never had really begun to lay. We moved those hens to their new yard and it got cold, days were short. The fall pullets were moved out to the same yard and then it was too crowded for every hen to fit into one house. So we split up some LED solar lights into two henhouses.

Those solar LED lights were on for about 5 hours a night with a dim, blue glow. I thought that would be enough to keep the hens laying. But soon we were only getting one or two eggs a week. The hens molted. We got no eggs a week. So I finally sold the last of the extra young new hens, moved the smaller chick-n-hutch out of the yard and put an incandescent bulb light into the chick-n-barn. All 15 birds pile into the barn, 5 on each roost. Crowded, but well lit. After about a month, things changed.

Even I was surprised at the results. We have a mixed crew of hens

With the above flock, the light on in my henhouse for 5 hours every night, we are getting a dozen eggs a day, roughly evenly split between brown and light colored eggs. It has been SO LONG since I had good eggs, I'd forgotten how tasty they are. YUM!!!

Cheers for chickens!