CHICKEN UPDATES

I have alot to report about my chickens. So for fun I am going to give you a little bit everyday. Why not. This way I can tell you all you never wanted to know about chickens, and I won't spend hours at my computer. I have limited my computer time so I'll try to be brief.

So far I have had pretty good luck with my egg production. well not MINE, but the Chickens. My egg production is another story altogether.

Anyway, I was getting on average an egg or two a day for about a week.(from 9 hens)
It has dramatically slowed down over the last week or so for a few reasons.

One... the daily sunlight has dropped. The sun rises around 8am and has been setting around 6ish. Chickens need about 14 hours of bright sunlight to be happy layers. The time change last night and the use of an aritificial light on a timer in our new winter chicken coop will help...I hope. I'll let y'all know.

Two...the temperature is dropping. The Lord has blessed us with an incredible October with some days reaching 20C. However, frost is now on the ground in the morning and sometimes we are reaching a low of -6C at night. chickens are not cold weather birds (exception being the canadian bread Chanteclier). They really don't like their water with ice crystals in it. Moving the water inside the coop will help for now, but I may have to get a heated bowl. We will see about that later as well.

Egg production slows in the cold because the chickens are expending more energy preserving heat. Go figure.

So....To help this egg business we have just put them in their winter coop that my husband has spend the last two weekends fixing for me. (pics to come later).
This will help the temperature and light thing.


The wind comes from the west around here. It is getting colder. As you can see there is not much between the coop and the wind. Just looking at this pic makes me shiver.


I covered the outside run with a tarp for now. That cuts down on the sharp winds, however the temperature drop is becoming too great.



this a perch I created inside the run. They LOVE. to sit on it. I'll be talking about perches later on.


This is a REALLY OLD chicken shed behind our house. We are scrambling to fix it up for the winter. When I say we I mean my husband :)




My husband the carpenter and his little helper