Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Getting the Chickens Ready for Winter.

 

About a month ago one of our chickens died.  We don’t know how or why.  We just found him in the coop.  It was very sad.  We were worried that he had froze to death since we have been having below freezing temperatures for about 8 weeks now. 

We weren’t getting any eggs at all for about 2 weeks.  We heard that chickens don’t lay when the days get shorter.  So we chalked it up to that. 

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We decided we want to prevent that from happening again.  We purchased a water heater to go under their water so that it won’t freeze.   We put a heat lamp in the run and another one in the coop. 

We have also been feeding them our leftover vegetables from dinner.  They have been eating our leftover pumpkins from Halloween too.  I heard that the pumpkins prevent worms and are very healthy for the chickens.  Plus they love them.   

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Since making all these changes we are back to getting 4 eggs or so a day.  (one per chicken)

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We have really enjoyed having chickens and the eggs are delicious.  When we go out of town, our neighbors take care of them and we let them keep all the eggs.  The day to day things that need to be done are things like filling up their food and water and checking for eggs.  We have a big enough food and water container that they each last for a few days. 

Having chickens have proved to be more expensive than I originally thought.  Not to bad though. 

1 comment:

Heather said...

We let our hens and the rooster free range most days and have been getting eggs all winter. But production numbers have dropped from one each every day to maybe four or five every other day (we have six hens). We finally figured out that if we leave them in the coop until afternoon, then let them out, they will lay in the coop. Otherwise, they head straight for the hay pile in the barn, or in the pony's stall, and lay their eggs there. I suppose sometimes the black snake gets them, and other times the dogs do. We find the once in a while if we look hard enough.

Whatever their production numbers are, they are fun to have. We have two boxes of 18 right now to use up, so I guess it is time for breakfast for dinner or something!

Our day old bread store sells poultry baskets of too old bread for three dollars. You get about thirty loaves and the chickens LOVE it. If you have a store like that, your ladies might like it if you'd see if they will do the same for you. Your kids would probably have fun, as well.

Blessings,

Heather@BlessingsPourOut

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