Winter project update

As I re-quaint myself with my blog I realise that I left my 'Winter chicken egg-laying project un-updated.

My winter project was to see if I could keep my egg production up throughout the winter days. Now we don't get winters here like America sees ->check out Ohio Farm Girl for what REAL winters are all about. However, our hennies have been born and bred in our climate so our cold is their cold.

My idea was not to falsify light for them, tricking them into thinking that the days were still long, my idea was supplement their diet to see if this made a difference. I have read a few theories on Hennies and their winter egg lay-off (pun intended). One theory talks about during winter and moulting periods, hens need all of the nutrients they are getting from their food therefore not leaving anything left over to create eggs with.

I'm not a huge fan of falsifying light hours as I think if the hens need a break then they need a break. We are just a small household so if we don't get eggs then so be it.
On top of their current egg-layer pellets I started giving them warm, milky porridge twice a week. They LOVED that! I also gave them sunflowers seeds. I have read that 1TSP per bird per fortnight is plenty. I probably gave it to them once a week.

Well it worked. It worked wonders. My hennies stayed nice and fat and the 3 of them (Mrs. Purebred Lavender Araucana doesn't lay at the best of times) kept laying throughout winter. We had a few days here and there where we would get less eggs or  noone would lay at all but we had a steady supply.

In fact, we havent seen a halt in the egg laying at all until this Summer, dark browney and light browney decided they wanted to hatch out some eggs. We don't have a rooster.

This, is another story for another day.

WOW

Wow. It has been 7 months since I last posted. Have I been lazy? Not quite. Been badly behaved with my blog? Most definitely. My poor garden has become overgrown and my blog empty and barren. I have been settling in and loving my new job. I still love it more than ever but I now have a great routine. A routine which involves 4:45am starts that allows 15 mins of coffee-in-bed-time, breakfast, husband-off-to-work time and then extra for either garden or exercise time. All before 7:00am when I leave the house for work. This week we did garden time and my garden is now ready for replanting.

The wondrous thing about my fabo job is that I have EVERY SINGLE weekend off! Tonight is Friday and after work drinks and Husband coming into the city to pick me up I am ready for a weekend of Farm work. I am after all, a suburban farm girl.