New Egg Boxes Working Out and Getting Larger Eggs Using Sun Flower Seeds

Monday September 30, 2019 Guerneville CA.

This nice weather says to putter so I did

I checked the egg boxes this morning and found 4 eggs and one golf ball in the bottom nests. They’ll have to get use to the upper nests as they are mostly use to using the bottom ones. The fact that they used all the bottom nests instead of just one of them like they were doing is a good sign they like the new nest arrangement.

An enjoyable day

The sun was out and the temperature was real nice so I spent a good deal of the day chair hopping and puttering around the yard doing a lot of just enjoying the day.

Moveable chicken runs

I’ve been thinking about making some moveable chicken runs and was wondering how it would work out. I had  this short piece of welded fence wire so I bent it to form a run to see how it might work out.

This would work but I think any chickens getting on top of it might cave it in a bit. This is 3 feet wide by 1 foot high. Bending it with a peak in the middle might work out better. So now I have a sample and can think on what wire to get to do what I want.

Chicken count

I sat around and watched the chickens as they are interesting to watch with all their antics. I have about 25 mature birds with one of them a rooster and about 35 little guys of all sizes as far as I can count which isn’t easy. That’s more birds than I originally thought I’d have but realistically I can’t eat all my birds or I get fewer eggs, so I need new birds coming in to lay so I can eat some of the older chickens that are slowing down laying eggs. I haven’t got to the point where this is all working out yet, but I’m working on it.

New egg boxes are working out

Later in the day I checked the nest boxes again and found a bird in one of the upper nests. It laid an egg, so I got 6 today total. Not very good for 25 laying hens. I can’t remember where that sixth egg came from.

Larger eggs

My  hens need more protein to lay more eggs I think. It’s hard for me to get it to them as I feed seeds with no corn. My brother Tom suggested I try giving them more of the oil type sunflower seeds as they are high in protein. The main result so far after about a week is the eggs I’m getting are much larger.

They may be starting to pick up in number so we’ll see how that works out.

It was a fine day chair hopping and puttering around the yard getting little things accomplished here and there.

Nice one.