how is everyone doing for eggs now! ours are getting more into the swing of it. has been a bit up and down. but mostly we are getting 5 good eggs a day from our 10 girls at the moment. hopefully that will pick up as the days get even longer!
koru_designs,
Aug 7, 3:06am
We're getting 1 egg a day at the moment from our 4 girls.but 1 isn't quite at POL yet & I think the bulk of the eggs are coming from our only cross-breed, who recently reached POL. Once they're all back on the lay, I'm anticipating we should get 2, maybe 3 eggs a day from the 4 of them if last year is anything to go by.
jules.,
Aug 7, 9:00pm
good for you koru designs. i went down just before and got another 5 eggs. not bad for this time of year i reakon!
purplegoanna,
Aug 7, 11:28pm
3 eggs from 3 chickens this morning! yay we have nearly reached the full lay.just waiting on my wee bantam to start and theyre all laying!.
jules.,
Aug 8, 3:22am
Thanks for the kind thoughts Koru-designs, shes doing well. I let her out of the rabbit cage today and she roamed around like nothing had happened, then put herself to bed with the others.
I got some SLW fertile eggs for our broody hen, will collect them tomorrow and get her started :) YAY Spring is on the away!
macandrosie,
Aug 9, 4:34am
You know of course it costs more to raise & feed hens than the eggs they can produce!! Anyway I have had hens off & on for years with some success. Since were on a farm I like mine to be free range & scartch around the place, only they have gone to the extreme & turn up at my back door in the morning! Even tho they came from a poultry farm they are really friendly eh & follow me around the place,hang around while I put the washing out! I have a large vegetable garden so when there's surplus they get leafy greens like silverbeet. I'm the only one in the house who will eat the stuff, so the hens get the rest!
jules.,
Aug 9, 5:19am
I disagree, I have 11 hens and go thru about 10 kg of food over about a 10 day period ($10-$15), although that varies on the scraps and garden greens they get, plus they free range. At the moment we are getting an average of 5 eggs a day (35 per week), and this is only the start of the season, so at full lay we will get around 65-75 eggs a week, which we sell for a profit. 6 free range eggs cost around $5+ in stores, so if you eat a lot of eggs (baking etc) then it is worth having them. But its not just about the cost, the eggs are really good and fresh, the kids love them (and me) and they are just great to have around!
purplegoanna,
Aug 9, 5:37am
I get 2 a day and get this NONE ON SUNDAYS! 2 weeks in a row now ive had no eggs on sundays!.we think its an absolute hoot the girls think theyve got the day off! their eggs are small but absotlutely beautiful.theyre extremely fussy eaters too.refuse mash & spuds in any form.love rice, pasta, spagetti.so i cook a icecream container of rice or pasta up and just give them a handful with there scratch every day or so.oh and they love their daily 1cm slice of dog roll!
jules.,
Aug 10, 2:06am
I got the eggs for Clara (our broody lady), very excited, I purchased 6 SLW, but was given 7 plus 2 BR aswell! So we are 1 day down, 20 to go, hehe.
stompy,
Aug 10, 2:08am
Aww thats so lovely, they really do all have personalities.I really don't think alot of people realise this, my girls seem to adore me they get so excited if they see me out in the garden and they want to get to me luckily I have chook proofed the garden well most of it.
jules.,
Aug 10, 2:11am
yeah, mine love dog roll too. its supposed to be good protein for them and help them to come out of their moults quicker.dont know how true it is, but they dont pass it up for dinner every now and then.
janet31,
Aug 10, 5:34pm
Hey just found this thread I was told that chickens go off the lay in the winter - so thought nothing of the cease in production. Began getting suspicious when a few times after letting them out for brekkie - one would have to urgently race off into the bush.imagine her suprise when I followed her yesterday morning and found her on a nest of 43 eggs.removing 43 very old eggs very carefully!
jules.,
Aug 11, 4:01am
oh my. she must have looked pretty funny perched up on top of her tidy stash!
stompy,
Aug 12, 2:46am
Yes they sure do love dog roll I just make sure its beef and not chicken.you know the whole mad cow disease thing! got to have that protein.
jules.,
Aug 13, 1:41am
yeah, i grabbed one, not reading it, but lucky i realised it was chicken before i paid for it. just the idea of them eating thier own kind is weird. i ran out of mash for their dinner tonight and np time to get anymore before the shops closed, so they had nice FRESH bread with warm water to soften it for them and a few other scraps i had about, they loved it.
janet31,
Aug 13, 1:54am
Bread is my Chickens Idea Of Junk food. But Spagetti (watties) is really dining out in style!
jules.,
Aug 13, 4:44am
ahahaa, janet, my kids love feeding the chooks the left over pasta spagetti, i always cook extra for them. they laugh and say it looks like they are eating worms.
janet31,
Aug 13, 4:59am
Hi Jules Do you have any problem with ducks where you are! They are really pesty where we are in West Auckland. I had one today that I had not seen before and I think she has some kind of redpiratory illness and was wheezing really badly - I have trapped her to keep her away from my chickens and either will give to a friend to care for or "dispose" of. They want the nice easy food source.
jules.,
Aug 13, 5:22am
hi janet, nope, no ducks here, just 10 lovely friendly hens. i hear ducks can be a pest if they are uninvited guests though, especially there poop. is there an SPCA near by that you can take it too if the friend doesnt want it! probably best to keep it away from your chooks incase it has a disease that can be passed on. good luck, keep us posted :)
momma1,
Aug 14, 12:07am
we have 3 chickens that my kids caught (we found them in an old demolished building) there were a lot of wild chickens. after a couple of weeks of a good diet and a clean coop the bantam is laying, the other 2 look like brown shavers and have small combs and they are'nt laying. could they be too young! or if too old how can i tell!
laser51,
Aug 14, 1:33am
Lots of info in the farming message board pages and pages of it
seniorbones,
Aug 14, 3:02pm
amazing_grace wrote: We have 8 chooks on our 1/4 acre section They are Hyline which is a breed for battery farming, however these were raised by the battery for sale as point of lay hens. They cost $19 each.Ours were 21 weeks when we got them, and they are laying about 7 a day.We have a big chook house, with 4 nesting boxes at 500mm high on one side of the house.We just googled and looked at different houses for sale then hubby built something very similar.[/quote.Gosh I thought this was written by me! same here we have 4 hi-liners and 5 wynadotts which husbands calls my 'designer hens' we have anything from 4 - 8 eggs per day, I think one of the wynadotts is clucky she sits on the eggs for quite a while I keep taking them off her and also taking her off the nest, is this the right thing to do! I have asked but dont seem to get any help regarding broodie hens, we are going to get more hi-liners as soon as pullets are available from somewhere because they are friendly and lay lovely big brown eggs for us. And we have a Jack Russell which everyone advised they dont mix with chooks but he is great, doesnt even attack the neighbours chooks who wander over to say hello now and then!
seniorbones,
Aug 14, 3:03pm
Do you have hi-liners for sale! I'm in Kapiti but would like young ones at pol.
koru_designs,
Aug 14, 8:15pm
Sounds like she probably is. The easiest way to tell is she'll have a bare patch of skin underneath that she uses to keep the eggs warm. Most broodies sit tight (ie not move off the nest except to eat & drink) but some don't.if you approach her when she's on the nest, a broody will normally fluff up & give you a warning noise. And, of course, she won't lay any eggs & doesn't eat or drink as much.& poos the biggest, stinkiest poop you've ever seen from a chook!
You can either try to break her quickly or just let it get it out of her system.or hatch some eggs! The trick to breaking broodiness is temperature change. I put mine in a wooden cat carrier with nothing except newspaper on the floor & some food & water & put it in a light, airy place. It's cooler & more uncomfy than their nest (& less private) & it snaps them out of it in a few days. Alternatively, you can keep moving her off throughout the day so she keeps having to walk around. Some birds seem to be pretty stubborn though (if you scroll back through this thread, you'll see some posters have had trouble breaking their broodies). If she's really determined, you can just let her sit.make sure she gets off a couple of times a day to eat, drink, dust bath & poop. And it may pay to dust the nest with some sort of mite spray. I put soluvet in their water to give them some vitamins - broodiness takes a lot out of them & they loose quite a bit of condition. I let one of my girls sit last year as she wouldn't break - she ended up spending over 2 months on the nest. Poor thing.
kat120,
Aug 14, 11:45pm
taste absolutely wins hands down.Mine really don't cost much.scraps(including vege garden in seaon and I substitiute chook feed with grain.They are able to get inout of the henhouse all the time.Collecting your own eggs is wonderful
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