Christmas Eve White Christmas

Last year, we had a sudden snow storm on the 15th of December that caught us off guard and ended up with snow inside of the chicken pens.  This year, we had the shields in place before the snow started flying.  We did not get as much snow this year and some of it was freezing rain so it was quite the mix between the two.  Yesterday was so blustery that the wind chill dropped to 16F even though the temps were closer to 30F. We even had a few gusts of 40mph. So, yah, it was bitter cold on Christmas Eve.  

Thankfully, Christmas day has been calm, although it never really got much above freezing. The new chickens are stressed by the snow, but the older chickens seem to be taking it in stride. 

We have a gopher this year that has been taunting the chickens, tunneling under their coops and into their pens. The coops have floors, so it's not like the gopher is adding tunnels into their coops, but my guess is that, either the gopher or mice using the tunnels are getting an added food resource this year.  We do not seem be going through feed quicker, so I don't think they are able to get into the hanging feeders, but I know that the chickens do drop food on the ground, giving the field critters access to the spillage. 

Some of the hens are still laying, so we got a few eggs this weekend. Not as many, but some eggs is better than none eggs. 

Facing East	Facing West - Coops, Cars & Hills
Light dusting of Freezing Rain and Snow	New Hens at the Feeder
New Hens Confused by the Snow	New Hens Perplexed in a Row
Egg in the Nesting Box on Dec 24	Dec 25 More Freezing Rain
Freezing Rain on Coop 1 (older hens)	Freezing Rain (and Snow) on Coop 2
Nesting Box lid Warmed by Hens	Egg in Nesting Box on Dec 25
Gopher Hole from the Field	Gopher Hole and Trail to Hole under Coop 2
Close up of Gopher Hole under Coop 2	Gopher Hole on Other side of Coop 2

It is supposed to warm up tomorrow - we will see if that happens.

Back to the Full Production

Thankfully, the older hens are back to regular production. But, that was almost a 12-week moult.

Even with the light on every morning this week, the younger hens are not producing. [Big Sigh]  But the older hens are giving us the eggs we need, just nothing to spare.  We just used up the last of our frozen eggs, so we will need to start working on those again so that we have some in storage for the future. Finally have a full dozen in the cooler. [Yay!]

Farm Fresh Eggs for dinner tonight!

Brr Cold Wind Chill Frost

The East Winds had kicked in hard, however, the older Welsummers have mostly completed their moult and with a light in their coop that kicks on at 4:00 a.m., they are starting to lay again. We have gotten two in the past few days.  

The younger hens are not very egg oriented yet, and we are only getting 1, some times 2 eggs per day from them. I know that a factor is the cold cold temps.  We have put the water warmer out to keep the waterers from freezing overnight and to keep the water a bit warmer during the days. We have not, yet, started closing up the coops at night, but if it drops down into the 20s at night, we will. The younger girls had kicked their light out of the socket, so that might also be a factor.  Got the light back in, moved the coops to a new location and now they have some fresh grass to munch on.