Since my last post in July, we went through a bit of a health crisis last summer, but the scars are mostly healed. We cut back on some of the daily chores for sanity sake. Gardening kind of went into a lull, and we sold off a few of the hens. Posting and taking photos was the least of my priorities.
Currently, we have 13 hens and four ducks in total, and are selling eggs (duck and chicken) like they are going out of style. We have one duck that, all winter long, lays an egg every day, while the other three are waiting for warmer temps. We have nine chickens that are consistently laying eggs almost daily. So, yah, the rest are slackers. On the plus side, Spring will be here very soon, and the other egg layers should start to produce again.
With the
Avian Flu hitting the US really hard this winter, the price of eggs are
high and in short supply. We don't have a shortage, just a higher demand than typical. We have customers on "wait lists." In the meantime, the price of chicken feed
keeps going up. Thankfully, we have a good group of understanding
customers who have stayed with us, and our flocks have remained fairly
healthy and good producers this year.
We have 90 chicks on order this year. 60
of the chicks should arrive next week. The rest of the chicks should
arrive in April. Will try to remember to post the new chick photos next
week. No, we won't keep all. We thin out the flock to keep a mostly cohesive group of good layers.
In and around all that, we got a decent dusting of snow yesterday and today. Some areas also received freezing rain. That missed us, probably because of the strong East Winds that were howling through, sometimes, at 50 mph. Temps were in the mid-20s most of this past week, with windchill temps dropping down into the single digits, which is cold for this region of the PNW. But, today, the temps are warming, the snow is melting, and when that's solidly happening, our birds will be much happier.
The ducks, sometimes known as Silly Ducks, seemed to think that by hunkering down in their kiddie pool yesterday, that they would stay warmer, despite the strong winds buffeting them around in the pool. We had to force them into their coop to get them to out of the freezing environment. The coop, actually, stays pretty warm inside, when they are in there on the straw that we have layered thick for them. The water bucket is on a special water heating pad, to keep that from freezing, and we made sure to provide extra feed so that they can eat whenever they feel like it during the storm and resulting cold weather. One of the ducks tends to develop foot issues every spring, after all the frost and frozen ground events. So, I have supplies ready to treat that, when it pops up again this year. For now, they are locked inside their coop until the snow melts.
The hens are seemingly a bit smarter. They are staying up in their house, up off the ground, except to eat or drink water. I have straw around their feeder and waterer to protect their feet when they do leave their housing. We did put wind blocks around two sides of their pen to minimize the amount of snow blowing into their pen. While the snow in the field is only about three to four inches deep, the drifts up against their pen is closer to six or seven inches. Thankfully, the snow only got inside from the north side of their pen, giving them plenty of space to move around without needing to step into snow and freezing their feeties. I've been watching their combs closely, but I don't think the temps are low enough to do any damage at this point. Thankfully, this year's snow event wasn't as nasty as last year's.
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