The First Four-Egg Day

Yay. Four chickens and four eggs laid today!  Obviously, our pretty little Orloff girls were a bit slower to develop into full blown egg layers than some of the other breeds. We adopted them on the 3rd of May, they had to be at least a week old by that time, and while it was apparent that two of the girls were older (based by size) it was still way longer than 20 weeks to egg production, for all involved.  

This last chicklet didn't start laying eggs until (at least) 29 weeks of age!  Her eggs are darker, as well.  While still beige in color, the eggs are a deeper hue than the others. 

We have had a lot of wind, 20-30 mph with 50 mph gusts, the past week with temps in the 30s and wind chill into the teens and twenties. We don't have a lot of protection from the wind for them since their coop gets moved twice a week.  There is no way to buffer the winds in each new location. They have the ability to get into their coop during the day, but choose to stay outside at long as there is light outside. The coop is well protected from wind and rain. I do have a canvas panel though, that I could try to wrap around the pen on windy and rainy days (sideways rain) but they don't like things that flap around so that might be more stressful than useful. We will just play it by ear to see what/if anything else needs to be attended to, as we head into the winter months. 

Cold Nights and Warm Eggs

While the girls were a little slow to actually start laying eggs, they now gift us with at least 3 eggs every day, rain, shine or freeze. The temps have dropped down below freezing the past few nights and we are still receiving the gifts of 1.5 dozen eggs per week.  They seem to have no problem leaving their coop on the frosty chilly mornings. So, given the year we seem to be having, selecting the Russian Orloffs was a good choice.  But that's the nature of our area. Even when the temps are not yet freezing, our east winds create a wind chill factor that routinely drops the feeling of the air temps down into the 20F. But the girls truly don't seem fazed by the cold winds. It's all good and the eggs are great!  

We do still have a small heat lamp in the coop that comes on at dusk and turns off at dawn. So they have a little extra warmth at night, just in case. Then, we also have a 40W white light that comes on at 4:00 a.m. to add that extra little boost of light for them in the mornings. By 5 pm, it's totally dark here, now. So they really are only getting about 13 hours of light per day, but they are still laying. That's pretty good :)