We have 36 chickens. We bought eight of them as day-olds two and a half years ago. This year we bought 25 laying chicks and 20 meat birds as day-olds. One of the laying chicks disappeared, so there are 24 of them left. One of the meat birds died and fifteen went to the butcher at the beginning of September. Now we have four left to be butchered, and we plan to try to do it ourselves.
The older hens lay one to four eggs per day between the eight of them, and the 24 younger hens lay between two and six. The eggs from the older hens are extra extra large, but the younger hens have been laying medium to large eggs so far. (By the standards of the regular eggs that can be bought at the grocery store. By the standards of the eggs we are used to from our hens, these eggs are small.)
I just took a break to do the chores and found seven eggs from the younger chickens. It's getting better everyday.:)
Justine
3 comments:
Our kids have wanted to have chickens since we moved to the country, but I'm not so sure they're worth the work and so have dismissed the idea.
I'm just curious ... are your younger laying hens still too young to be laying more regularly? or did you buy them when they were ready to lay?
We have "chicken-sat" for friends and their chickens would pretty much each lay an egg a day ... it was so nice to have a good stack of eggs in the house all the time :) At an egg a day I could sort of see the advantage of having them. We enjoyed chicken-sitting, it was nice to have a abundance of eggs :)
Yes, the chickens should lay more regularly as they get a little older. I'm thinking maybe some are laying nearly one every day, and the others just aren't mature yet, but it could also be lack of light. Generally the egg production goes up in the summer and down in winter when there are less hours of daylight. Right now we don't get an abundance of eggs, but once the chickens are older we might get 15 - 20 eggs a day.
Justine
You sure do have a lot of laying hens! :-) If we ever moved out to the country I am sure that we would get laying hens too, as we LOVE farm eggs. They taste so good compared to the store bought ones. I also like the bright yellow yolks!!!
A couple years in a row, we got about 50 of our own meat birds, but we had to put them out to our grandparents farm since we live in a town. We really enjoyed eating the chickens, but I guess these last couple years we have not been feeling up to doing that, you know...all the butchering and stuff. :-)
Have a great day,
Emily
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