2014 By The Numbers

On the door to the freezer in our utility room, we have several charts that we fill in each day to track daily egg production, milk production, and rainfall.  We like to keep good records and watch for trends over the course of time.  Like a scoreboard in a sporting event or a budget, looking at production records lets you know how things are going and helps you to look at and correct management problems. Rainfall totals are a little different.  Obviously, you can't manage rainfall, but it is interesting to track.

One of Benjamin's chores is to gather eggs.  Each afternoon he grabs his egg basket and goes out to the various places in the barn, hen house, chicken tractor and other odd places where our hens like to lay their eggs.  He brings them to the patio, spot cleans them if they need it and packs them in egg cartons.  Then he marks down the egg production for that given day on the egg chart.

A nice looking nest of eggs

Let's take a look at Egg Production in 2013 by month versus 2014:

	2013	2014
JAN	393	197
FEB	407	504
MAR	692	1714
APR	935	1796
MAY	843	1738
JUN	577	1127
JUL	462	1330
AUG	214	1094
SEP	333	988
OCT	377	1200
NOV	126	624
DEC	29	425
TOTAL	5,388	12,737
Dozen	449	1,061

I'm sorry about the formatting, when I copy/paste from Excel, it doesn't come out right.  Regardless, the numbers tell an interesting story.  With approximately the same number of hens on the pasture in both years, we more than doubled the amount of eggs laid in 2014 over 2013.  Why?

Well, there are several answers that we know of and probably other contributing factors that I'm not smart enough to pick up on.  We learn as we go and make mistakes every day.  The first thing we found was nutrition.  In 2013 we didn't do a good job of providing our chickens calcium.  They desperately need calcium since their bodies are using up a great deal of their calcium stores to produce eggs.  When the body has a nutrient imbalance, the first thing that shuts down is the reproductive system - Egg Laying.  So in early 2014, I began to keep a dish of crushed up oyster shells for them to partake of at will and that did the trick!

You can also see a trend of daylight hours and temperature in relation to egg production.  The number of daylight hours is very important for egg production. As the days get shorter, so does the egg count.  There is also a correlation in temperature.  Chickens are like people.  As the days get hotter, they get stressed and eat less, preferring to sit in the shade.  More Heat = Less nutrition = fewer eggs.

We could put lights on our chickens and their egg laying would increase; however, their productive lifespan would be shorter.  We're going to go ahead and let them have natural light and seasons the way God intended.  There are plenty of shade trees for them to cool off under.

How about rain?

Refreshing rainfall

Let's take a look at Rainfall in 2013 by month versus 2014:

	2013	2014
JAN	14.35	2.1
FEB	6.2	7.4
MAR	2.9	2
APR	8.8	3.2
MAY	5.2	8.3
JUN	3.4	9.2
JUL	2	6.5
AUG	2.5	9.2
SEP	6.6	1.2
OCT	3.7	4.2
NOV	2.7	2.55
DEC	4	2.3
TOTAL	62	58
Feet	5.20	4.85

Now, let me make a confession here that although we try our best to mark down each time it rains, sometimes we may forget.  With egg production, because the hens lay every day. we know when we've missed a day.  Not so with rainfall.  We may have missed a day, but the bottom line is the 2014 versus 2013 rainfall difference was statistically immaterial.  The only real trend that I can see is that February looks to be a wet month and November a dry one.  Other than that, the important thing to see is that here in South Louisiana, we average 5 feet of rain a year.  The US average rainfall is 37 inches, so we're pretty wet.

That's a good thing, BUT it also provides plenty of breeding grounds for mosquitoes!