Putting the Chickens on A High Protein Diet

Our hens have been laying steadily, even through the shorter days with less sunlight.  In past years, their egg production has shut down to virtually none for a month or two during the winter.  Everything was going well until...  We left for a couple of days during the holidays to visit family and when we returned, the hens stopped laying.  It is as if they decided to go on strike and march around with picket signs.

The light definitely does play a role in the diminishing number of eggs we're collecting.  A hen needs 14 hours of daylight to lay eggs.  The number of hours of daylight should be increasing now since we've passed winter solstice.  The other factor is nutrition.  Normally, our hens roam around on 3 acres of land scratching for bugs, worms, and tasty morsels they find scratching through the cow poop.  During the winter, the number of bugs and worms for them to eat goes down considerably.  Besides the hen scratch and laying pellets we feed them, they are looking for things to eat in order to supplement the bugs and worms that were more prevalent in the spring and summer.

Today I found the holy grail of protein for them!  I was splitting some firewood and look what I found:

The larvae of a beetle that bores into oak trees burrows holes in the wood, eating the wood and getting big, fat, and juicy.

Can you see their tunnels?

As I split the log open, giant worms spill out.  You can see one in the hen's mouth, two on the ground beneath the log and one curled up in its burrowed out tunnel in the log.

Here's a closer photo of it.

While these worms look gross to you and me, there is nothing that excites a chicken more than the sight in the photo below!

After I swing my ax and expose more worms to the chickens, I step back in awe as I watch the hens devour the worms.  The worms are much too large to eat in one bite, so the hens grab one in their beak and run off.  The race is on though, because the other hens want to eat what they've got.  They don't want to share, so they race off in the pasture. 

Other hens' patience pays off as I swing my ax again and more worms spill out, providing tasty treats for the hens.  It is similar to a pinata!  Hopefully this additional protein will supplement their nutrient deficiency and encourage them to begin laying once more.  We only have 6 dozen eggs in inventory left.  We don't want to have to buy eggs from the store with 100 hens in the pasture.