By The Numbers - 2024 Egg Production

Last week we looked at the rainfall totals and trend from 2024.  I always find that to be interesting.  Tonight we'll look at the 2024 egg production totals.  As we do with rainfall, we keep daily logs of the number of eggs we pick up each day.  Yes, it is a paper log.  There's probably a more efficient way to do this.  Who knows?  There might be an app, but for now, we write down the number of eggs each day, total up by month and then by year.  I move all the information into an Excel worksheet.  We also add notes that remind us about eggs we put under a broody hen or when we move pullets back out into the pasture with the rest of the flock. 

We now have 12 years of data on how many eggs we've gathered.  We eat a bunch of them, give some to family members and sell the rest to people who appreciate free range, pastured hens that roam free and eat, primarily, what God provides them.  Things like bugs, worms, frogs, grass, garden scraps and leftovers sometimes.

The first thing you'll notice is that the number of eggs produced in 2024 on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm is down and down significantly.  In fact, it is the lowest year since we've been recording egg production.  To be specific, 1,508 eggs less than last year!  That is attributable to losing 39 hens to minks.  Even though we replaced some with hens that we raised from eggs incubated by broody hens, it wasn't enough to offset the ones lost in the bloodbath.

Let's look at a few things.  The month of March is still the highest production month.  This makes sense to me as it is springtime and fresh, lush green grass is abundant, as are bugs and worms.  More protein = more eggs.  The lowest was November.  That one is a little hard to figure out.  You can look to see how we measured up against the 12 year average.  

Let's look at the data in another format, broken up in totals by month and for the year and converted into dozens.

I looked up the information from last year where we had roughly 50 hens.  It is hard to be exact because we always lose a few here and there from predation and old-age.  With 33 hens, they laid about 155 eggs each.  Each day we picked up, on average a little more than a dozen eggs.  This year we hope to add a few birds to our flock.  We've had to take down our "Eggs for Sale" sign as we only have enough to sell to our regular customers.  I'd like to reintroduce some Barred Rock hens to the flock as the minks wiped out every last one of them.  As the days get longer and the food sources get more abundant, we'll see more eggs.

2023 Egg Totals - By the Numbers

Yesterday we looked at rainfall.  We had less rainfall in 2023 than we did in 2022 or any year since we began tracking.  Eggs were a different story.  We had MORE eggs in 2023 than we did in 2022.  This is mainly because we hatched out two batches of chicks that we raised.  We butchered all the roosters, except for two.  The pullets finally began laying.  Simple math.  If you have more birds, you're gonna collect more eggs.  But toward the end of the year, the minks began to take a toll on the older chickens, killing what we estimate to be 40-something birds.  Egg production took a hit toward the end of the year, for sure. 

Let's look at the eleven year trend in the trendline below.  In 2023, we collected 6,615 eggs.  What do we do with all those eggs?  We eat a BUNCH!  We give some away.  We sell some, too.  Our biggest month on egg production during 2023 was March and the lowest month was January.  Over the 11 year period, we averaged 8,053 eggs per year.  The biggest egg production month was May and the lowest was December.

Here is another little table below that breaks down egg production by month and converts to dozen.  Below that, it gives some fun data.

So we're picking up an average of 18 eggs per day.  A bird will lay an egg once every 2.76 days.  If we kept our chickens confined in a barn on a high protein diet with lights on all the time, we could boost those numbers up significantly.  The mink problem tempts me to do that!  But then they wouldn't be natural eggs.  We like the free ranging, pastured birds.  We intend on hatching out some additional chicks this spring to replenish the flock to replace the ones killed by predators.

For Every Time, There is a Season

In the late afternoons, Tricia and I try to get our steps in.  We have a step counter and the goal is 10,000 steps each day.  In our 3 acre pasture, if we don't cut corners and walk the perimeter, each lap is about 700 steps.  We walk, we talk, and we enjoy the sights and sounds of a country afternoon.  We are both in our mid-50's and, though we are active people, it helps to have some sort of an organized fitness routine and hold each other accountable (because I like to eat!)

The neighbor that lives in the house bordering our pasture hollered at me last week.  He said, "You're walking as I'm about to go inside and eat McDonald's," as he held up a brown paper bag.  On our walks, Tricia and I talk about our kids, goals, to-do lists, hypothetical situations and what we'd do.  It's a nice time.  We watch Belle run like wild in the pasture.  The cows, taking advantage of the relative coolness of the afternoon, munch on grass.  We can hear the crunching as they pull the grass with their tongues.

Time is fleeting, though.  Since we passed the Summer Solstice, the days are getting shorter.  In fact, for our zip code, here are the average sunrise and sunset times for the next six months:

July                 6:20 am    8:13 pm

August            6:38 am    7:50 pm

September      6:56 am    7:15 pm

October          7:14 am    6:39 pm

November      6:37 am    5:15 pm

December      6:59 am    5:14 pm

Look specifically at the sunset times I've highlighted over the next several months.  Notice that just as the sunset is getting earlier, the sunrise is getting later.  The days are shortening.  For egg production, this is a bad time of year.  A hen's reproductive cycle is based on daylight hours.  It begins and picks up in spring when daylight hours reach 14 hours per day.  As the days get shorter, the amount of eggs the hens lay are reduced.  

We've pulled down our "Eggs For Sale" sign down that we keep posted by the road.  We have loyal customers and all are on the honor system.  We have an outdoor fridge in the garage and they pick up the amount of eggs they need and leave money in the butter dish in the fridge.  We're picking up only a dozen a day max right now and that's not enough for us to eat AND sell.  Our principle is to "eat all you can and sell the rest."  Right now, there's none left over to sell.

Our hens roam free on the 3 acre pasture, eating bugs, worms, grass, frogs, and whatever else they find to eat.  The yolks are rich and dark yellow.  The solution to increase egg production in the shortened days would be to put lights in our henhouse.  That's what the big egg production companies do to maximize production.  We decided not to do that early on.  Just as we need a break, the hens do, too!  We let them rest in the fall and winter.  They'll pick back up in the spring.

2021 Egg Production - By the Numbers

Let's finish up our look at Egg Production for the year of 2021 before it is time to show totals for 2022, shall we?  We are a small homestead farm that operates on the "Blue Bell ice cream" principle.  We eat all we can and sell (and give away) the rest.  We do eat a lot of eggs.  Each afternoon around 4 - 5 pm, we do our evening chores.  One of those tasks is collecting eggs from the nesting boxes and also searching around favorite nesting hiding places where rogue hens like to secretly lay their eggs.

We collect the eggs in a wire basket like below:

We bring the eggs back to the house and package them in egg cartons.  We very seldom have to purchase egg cartons because people bring empty cartons to us.  Upon going into the house, we record the number of eggs collected.  We have nine years of history, but have had laying hens for longer than that.  In 2013, we started tracking egg production and I'm glad we did.  It's interesting to see the history and observe seasonal trends.

Here is the cumulative record:

A couple of interesting observations.  First, March repeated its 2020 trend of being the month with the most egg production.  In March the spring grass is lush and there are more bugs and worms for eating.  The temperature is perfect.  A happy, unstressed hen lays more eggs.  November was our month with the fewest egg production.  The days are beginning to be shorter and foraged bugs, worms, grass is not as easy to get.

In our Nine Year history, you can see that overall April is our biggest production month and December our lowest.  Overall, we average 8,420 eggs per year or 702 dozen.  Amazing to think that on our little farm our hens have produced 75,784 eggs, or 6,315 dozen.  Of course that all depends on how many hens you have, their age, and a dozen other variables.  You can see that data below:

We had about 45 birds in 2021.  We have lost a lot of birds over the last year due to predation.  I've caught a lot of possums, but there are always hawks and owls on patrol.  You can't legally trap or shoot those.  Belle, our livestock guardian dog, needs to step up her game!  We average picking up 12 eggs per day.  The annual eggs per bird is 123.  That figure is WAY below the production for the type of hens we have (Rhode Island Red, Barred Rock, Aracauna).  They appear to lay an egg every 3 days.

We just purchased 15 birds from a neighbor to replace those lost to predators.  These hens are 1 year old and are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a White Leghorn.  They lay brown eggs and are prolific.  They are supposed to lay between 250-300 eggs per year.  We'll see...

2019 Egg Production By the Numbers

Last week we summarized cumulative rainfall totals for 2019 that fell at our little farm three miles north of Jennings, Louisiana.  We also do the same thing with egg production.  For seven years we've written down the numbers of eggs we pick up each day.  First, it was Russ' job and then Benjamin's to gather eggs and record daily production. Now, we're experiencing the empty nest syndrome (pardon the pun), since it is just Tricia and me at the house, we gather eggs and record egg production daily.

So let's take a quick look at monthly and yearly egg production compiled since 2013:

Although we haven't counted the number of chickens in a few years, Tricia and I estimate that we have around 90 laying hens.  The number of hens we have vary over the years and that is one of the variables regarding the number of eggs we pick up.  We haven't added any new pullets to the flock in several years, resulting in the age of our flock becoming older and that results in fewer eggs.  We've lost a few hens to predators and old age, too.

As far as trends go, you can see that, once again, April is the best month for egg production on our farm.  The weather is nice - not too cool and not too hot.  Comfortable, non-stressed chickens lay more eggs.  There is also fresh, green vegetation growing in April and that yields more eggs as nutrition in better.  December is, once again, the poorest month for egg production.  Shorter days and a lack of fresh green vegetation diminishes the eggs we collect.  To alleviate this, we could leave lights on in the hen house and get more eggs, but we've decided against that.

In 2019 we picked up 8,446 eggs or 703.83 dozens.  Since we've been raising hens, we have gathered 64,422 eggs or 5,368.50 dozens.  That's a lot of eggs!  What do we do with all of them?  Well, we eat a bunch of them, we sell a bunch of them, and we give a bunch of them away.  They are delicious and nutritious.

Here is a summary of 2019 Egg Production by month:

The last thing is kind of interesting.  We have 90 hens.  They lay almost 94 eggs per bird per year.  We collect, on average, almost two dozen eggs per day.  The hens lay 0.26 eggs per day or put another way, the hens lay an egg every 3.89 days.  All these egg production numbers were skewed low this year as we did not count all the eggs that were broken by the egg eating chicken.  January 2020 egg production numbers are already markedly higher since we put her in the freezer.

2017 Egg Production - By The Numbers

We try to keep accurate records around Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Good record-keeping helps to spot trends, good management ideas (things that went well), bad management ideas (experiments that didn't work), and just gives us benchmarks so that we can compare year to year to see how we are doing.  It is kind of like a scoreboard.  Today we'll look at the scoreboard for the hens to see how they are doing.

In looking at the statistics above, you can immediately spot a trend from month to month.  The season peaks out in early spring when the weather is nice, sunshine is plentiful, and tender plants and insects to eat are in abundance.  The eggs dwindle to nothing in the gloomiest, coldest, darkest months.  There is also a dip in egg production in the hottest months of the summer, followed by a brief rebound in early fall.

We have about 100 hens.  According to our records, in 2017 they averaged almost 100 eggs per hen.  This is really not great production, average production for the breeds of hens we have is more like 200 eggs per bird per year.  This can easily be explained.  For most of the year we didn't feed them a high protein diet.  We fed them rough and milled rice.  If I remember correctly, that provides about 12% protein.  For part of the year (beginning in the fall and winter) we did incorporate hen scratch and laying pellets that provides 17% protein.  Additionally, our hens are getting old.  As they get old, their laying slows down.

Below is a comparison table that we compile that compares egg production year over year.  The variable is the number of hens.  That differs from year to year, but I would estimate that the number of hens doesn't fluctuate by more than 10% each year.

This table shows egg production by year, by month, in total and then converted to dozens.  You can see that 2014 was the best year!  In the 5 year trend you can spot that Dec-Jan are the lowest egg production month each year and that April is the best month for egg production.

There are several things we could do to increase egg production.  We could keep lights on them all the time.  We could consistently feed them a higher protein ration.  We could get rid of all of our older birds and start with a brand new, younger flock, keeping the hens for two years before rotating out.  We could get rid of the Aracaunas (hens that lay blue and green eggs) and replace with Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks or perhaps get some white leghorns.

While we could do some of the practices mentioned above to increase egg production, we probably won't.  Why?  We currently have plenty of fresh, farm eggs to eat, to sell, and to give away at church.  We love having free range chickens.  They provide delicious, healthy eggs for us to eat and they walk around and fertilize our pasture.  They are "eggstrodinary" creatures!

2016 Egg Production on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm

Here is a second installment so far in January in our annual record-keeping report. Last week we showed our rainfall totals for year ended 2016.  Although we can't really control how much rain falls, we still track it as I like to see trends.  Now we'll talk about egg production from our hens for the past year.  We can do a think or two about influencing egg production, but weather, daylight hours, and nutrition play the biggest role in the amount of eggs "the girls" lay.

It is Benjamin's responsibility to go out each afternoon and gather eggs.  He walks out with his egg basket and checks the chicken tractors, the hen house and the nesting boxes in the barn.  He has to be diligent, though.  The hens are crafty.  They always find different hiding spots to lay their eggs - up in the hay loft, behind the refrigerator, sometimes just out on the flat ground.  He goes on his own Easter egg hunt each and every day.  He'll gather the eggs and package them into egg cartons and then he fills in a ledger with daily egg production by writing the daily tally down.  I total each month and then at the end of the year, I'll transcribe it into an excel spreadsheet.  Here is the result of last year's records:

Now you'll notice that egg production for the year 2016 totaled 7,373 eggs or 614 dozen eggs.  This year was slightly different in that March, not April as in prior years, was the best month for egg production.  I think that this is attributable to the spring grass out on the pasture during spring that yields a bonanza of nutrients that enables the hens to really kick it into gear.  That coupled with the increase in daylight hours and mild, comfortable temperatures during spring.  In a strange occurrence, the hens went on strike an laid only 1 egg in December.  One egg!

But here is an even stranger occurrence. Notice that the egg production in May 2016 was the same exact amount that the hens laid in June 2015.  Also notice the egg production in June 2016 is the same exact egg production of July of 2015.  How strange is that!?  Now these are only just numbers and they are pretty meaningless (other than the seasonal trend) because I'm lacking the most important number - the number of hens we have running around out on the pasture each month.  The hens won't stand still for long enough to let us count them.  The egg production could be falling due to the age of our birds or they could be falling because the hens are getting older.  Or it could be due to both things.  We do add 15 pullets to the flock each year, but we probably lose more than that due to predators, cows stepping on them, and just death from old age.

Tricia guesses that we have 75 hens.  If that is the case, in 2016 each hen laid 98.31 eggs per year. That is well below the 200-240 eggs per year that the birds should lay according to the breeds we have. That means the average eggs per day we harvest is 20.2.  The average eggs per bird per day is 0.269 and the average hen lays an egg every 3.71 days.

So far in January 2017 the girls haven't laid an egg yet!  We have actually had to purchase eggs from the store. Gasp!!  It makes me want to make a big gumbo with those freeloading hens.  We do see from past years that the egg production starts rising in late January - early February.  We'll see if that rings true in 2017.

The Hot Hens of Summer

In 1966 (the year I was born), a musical group called "The Lovin' Spoonful" released a song called Summer in the City that had the following lyrics:

Hot town, summer in the city

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty

Been down, isn't it a pity

Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

Do you remember that?  Well, it's not just summer in the city.  It is summer in the country, too, and the chickens are walking in the pasture, hotter than a match head.

Healthy (but hot) hens on green grass

Benjamin was visiting his MoMo Kay and Papa today, so I had egg duty.  I grabbed Benjamin's wire egg basket and made the rounds collecting eggs to the chicken tractor, the hen house, the goat barn, the hidden nest underneath the old freezer, and the nesting boxes in the barn.  It was there that I encountered an Aracauna hen we call "the barn owl" because she likes to hang out in the barn.  She will fly up into the rafters to roost if we don't evict her.

Generally the hens finish up laying around noon or shortly thereafter, but this old gal was on the nest at 6pm.  She didn't much appreciate me being there.

Leave me alone!

I quickly caught her and used a pair of scissors to trim all the feathers off of her right wing.  She'll not be flying up in the barn rafters for quite a while now. Aracaunas lay either blue or green eggs and sure enough, there was a sky blue egg in the nesting box right next to a wooden egg that I put in the boxes for rat snakes to eat.  Obviously, the snake won't be able to digest a solid wooden egg and it will kill the snake.  When you find the dead snake, you can cut it open and retrieve the wooden egg to use again.We call these snakes chicken snakes, but I think the correct name is rat snakes. They love to eat eggs.  They're harmless but they grow to be exceedingly large and they scare you by their size.  

I was talking to a gentleman at church Sunday morning who told me that he caught a rat snake in his hen house.  The snake had numerous bulges.  Some bulges shrunk when hit with a shovel.  These were chicken eggs that broke in the snake's belly.  Some didn't shrink when hit.  Those were the wooden eggs.  After scaring his wife with the big snake, he got his wooden egg back!

Blue egg from the Aracauna alongside a wooden egg

We always see a significant reduction in the hens' egg production numbers in the peak period of summer.  The hens are just hot and uncomfortable.  They are doing what they can to stay cool and the heat takes a toll on their egg laying.  In March, April, and May, we were picking up between 3 and 5 dozen every day.  We don't get that amount in summer, though.  Look at that miserable little basket of eggs.  11 of them to be exact.

Not even a dozen

I did find a hidden nest in the goat barn that contained 6 dozen eggs.  Every once in a while we discover hidden nests like this where sneaky hens find creative new places to lay their eggs. Sometimes the eggs are old and rotten and I'll carefully compost them in the garden.  If they aren't rotten, but just questionable, I'll feed them to the dogs.  Other times, like today, I feel like these eggs were laid recently and will still be good.

Discovering a hidden nest

Since the summertime egg productivity has dropped off, we value each egg and don't want to waste them.  We keep these questionable eggs separate and we'll crack them one at a time in a separate bowl.  If the yolk is intact and looks good, we'll eat it.  If we have any reason to doubt one of them, the dogs take care of them.

Usually, if we get overcast days or rain, the chickens feel comfortable again and will reward us by laying more eggs.  We look forward to that.

2015 By The Numbers

At the beginning of each year, we like to look back to see if we can better manage things by looking at trends, statistics, and facts.  We pray that we'll be good stewards of things that the Good Lord has given us to manage.  As a result we try to read and gain knowledge and improve each day.  Another thing we do is maintain records.  Although it can be tedious, good record-keeping is vital in determining what works and what doesn't work year after year.

Our utility room is the primary work area of our home.  We wash and dry clothes there.  We pour milk there and wash the milking buckets and milking rags there. We store our egg cartons for packing away our daily egg production there.  We germinate all of our tomato, eggplant, and pepper seeds there.  We have a deep freeze chest freezer where we store a lot of our meat, vegetables and fruit there. There's one more thing we do in the utility room.

It is there where we have charts to track our egg and milk production as well as rainfall totals.  The charts are on a magnet attached to the door of the freezer.  Each day we dutifully chart totals and at the beginning of the next year, we record the totals.  I've thought about automating it by maintaining the charts in an Excel spreadsheet, but files can be lost or destroyed.  A chart maintained by hand, complete with different handwriting and ink colors on various lines, shows imperfections and mistakes.  These imperfections and mistakes remind me that that's who we are.  We are quite imperfect and fail quite often, but we keep going even though the results may not be pretty.

Anyway, today during lunch I transferred all the handwritten data into Excel, to quickly provide sums, averages, and see trends over the past three years we've been keeping records.  Here is our story:

For year ended December 31, 2015, our hens produced 9,155 eggs or 763 dozen eggs in total. Although I can't count them because they won't stand still while I'm counting, I'd guesstimate that we have about 65 laying hens running around the pasture, clucking, pooping, and doing other such fun hen things.  They are chased by 7 roosters who are quite amorous and when they aren't running from the roosters, the girls lay eggs for us.

Not surprisingly, over a three year average, the best month for egg production is April.  If I had to give an educated guess why, I would say that in April, the pasture has lush grass.  Spring has sprung and the tender, nutritious grass, along with bugs, worms and other delicacies give the hens maximum nutrition, allowing them to fill the nesting boxes with beautiful brown, green and blue eggs.

We'd be able to increase our egg production during the winter months if we kept a light on for them. Their laying quantities reduce significantly as the days get shorter since a hen requires a certain amount (research shows 15 hours per day) of daylight to maintain peak egg laying.  We choose not to do that and give the girls a 'rest' during the winter.  We do look forward to the longer days of spring and the resulting increase in egg production.  Our historical records show that this increase begins abruptly in very late January/early February.  We'll see if this trend continues...

Now let's take a look at rainfall totals.

Although we can't do a single thing about rainfall, it is interesting to track rainfall totals.  Rainfall averages over time for our zip code shows that on average, it rains 60.35 inches per year - a tad above 5 feet in a year!  If you average our rainfall we recorded over 2013 - 2014 (two year time period), that is right on the money: 60.25 inches.  However, in 2015 we had a full 9 inches more of rainfall in the year, totaling 69.05 inches or almost 6 feet of rainfall.  That's almost a foot more rainfall than we got last year! March continues to be our driest month, but the 13 inches of rain in April 2015 propels it to be the new 3 year average wettest month, replacing the previous two year average wettest month of January.

Overall, we just got more rain this year, despite June, July, and August being drier than normal.  That explains why the barnyard is a muddy, soupy mess.  Let's look on the bright side, though.  Our aquifers ought to be fully recharged now. California is in a drought.  I'd rather have too much rainfall than not enough.

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!

2013 Eggs & Rain by the numbers

We like to keep pretty good records of things on the farm.  It gives us an idea of costs and revenues and production figures.  This information is helpful in reassessing what we're doing to determine if we might need to adjust our management practices.  I'll show you a good example of what I'm talking about.  The chart below was cut & pasted from Excel and the formatting didn't carry properly, but I think you can get the idea, even though it is very rough.

The Y access shows the day of the month and the X axis shows the month of the year.  The bottom lines show totals by month and cumulative egg production figures for the year.  I apologize again for the quality of the table below.

Our Maker's Acres Family Farm
Egg Production Records
Year: 2013
	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1	14	16	20	21	24	19	18	7	9	13	3	0
2	14	20	5	14	32	36	14	9	17	17	4	0
3	16	13	18	17	34	33	21	9	5	18	4	0
4	11	23	2	28	19	36	24	5	18	25	7	0
5	10	22	16	30	40	32	13	12	0	20	6	0
6	17	15	9	27	15	33	21	3	11	22	0	0
7	15	19	17	32	20	30	18	3	0	20	0	0
8	10	15	12	27	13	22	20	6	11	17	0	0
9	9	19	21	29	22	28	22	3	7	19	5	0
10	16	15	21	37	16	21	19	5	9	19	7	0
11	12	21	28	38	17	20	18	2	8	19	8	0
12	11	16	20	35	15	16	20	6	7	20	5	0
13	13	13	29	40	29	15	21	2	9	18	12	0
14	18	14	22	39	28	16	15	5	9	16	7	0
15	8	14	21	34	29	16	13	2	7	12	6	0
16	14	12	26	44	32	16	16	5	8	18	10	0
17	8	13	32	36	32	13	8	4	8	0	4	0
18	12	13	33	39	32	18	12	3	7	9	8	0
19	11	11	26	39	36	19	5	6	6	14	8	0
20	9	13	36	26	36	13	20	8	20	9	5	0
21	12	12	31	39	30	12	6	11	12	7	7	0
22	10	10	33	29	32	10	18	9	20	3	6	1
23	10	9	33	36	37	15	7	9	11	8	0	1
24	10	10	27	27	26	15	12	8	19	1	0	1
25	8	9	32	27	26	8	9	14	15	4	3	1
26	13	12	28	31	36	10	13	9	16	6	0	5
27	11	15	25	22	28	12	13	0	17	3	0	1
28	13	13	18	30	28	14	11	13	13	3	0	7
29	20	0	16	33	25	14	9	12	12	4	0	3
30	20	0	22	29	26	15	12	13	22	4	1	5
31	18	0	13	0	28	0	14	11	0	9	0	4
	393	407	692	935	843	577	462	214	333	377	126	29	by Month
	32.8	33.9	57.7	77.9	70.3	48.1	38.5	17.8	27.8	31.4	10.5	2	Dozen
	393	800	1492	2427	3270	3847	4309	4523	4856	5233	5359	5388	YTD
	32.8	66.7	124.3	202.3	272.5	320.6	359.1	376.9	404.7	436.1	446.6	449	Dozen YTD

This chart showed some interesting information.  Our little flock laid a total of 5,388 eggs in 2013 or 449 dozen eggs.  That seems high at first glance, but a we have about 60 hens.  That means on average, our hens laid 89 eggs.  If you do a quick search, you'll see that on average a hen will lay an egg every 26 hours or 265 eggs per year.  Yikes!  What happened?

As we discussed in a previous post, we have a nutrition problem and need to supplement with feed to give the birds the nutrition they need.  Good record-keeping bears this out.  As the chart indicates, during the Spring and early summer, the birds are able to forage for bugs and worms to supplement the grain we're feeding them and egg production is at its highest.  However, in winter months, when the bug and worm population falls off, we need to begin supplementing with feed, as their egg production falls off sharply. 

This is interesting data for me - News I can Use!  

We also do the same thing with rainfall data, tracking it day by day on a similar chart.  What we show below is a total of 63 inches of rain for the year in 2013, averaging a little over 5 inches per month.  Disclaimer: we may have missed a day or three during the year, but the figures should be pretty close for our area.  We'll continue to keep detailed records which help to show interesting trends to assist us in farm management. 

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
14.35	6.2	2.9	8.8	5.2	3.4	2	2.5	6.6	3.7	2.7	4	Rain by Month (inches)
14.35	20.55	23.45	32.25	37.45	40.85	42.85	45.35	51.95	55.65	58.35	63	YTD Rain (inches)
												5 Avg Rainfall/Mo.