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.

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.