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.