Well, last week I put a 20 watt incandescent bulb in the coop. Egg production has increased. As of this afternoon we're up to 6 eggs per day!

Current production is up at the sacrifice of a longer laying career.

These guys get to go outside tomorrow and then we start over in a day or two.

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More chicks hatched out yesterday, six as of last night seven as of this morning.

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ETA some better pics of our newest batch.

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Anyone have any Guinea hens? Wife wants a couple, thinks they will become invincible warriors and bug-eaters.

Is there anything I can do about a broody hen? There are no roosters involved; this girl sits on a clutch of 5 eggs without  producing any eggs at all.

Well we just got this years chicks to turn into laying hens. Last year we started off with 6 Novogens, my wife wanted an assortment whereas I don't care as long as there is production.  Wound up with 3 black sexlink, 2 sapphire olive eggers and 2 buff chanteclers.  Later on we will pick up the chicks to raise for meat, going to get 10 of them and a couple turkeys.

egg production is down, 3-4 per day now, because I covered the coop with a tarp; the roof leaks and we want to protect the ladies from rain.

I normally use a fair amount of herbicides around my place, primarily for my lawn, driveway and spot killing invasives. I'm sure my hens would pick up granular fertilizer so that is out now, as is granular ground sterilizer. What does everyone do to protect their birds? Lock em up for set amount of time after application? No more chemicals?

That’s how I run my place. No chemicals whatsoever. The only things I use on the entirety of my 40 acre blueberry farm is some Raid ant spray for fire ants around planters and some roach and rat bait inside of the barns.

My guineafowl did a good job of removing an invasive sand spur off of my 2 acre yard.

Are you talking about goat head spurs? My wife wants some guineas and if they kill goats heads, I'm all in!

Lawn burr. It grows so low my mower can't get it. In late winter it used to take over large patches of the yard, making it impossible to walk around barefoot and often the burs worked their way through the soles of shows. The guineas reduced it by 75% the first year I had the flock and this year they wiped the rest out.

You want French guineas as opposed to regular domestic guineas. The French guineas get bigger and are more laid back. They don't make as much racket when they are mature. They generally only alert to real dangers.

Guineas are a handful to raise. I believe they're biologically built to be followers when they're chicks and that's what makes them seem so stupid. When they get over a year old their problem solving skills increase a lot. I can command my guineas to do some things. For instance, if a guinea runs inside of a chicken coop. I can point to the door and tell it to get out and it will.

They don't reproduce on their own well. So far mine are batting 0% for successfully hatching their own eggs. They inevitably hide their nests far out from the barnyard in the blueberry fields where they get picked of by predators at night, as opposed to my game chickens which nest around the barnyard and so far I've lost no game hens or nests to nighttime predators.

If the day came when electricity wasn't available the only way I could foresee keeping a flock of guineas going on a homestead would be to collect their eggs and put them under a broody chicken hen.

I started with 10 guineas 2 years ago. Between snakes and my dogs (yes rat snakes seem to like to kill them even thought they can't eat them), 5 made it to adulthood, 2 cocks and 3 hens. I then hatched out more from the flock of 5 and brought their numbers to 24. Over the next year I lost all but 7. Of the 7 I have now, only one is of the original flock, the original dominant cock. I lost the original 3 hens when they tried to sit on their nests a long ways from the house.

Not all of a guinea's problems is related to them being directly killed by predators. I've learned that the dominant cock is very choosy and often runs off guineas he doesn't like. The birds that he runs off go feral in the woods. I might get them on trail camera hundreds of yards away from the house weeks after they disappear, then I won't see them again. I did have some guinea keets get adopted by a wild turkey hen.

There was once a homestead guinea common in the SE that was different than modern domestic guineas. The old south guinea had a larger helmet. My great great aunt and uncle had a flock. Those birds were better survivors. My understanding is that those guineas were of a flock brought over separate from other guineas that were more pure in their subspecies to wild guineas from Africa.

So the local shop got more chicks, so guess what I got more chicks.... a couple gold laced wyanedottes and a couple midnight majestic marans... chicken math for my wife is like gun math for me

I used a propane weed burner to control mine when I lived in Nuevo Mehico.

I put my chickens in a greenhouse over the winter.....

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20 hens, a couple roosters, 7 ducks, and a goose. Using the deep mulch method I put fresh hay down every other day and just let it build up. So far it is almost 16” deep. My egg production has not let up one bit. I average 10-16 chicken eggs and 4-8  duck eggs EVERY single day. My only obstacle with the greenhouse was condensation so I slowly began adding passive vents at each end, then another up in the peaks of each end. This helped a little, but finally about two weeks ago I removed the two passive vents and just put mesh over openings to allow more ventilation. This solved the constant condensation buildup and when I put them back out in their mobile coop I will end up with a 14’x14’x2’ of composted chicken/duck manure compost for my gardens.

I will follow up with pics of current conditions a little later.

ETA: I only had their water freeze up a couple of times when it went down into single digits. Other than that I did not take any steps to keep their water from freezing. The ducks made it hard to keep their water full as they tend to waste it, but I hope to have that sorted out for next winter.

Cool picture! do you have the ducks/goose for their egg production also? or are they more just pets?

Darned thing bit the hell out of me!

Our six hens are generally a pretty affable bunch, but today while gathering eggs one of them bit me! She was squatting on 2 eggs, in the corner they've decided to lay. It looked like she was trying to hatch them. I wonder if she's getting broody? She nipped me HARD, twice, and was aiming for a third time when I gave her the word.

If she IS broody, what do I do about it?

We overbought hens expecting to lose some in the brooder, when free ranging, etc.  They have done great and only lost a couple chicks.  They will start laying soon.  What am I gonna do with 2 doz eggs a day, y'all????  

Make friends. Lots of friends.

Seriously, we have 6 hens, seldom get fewer than 3 eggs per day. Usually 4 or 5. There're only so many ways to make omelets...

I have 22 hens  and out of them about 5-6 that wanted to sit on the eggs.  We were able to break this habit for them by leaving them in jail of a night or two.



We take a large dog crate with the pan out leave the hens in there over night and most of the next day, then let them out and see if they return to the nest or just back with the flock most of the time it only took one night but had one that took a bit longer as she always ended up back on the nest.

Here is an update to the stuff I posted on the last page.

Cereal rye turned out really nice and likely laid down enough seed that I won't have to buy seed next year.

West run where rye was planted first.
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I mowed it low and then raked up the residual with this:
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This is what it looked like after.  In hindsight I wish I would have dragged it with the landscape rake because the chain drag couldn't cut through the rye residue that was still rooted in the ground.
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Threw out german millet seed and raked it in more with the chain harrow.  This is what it looks like a few days later.  There is a lot of rain in the forecast.
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The chickens are in the east run with the second crop of cereal rye seeding out.
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Did not work.  She attacked another chicken right in front of my wife and FIL.  He beat her off with a belt and the chicken lived.  I bought a shock collar and that is the next trial.  She is going to learn that chickens have super powers.

I’ve done it on 5 dogs, worked on 4.

1. Collie/American bulldog mix, worked.
2. Black lab, worked.
3. Old English bulldog, worked
4. Redbone coonhound, worked.
5. Catahoula blue leopard, did not work.

The dogs it worked on were all mature and well past their puppy stage. The catahoula was a puppy and I think that is why it didn’t work. A shock collar didn’t work on the catahoula either. She simply waited for the shock collar to be taken off before killing the next chicken. And if left on 24/7, she waiting for me to not be home (she learned the shock collar only worked if I was nearby and watching).