Quote from: Vindingo on September 06, 2010, 07:04:33 PM
BUMP...

Anyone get eggs yet?   None for me,  I think 5/9 chicks turned out to be roosters. 

Chicken dinners soon!

Not yet.  I'm hoping the end of the month.  Turns out the two old girls are just too old.

That rooster part sucks unless you have a pot big enough. 

Our initial 4 chicks are now 3 pullets after they got out of the fence and something made off with one. If they're anything like the last batch, they'll probably start laying in February (which, according to all the books, they're not supposed to do) then push out an egg per day and bury us in eggs for most of a year before slowing to a crawl. We have 2 of our original 3 hens left and between them we get about 2-3 eggs per week. I'm pretty sure one of them has quit entirely.

Our girls (born around mid-April 2009) started laying around the end of September 2009; the first eggs were odd-shaped and infrequent -- and we didn't eat them because the hens were still on chick feed with antibiotics. We switched them over to layer feed.

The ISA Browns (a pure laying breed) started laying first, and the Wyandottes (an egg/meat breed) were probably three weeks to a month later. We got up to four eggs a day from four chickens, and then they tailed off a bit in the winter, down to one or two. We didn't push them to lay in winter with artificial lighting, but I think we only had one eggless day. They started up again in Spring, and then began slacking again in the heat of summer.

There was about a week in July when I thought they'd stopped laying completely -- that was until I discovered the cache of a dozen or so eggs tucked away in the corner of the garage where they'd set up an alternate laying site...

Looking back on the year plus, I'm still pretty amazed that we've still got all four of them. Pretty good for novice chicken-keepers in a neighborhood that we share with skunks, raccoons, coyotes & all manner of raptors, not to mention the dozens of other ways a hen can meet her maker...

Well, it really happened today, we found our first egg 

Carl found it, at first he though it was one of our wooden eggs....the girls were being noisy so he went to check on them and that's when he saw it!

It is little but shaped perfectly and had a nice strong shell 

Well, we have no idea which of  12 hens did it... but this is very cool!

Congratulations!!!!!  That's egg-sellent news!!  Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun. 

Hey now you can have eggs and  with home-grown eggs!

LOL 

We figured out which hen is laying, I saw her lay an egg the other day. She was walking around right before and I couldn't believe how much she fluffed her feathers out. She almost looked twice the size! (I was out in their run because Carl just built them a larger hen house.) This whole thing is just so amazing 

The "girls" are starting to use their nesting box's too! (Well their sitting in them)
So far we have 12 hens (we can't believe there wasn't one rooster) one small egg, and two eggs that did not have a complete shell.

Here is a picture of the one right before she laid the two eggs that were in sacks not shells.

Carl did have  and a egg for breakfast Sunday! I though since he did all the building it was the least they could do was provide him with breakfast 

Here are our two peeps.

The "big girls" hatched in May


and our "little girls" hatched in June.

Very pretty girls! Glad to hear they've started earning their keep! 

That's what Carl said  oh and tasty 

Our buff Orpingtons are about the same age but don't seem to be anywhere near laying yet.

The one seemed to get really loud, talking a lot for a couple of days.

She is the only one out of the 6 that seems interested in it? All of them in that peep seem the same size so I am not sure why she is laying and the others are not?

Well...

it seems one of the turkeys injured a leg or some such...it couldn't move very well, and since turkeys will pick on the fat kid...

when I went out yesterday to water there he was in the corner with a bloody head and back...

still alive and otherwise healthy.

He met an early demise...he probably weighed 25 lbs dressed so he was plenty big.

My question to all you would be what are your plans for your laying birds when they are no longer productive?

Pets?

Quote from: humorless dp on September 30, 2010, 04:30:00 AM


My question to all you would be what are your plans for your laying birds when they are no longer productive?

Pets?

We have a 9 quart cast iron dutch oven.  Plenty of room for a standard bird.

Quote from: humorless dp on September 30, 2010, 04:30:00 AM


My question to all you would be what are your plans for your laying birds when they are no longer productive?

Pets?

Death and consumption.

sac

There was a city boy who had just moved into the country. He went walking around to check out his surroundings and found a farmer selling chickens. The city boy went over to the farmer to see how much he was selling them for. The farmer asked him if he wanted a male or a female. The city boy asked for both. So the farmer said, "Here you go, one cock and one pull-it." The city boy confused asked him what he meant. The farmer said, "A cock is a male chicken and a pull-it is a female chicken."

The city boy said, "Oh," and went on his way with two chickens one under each arm.

A bit further down the road he saw a donkey for sale. He went to the man who was selling it to find out how much it was. The man said, "The ass is 15 dollars." The city boy replied, "No, I want the donkey out side in your yard." The man just said, "That's an ass." The city boy, new to these terms, just said, "Oh." and bought the donkey.

As he was leaving the man yelled out, "Wait, the ass gets a bit stubborn about going over hills, so you have to scratch him behind the ears to get him going again." So the city boy is going back home and the donkey stops dead in its tracks and he can't get it to move. He can't scratch its ear because he would have to drop one of the chickens and it would run away.

So the city boy starts to fuss and yell at the donkey. While he is doing this a beautiful women walks up and asks him if he needs help. The city boy thinks, hey why don't I try to impress this beautiful women by using my new slang terms that I learned today.

So the city boy turns to the woman and says, "Yeah, could you hold my cock and pull-it while I scratch my ass?"