It would appear that we were not careful enough with the lighting system around the time that the baby was born. As stated in a previous blog post, this is a danger of using artificial lighting... even a day or two without the lengthened days can wreck havoc on the bird's hormones and stop egg production. Even though the lighting has been restored and improved, and the roof on the coop has been replaced, it will be 2 to 3 weeks until egg production is restored.
We are now learning about the different dietary needs of chickens in cold weather and when molting. During cold weather chickens require more carbohydrates. During molting they require more protein (feathers are mostly protein). So we are going to take this opportunity to work on their diet supplement for both groups. Even though our birds are mostly free ranged (have complete, unrestricted access to our property almost every day) we still supplement with organic feed during times that the natural food supply is diminished. Its actually easy to tell when they need supplementing, because normally we can fill the feeders, and they stay full for a few days. The chickens definitely prefer to eat outside, foraging for their own food when available. When food becomes scarce outside, they gobble up the commercial feed every day. Hopefully by adjusting their feed with more natural proteins and carbs, we can help them through this cold and difficult time.
I also ran across a great book:
Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
By Gail Damerowyou can find it on google book at :
http://books.google.com/books?id=GxoH_NRDxe8C&lpg=PA199&ots=0Sa5ZAZl5d&dq=shorten%20chicken%20molt%20chicken%20lay%20eggs%20during%20molt&pg=PA201#v=onepage&q&f=false
Particularly interesting is page 201. Here the author shows plainly how you can tell exactly how long a chicken has been molting, and how long it will take to complete. I cant wait to go out and record the flight feathers of each of our birds and test this approach!
UPDATE: Our egg production is climbing since we repalced the lights int eh chicken coop, set the timer properly, and replaced the tin roof with a clear fiberglass one.
ReplyDeleteAs of this week we are at a consistent 10 eggs per day fomr about 34 chickens. Thats about half what we would expect. the norm is 3 eggs per day for every 4 chickens.