What keeps the Chickens Laying??

I don't know why, and I guarantee that I am NO chicken expert (see previous blogs for proof of that!), but for some reason, when all the chickens around here are taking a break for winter, fall, or molting, whatever, mine are still plopping out eggs. We get 12 to 25 daily and have about 30 layers. I have some theories, but that is just what they are, theories, and probably just a bunch of hooey! But I will share my chicken hooey with anyone who cares to read about it!

For one thing, we give our chickens a varied diet. We think they like it. Our chickens have to be penned, or our dogs will eat them for snacks, so they cannot freely forage. But freely foraging chickens eat all kinds of things: bugs, flowers, grasses, worms, mice, leftover food from the trash, dead stuff, fallen fruit, vegetables, etc. So we do our best to give them the variety they crave. We feed them layer pellets and scratch grains (to be sure they have a balance of the correct vitamins and minerals for proper nutrition and egg-laying). Then, we give them our special rice mash. The base is cooked all natural brown rice (good for them and less expensive than prepared feed), and we add a variety of old sourdough bread (we make way more than we can eat every week), crushed eggshells, leftover scraps, gravy, organic soy milk, milk (sour or fresh), outdated yogurt, sometimes a can of cat food, etc. Mixed all together, it's a chicken-yummy mash! Then I throw them any bits of meat, bone (cracked to reveal the marrow), vegetables, fruits, etc. We have two garbage cans chained up by some of the vegetable stalls at the Kona market to collect the overripe papaya  that the vendors throw out. We bring it home twice per week for our papaya-loving chickens!

The other thing is social  change. Some people say that chickens like routine. Although that may be true, I think that they sometimes become complacent. Then they think, "Hmm, I've been laying all these eggs. It's hard work. I think I'll take a vacation, and just eat and ay around for a few weeks." Say, what??!! Let's say I take a vacation and don't feed you for a few weeks? Anyway, my observation is that chickens are very competitive, and they can be happy without being "content." And I think happy and challenged is better than happy and content. So we try to change it up on our chickens every now and again. We keep some young hens in with the old, and it seems to get the old ones laying again, as if to ensure their place in the "pecking order." The roosters are busy protecting and teaching the new hens, while maintaining their turf, so no one has any time to be bored and think about vacations! Right now we have a pen with 7 hens and a rooster that has always yielded 4 - 6 eggs per day. Well, I sometimes am getting 1 these days! So, since the pen can hold 5 - 8 more chickens, it's time to move some of the young ones from the transition pen to this one (called the Mary's pen). The only problem is, we want to move them at night. Well, they all sleep upstairs in the waaayyy back corner, and, uh, well, we can't reach them. oops. So, as soon as Pat makes a little adaptation to the pen, we will move them :)

More later!