Ours have been molting off and on for a few months now. Was hoping they'd be done before cold weather set in lol. We run an extension cord to keep a heated dog dish in their run for water, other than that we do not use light at night or use any heat for them. They go in for the night as soon as...
Here in northern Illinois, the coldest we had inside the coop last year was -1°F (no windchill inside coop). Tonight, we're at -5°F inside the coop. Been an awful cold December so far, hope January is warmer!
Our run has sand too. I sprinkle some Sweet PDZ throughout the run once or twice a week, and I only turn the sand over in the run about once a month, and sprinkle some Sweet PDZ over it after turning it. It helps keep the odor/gases down. But I also scoop as much large poops out as I can every...
Our setup sounds similar to yours, we close the pop door after they have gone in for the night and they do not have access to the water. They don't move off of the roost until either it gets light out or I turn the coop light on for them, so they wouldn't be eating or drinking anyway. Ours go...
I bought this heated dog dish on clearance at Walmart. We've had temps down into the single digits and even a -4F night a couple nights ago, no problems with water freezing. We ran the cord through the hardware cloth so that the dish sits up against the side of the run and they can't mess with...
We use a heated water dish that is for dogs. We don't have water inside the coop, as they pretty much only go in there to lay their eggs and to sleep at night, so the water stays outside in the run. We snipped one little piece of the hardware cloth to run the cord through so that it can sit...
Ours isn't a choice on the survey, but we use AgriMaster layer poultry feed crumbles. They really like it, seem to be doing well with it, and they are not messy or wasteful with it at all. We get it at Farm and Fleet, cost is $13.49 for a 50lb bag, but it's on sale frequently. We only have 6...
Here's my summary for the month so far from our 6 hens:
Jan 1 - 17F - 2 eggs
Jan 2 - 29F - 2 eggs
Jan 3 - 26F - 5 eggs
Jan 4 - 32F - 4 eggs
Jan 5 - 34F - 3 eggs
Jan 6 - 33F - 3 eggs
Jan 7 - 38F - 5 eggs
Not too sure there's much of a pattern here based on temps lol.
We originally had 2 plastic dish tubs as our nesting boxes inside the nesting box with no divider between, but it seemed like most of them preferred to use the same side and we kept finding eggs in front of and in between the tubs because they tried squeezing on the same side. The final straw...
3/6 today. And I dropped one of them on the floor.
I thought I had broken the fall with my foot, but it still cracked the shell so I cooked it up and the girls got a nice warm treat!
Your flock sounds so much like ours! We have 6, and from those 6 we get a real light almost white pinkinsh/tan egg , the tan with dark speckles like the one you show, a tan with white speckles, a couple medium brown eggs, and two really dark eggs that also look like they were dip-dyed! They are...
Do you have any other breeds besides the ones listed? We get an egg just like that, and the only breed we have that you have is the Barred Rock, and I'm pretty sure it is not from her. Our barred rock are the pinkish tan also and they have a weird ridge in the middle of the egg. I don't think...
So far I have found that none of my 6 (2 black australorps, 2 Rhode Island reds, 1 speckled sussex and 1 Barred Rock) like bananas, carrots or asparagus.
4/6 here today. We keep ours under lock and key also. We live in a subdivision and there is a creek behind us that the neighborhood kids love to play around, plus I just don't trust people nowadays lol. Hope you'll start seeing many more eggs now that the thief can't get them!