Sierra Mountains-Gold Country-Foothills - Page 2

Hi Discoveregg, and welcome!

First of all, good luck keeping your flock small.     Last year on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, we picked up our first flock of 5.  Now, the INTENT was 2-3 laying hens, that's it, small A-frame coop, no big deal.

Fast forward a year.  Moved out of the city, living in the mountains now, 31 chickens and 22 eggs in the incubator.   

I have had no trouble selling excess eggs to friends and acquaintances.  I only sell about 1-2 dozen a week.  I also give a dozen to each of my grown sons for their households every couple of weeks.  I also give a couple dozen eggs a month to our landlords.  Since we moved to the mountains, though, almost everyone has slowed down laying.  We were getting 5-6 eggs a day from 6 hens, but now we are getting 2-4 eggs a day, and my beautiful FBCM pullet had just started laying last month, only laid for about two weeks, and has not laid in 9 days now.  Bertha hasn't laid in 4 or 5 days.   I think they may be laying in the brush on the hillside & that possibly mice/gophers/rats/raccoons are getting the eggs.  My husband did find some egg shell about 20 feet from where the girls tend to hang out in the afternoons, so we are keeping an eye on it to see what happens.   We have to REALLY cover up with long sleeves and thick jeans to get to it because that part of the hillside is fulla poison oak.  Once I go up there, I have to come in and change my clothes real quick so I don't break out.  So far, that's been effective (knock on wood).  Farmer Lew (my better half) got poison oak on his left eye last week & it's just now starting to look better.  When we lived in the south, we had a lot of poison ivy & he was impervious to that so assumed he would also not react to poison oak.  WRONG!

We are raising and hatching a few bantam breeds now & their eggs are SO cute and taste the same as LF chicken eggs, just smaller. 

We went into chickenkeeping to get eggs.  We stay in it and continue expand because we love the chickens. 

As far as predators go, we have a pretty well-fenced in backyard and solid coops and a big brown dog in our yard.  We see the hawks, but so does Ginger (the dog) and Rico (the lead rooster), and I don't think any hawks are going to land in the yard as long as Ginger is on guard.  Our landlords, whose yard is adjoining to ours, also have a couple of great pyrenees that are excellent warning/guard dogs and protect the alpaca herd down in the front end of the property.  There's no guarantee that a predator can't or won't come into the yard and get to the flock, but good fencing and good dogs go a LONG way.

FINALLY getting a late summer/fall garden in the ground this week.  We'll have peas and beans, butternut squash, zucchini & yellow crookneck squash, and cooking herbs.  In August, I'm planting lettuces/greens and onions.  I may do some late miniature carrots we'll see.  My cats have really put a hurtin' on the gopher population in the yard here, so I may be able to do a couple of root veggies.