Dear Chickens, You are now 26 weeks old (Liona and Sarah) and 25 weeks old (Liz and Sam). Tomorrow is a very big holiday for some people in the human world, and it is customary to exchange presents. I baked 31 homemade chicken treats today, and gifted you with the first one just before roosting time on Christmas eve. Tomorrow you're getting a spray of millet from the pet store, and I'm starting a mealworm farm, just for you. I hope you will consider whether there is anything that you might gift me in return. I would really, really like an egg or two for Christmas. It is customary in the human world to wrap presents before giving them. Either brown or blue-green wrapping would be great! Yes, I know that you might have heard about eggs being a traditional part of another human holiday, a few months from now, but nonetheless I hope you will consider the gift of eggs for Christmas.
Hey neighbor! Do you have a 14 hour day on your chickies? <<<lights>>> Your girls are old enough but the day length is way too short here right now with out supplimental lighting.
String o' LED lights comes on at 4 am, so they are getting about 12 hrs of daylight. I meant to start this right after Thanksgiving but just got it going last weekend. If they don't come up with some eggs by New Years, I'll consider setting it for additional light. Our length of day in Montpelier/Moretown is 8 hrs, 50-some minutes at the winter solstice. I also looked it up for Asheville, North Carolina, just for comparison, and they only get about an hour more.
My light goes on at 6AM... goes off at 8PM. We get about 9 eggs a day now... (down from 13) And I have some hens that are 8 months old tomorrow so a couple are going to get the knife if they don't lay soon.
I am kind of in the same boat, but I don't think their suplemental LED light is working out to well. Then I remind myself that I would rather have the gift of healthy girls than eggs. As long as they are healthy I can wait on the eggs until they are ready. Oh, and they are going to get oatmeal and raisins for their Xmas breakfast.
Yes, Vermontgal, there will be a First Egg . So you have not seen eggs dancing in the nestbox? But, that's no proof that they will not be there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. There is a veil covering the unseen world which only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside. Are eggs real? Ah, Vermontgal, in all this world there is nothing else so real and abiding as an egg. No Eggs! Thank God! There are! A thousand years from now, Vermontgal, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, eggs will continue to make glad the hearts of chicken-keepers. Yes, Vermontgal, there will be a First Egg .
