When will they start laying again?

[SlipsWife]

I've only ordered the surprise from Cackle so I'm not sure if they give extras or not (I'm leaning towards an extra 'packing peanut' or 2 from what I read last year but I don't remember...sorry! lol) We had 2 Silver Spangled Hamburg in the surprise to (both pullets). We didn't keep them but it was a hard choice. They REALLY loved to roost (the higher the better) and after we decided to not free range anymore it didn't seem fair to take that away from them. Someone came by to buy a couple of the others and offered to buy any we weren't keeping and were going to let them free range.

Chicken math went out of control last spring at our house. They are so little when you start you don't realize how quickly they add up!

+

=20

We were lucky and our 'extras' sold quickly and there was a nice demand in the area. Then we were unlucky because predators (feral cats/hawks, 2 dogs that we no longer have...) wiped out a lot of them. The cat(s) were picking off the little guys so slowly and steadily that it took awhile before we caught on and we ended up losing about 15 out of the 30. Then the dogs got most of them...we sold 2 (roosters) and have 2 left from that order...horrible odds for that poor group.

I don't remember all the break downs on what we sold, who died of natural causes and who predators got but we had close to 100 chicks last year and have 8 left...

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Wow that is rough.

So far I've only lost one to a hawk and two chicks, one to compacted crop (before we learned how to deal with it) and one was a CX that I think was just sickly. Once I get my incubator I am afraid my numbers will skyrocket!!!