Saturday, December 18, 2010

Cluckin' along


It's been a soggy week for the ladies. We've had some torrential rains accompanied by mighty winds, which made their coop a damp, dreary place. (Lady Marmalade looks particularly pathetic with damp feathers.) I spruced things up with some fresh straw, and installed a new, huge feeder that will let us go away for the weekend without needing to have someone chicken sit (we'll still have to do that when we go on vacation for a week or longer).

Jeff also rigged up a wire contraption to turn their waterer into a hanging waterer. We'd previously had the waterer propped up on a stack of paver bricks, under the "landing" to their henhouse. It was the only place we could put the waterer where they couldn't fly up and perch on it. Trouble is, the little gremlins are constantly working on digging a tunnel to China, and their excavation work was often right next to the stack of pavers, making them gradually less level and stable. Hanging the waterer will stop them from knocking it over, and hopefully keep it cleaner, too.


The girls have been averaging 1-2 eggs a day (total), which isn't great, but is fine with us. We'll have more eggs than we can use come spring, so the quasi-hiatus is probably a good balance.