“Chicken Surprise”

“Chicken Surprise” is not a fancy new chicken recipe.  It is what the chickens gave us–a REAL surprise–when we last moved the coop on August 1st.   The coop move was was uneventful.  We have moved the coop several times now and have worked out most of the bugs of the move.  But looking back to where the coop had been I saw dozens and dozens of eggs that had been laid under the coop!!  We were wondering why our egg production wasn’t ramping up and now we know why.  The things one learns the hard way as novice chicken farmers.  We suspected that something strange was going on, but we had no idea how easy it was for the hens to get under the coop to do their laying!

Christianne’s daughter spent quite awhile gathering the eggs and her father, Tom, seen driving the tractor in some of our photos, opened up all the eggs and inspected each one.  Only four or so of the 128 eggs collected were bad.  Christianne cooked up many of them and fed them to the chickens.

We spent nearly 2 hours “securing” the open borders of the chicken coop.  We need to develop a better system for the next move, but we used fencing, chicken wire, boards and rocks to seal up the access to under the coop.  All of a sudden the egg production went way up!  We are now at about 50 eggs per day with more standard-sized eggs than pullet eggs.  There are about 15 hens that are behind the initial shipment of chicks we received in mid-February, so our production should peak somewhat higher over time.

We are hoping for no more “Chicken Surprise” any time soon!