27 Apr 2010
Egg-straordinary

I haven't blogged about what's going on on the home front for a while, but the events of the past month in the hen house simply have to be shared.

We had a terrible winter, but all the while, my girls kept right on laying - a dozen or so a day. Sometimes as few as 10, other days as many as 16. With the makeup of my flock being what it is (35 hens and six 10 week pullets) that's about normal. I all my years of raising chickens, I've always held it as a rule of thumb that a free range brown layer flock in full production will produce about one egg every 36 hours per hen. So I was right in range.

In March the weather changed dramatically. We had several 80°F days, and surprisingly light winds. Very little rain, especially for this time of year. We've gotten some needed moisture recently, and we're certainly not in anything like a drough, but it has been dry. So far this year (knock on wood) we've had but one tornado watch. Mysteriously, egg production started dropping - 9, 6 4 ... by the end of the Month I was getting 2 eggs a day.

Hens molt,and when in molt they go "off-line" - stop laying eggs. So I figured the warmer weather had tripped a molting cycle. But molting hens lose feathers and some weight - and my hens looked fine. No feathers around the coop, outside of ordinary levels of shed.

So what else was going on? The henhouse was pretty stinky - I'd cleaned it out late last year, like September if I recall correctly, but because of the tighter insulation and the colder, wetter winter, it was ripe. So we cleaned it - a full cleaning, new chips and straw/hay. We double checked the doors and screen windows to make sure nothing could get in - I've dealt with weasels and opossums before. There were no obvious signs of predators - no broken eggs or shells. A week went by with no improvement to production. Hmmmm...

Back when I was doing full bore egg production, with 500+ hens, a friend had suggested that I start new pullets in nest boxes that were "seeded" with a wooden egg. You know, the find you can get at a craft shop, usually to be painted or decorated. It seemed to work then - but these weren't pullets getting started. But it couldn't hurt, so I dropped seven starter eggs as "seeds". Production levelled off at 2 eggs a day. No improvement.

We altered the feeding schedule. We lengthened the lighting. We tried everything we knew, and nothing seemed to help. Then, a week ago Monday, I was feeding and gathering eggs and picked up four. Not a great improvement, but it was the first time for about three weeks I'd gotten more than 2 eggs. I checked the boxes again - I counted six wooden eggs ... wait, I'd put out seven starters... I looked all over for the blasted thing - it was nowhere to be found.

OK, so this is odd. But what happened the next day was positively weird. I got 22 eggs - nearly two dozen! Production has rocketed since. Tonight I got 33 eggs!

I related the story to my mom, and she remembered her father finding a black snake, half in and half out of his henhouse, stopped in it's tracks by an unbroken egg it had swallowed. Ah-ha! I have no proof, but I think I inadvertently choked a black snake.

I'll bet I'd missed some hidden opening when we cleaned, big enough for an egg and a bit more to squeeze through. The snake had had a feast - but no snake can eat a dozen eggs a day. So what else? Well, hens stop laying when they're stressed. And birds and snakes are not exactly noted for being best buds. So I think the stress accounted for most of the drop - probably all but a couple or three eggs.

So that's my egg-straordinary tale. The proof will come when the weather warms up again - if I start smelling rotten meat in the henhouse, I'll know what to look for.

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