Keeping up egg production.

Summer is undeniably over; the autumnal equinox is behind us and the days are getting noticeably shorter. Since late spring our older hens have averaged 16-20 eggs per day, I am sure there have been some eggs that we didn't find, but that is the price we pay for pasture-feeding our free ranging hens. They are locked up at night for their own safety but all summer long they rota-tilled the old manure heap and the composting mounds that were the sites where we fed the sheep their hay all winter. They ate bugs, scratched and did what chickens do naturally. When we re-located the younger hens from the brooder house to the hen house we had to restrict movement to the fenced-in chicken yard until the young ones came home to roost in the hen house by choice. Now as winter approaches, they are restricted to the chicken yard, both to protect them from predators anxious to eat all they can before winter restricts their diet, but also to encourage them to eat all the left overs from the garden we toss their way. Some left overs are for sheep, some for hens and it is easier to keep them separated by keeping the chickens in their yard.

The last week we have noticed egg production decline. It always does as winter approaches but this year we decided that we wanted a little more return on our investment, especially as we now have almost 70 hens with the majority maturing to egg laying by the end of this month. We went to the DIY store and invested in a shop lamp and a timer. Not a large investment by any means. Like most sane people, neither of us has any intention of getting out of bed at 4 am to turn on a light for chickens, so the timer is as necessary a piece of equipment as the light.

Dusk is an important time of the day for chickens. It gives the warning of approaching darkness so they can hurry home and find their roost. Not a ritual you want to play with. If  darkness were to come at the click of a switch the birds would not be able to settle for the night, they wouldn't even know where to go to settle safely. We want their day to be longer than their night and set the timer accordingly. I hate repetitive tasks so right away I have our lights set to go on at 4 am and out by 8:30am, I may have to adjust it a couple more times before spring but we should be good to go for a while now. Within 48 hours egg production has increased again. 

We have regular egg customers so we are happy to be able to tell them we can continue to keep them supplied all winter but we are also happy to get some return on the extra feed they use as we move into our white world of winter when the chickens are unable to roam free. The light ( fluorescent) seems a small price to pay for happy and productive chickies.