Here it is Sunday morning. Just wanted to update those of you who care about our "chicken egg dilemma". If you remember, I wrote on *June 8 that we had decided to try and keep the chickens in their fenced yard around their coop, hoping to increase the amount of eggs we would get. Well, it didn't make any difference. The most eggs we've got in one day since then is 5, and that's not on a regular basis. We had clipped some (about half of the 28 or so) of the birds' wings, but some of them still got out. Of the ones that did get out, we managed to train them to stay off of the porch. A few days ago we decided that it was a failed effort and started leaving the gate open so they could all resume "free ranging" like before. Now we're in the process of training the newly freed birds to also stay off of the porch, and having fairly good luck. How are we training them you ask? Well, every time we see one or more on the porch we chase it/them off. Seems to be working for the most part, although we still have to hose-off some piles of poo, but not nearly as much as we did when we were letting them be on it whenever. Who said you can't train chickens? Well, they were wrong, at least in our experience. Another change we've made is that we're only feeding them 'chops' (chopped corn) in the evenings now, so they have to fend for themselves more. Hopefully that means they'll eat more bugs and we won't have to worry as much about ticks. The reason for changing to 'once-a-day' feeding? We went to the feed store earlier this week and picked-up one bag of chopped corn and it cost us $8.25! Just last month it was only $6.75 (estimate). Yikes!
Other posts about this topic:
1) Breakfast. Court. Surgery. Plants. Funeral. Visiting. Clipping chickens. Garden. Pump switch and hoses.
2) * Writing, chickens and mowing
3 comments:
I'm sorry but you know that the economy is totally out of whack when the price of corn "anything" goes up that much! It is the most over produced food in the nation!
That just makes no sense!
Glad to hear you are having better luck with them free ranging though!
Well, if you want to look at it another way, you may be able to get more exercise now that the chicken are roaming free again. :)
"you may be able to get more exercise now that the chicken are roaming free again. :)"
Sure, that's one way to look at it. *grin* And having to chase them off the porch all the time gets me exercise too :-)
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