Back With the Birds

It’s another beautiful Monday! 

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving, for those of you that celebrated, and otherwise I hope it was an amazing Thursday.

In my daily chores over the last few weeks I noticed some small issues in the coop since the last big projects I worked on. I should have known that I was jinxing myself when I said I was done working on projects in the chicken coop. Because I was faced with a not-so-small predicament.

My hens quit laying eggs about two weeks ago.

Now, normally, hens will continue laying eggs as long as they have ample food, water, warm shelter, and at least 12-14 hours of sunlight. When there’s less light, this triggers your birds to go into ‘rest’ mode, and they exert more energy to stay warm than in producing eggs.

While I understand it’s pretty normal for a hen’s lay rate to slow or even completely stop during the winter, it’s uncharacteristic for my hens to completely stop laying all together, so I knew there was another factor at play.

I take care to make sure they have food and clean water daily, so I know that the issue probably has something to do with either their shelter, or that they are using their energy to keep warm.

At this point, I had a couple theories I wanted to address, which you can watch here:

 

One

Something I saw for sure was a leak that dripped water straight into the nest boxes when it rains. This is likely one of the reasons my hens aren’t laying, so my highest priority became building a roof or cover over the nest boxes that would block the leak into the boxes.

I’m quite pleased with myself for holding onto the wood from the old coop, since this is where I was able to get the materials to build the cover over the nest boxes.

There was an intact piece of roofing I was easily able to repurpose to act as a block between the leaky section and the nest boxes, along with several spare bits of wood I fashioned into supports.

I actually attempted this mini roof twice.

The first time I’d designed it so it sat too flat. This would potentially encourage the chickens to try to roost on top of it, which would put them in the way of the water, and would definitely break the roof. This design has very little strength to hold up against weight on top of it, so I knew I’d have to change the design to discourage them from trying to sit on top of it.

I was able to redesign it so it sat at a steeper angle, and this is the final product I decided to go with.

Two

It could be that the hens don’t know where to lay their eggs.

I didn’t slowly transition where I wanted them to lay eggs, and took away the old coop, which for many of my hens was the only place they’d ever known to lay.

There’s a relatively simple fix for this that could train my hens to use the nest boxes.

A lot of times you can trick your hens into laying in a particular place by planting fake eggs in that spot. There are plastic eggs you can purchase, you can use golf balls, or you can do what I did – I looked for rocks that looked roughly like the eggs my hens lay in both color and size.

It might take a few days for this trick to work, so don’t get too discouraged if they don’t lay eggs in the desired nests right away.

 

Three

The birds don’t know where to roost.

This could be causing them to sleep in small groups or on their own, which means they’re not conserving energy by sharing body heat at night.

Again, this is an issue because I didn’t slowly transition them from the old coop to the new one.

Ideally, what I probably should have done was move the old coop so it sat inside the new coop building until the birds were accustomed to laying and roosting in the building. Then I could have slowly torn apart the old coop and the birds would still know that they were supposed to stay in the new building.

I didn’t think of that though when I first started the transition, so I have a couple other tricks I can try to finish the transition.

The easiest route I could take to encourage the birds to roost on the new beams I installed for them is to install a temporary heat lamp above them. Since it’s cold out right now, they’ll be drawn to the warmth, and they’ll start roosting together on the new beams.

Once they’re used to roosting there, I should – theoretically – be able to remove the heat lamp, and they’ll all be able to stay warm by sharing body heat.

The other option I have would be to build a wall extension and closable door in the wide opening in the coop. Then I could physically put the birds inside the coop at night, when they’re more docile and easier to catch, and a few days of closing them in the building at night would train them to go there on their own.

They would have warmth inside the coop either way, which could help them start laying eggs again.

 

 

I only had time to try to solve the first two problems, and I discovered that the extension cord I meant to use to reach from the barn to the chicken coop was both too short and unusable.

Which means I’ll need to go back into the coop another time to finish this project.

 

 

Thank you all so much for joining me again for another struggle in starting a homestead, I hope you all have a freaking awesome rest of your week, and I’ll catch you all next time!

 

-Alyx