After about two months of egglessness, we're back in business. The son is collecting around 9 eggs a day--give or take a few--from 14 hens and 2 ducks. Our four newest hatched hens (July 2019) started up last month, as have most of the older ones.
Well, with egg laying comes escaping--these young hens decided they needed to lay in secret places all over the garden instead of the nest box like sensible birds. We therefore redesigned their enclosure, now slightly smaller, but mostly jump/climb/dig under proof. Mostly. I've had to adjust a few places (and chase one or two), but on the whole it seems to be holding.
Our four ducks (two male and two female) have mainly been enclosed with their beaky counterparts in said yard, but were recently allowed another two weeks on the vegetable patch to tidy up and do a little slug-hunting. They're back in with the hens and not happy about it, but as they also had access to the patio next to the house (and the gate to the driveway and greater world which was not always firmly shut), I'm glad they're pooing somewhere else now. The yard being slightly smaller means that their fortnightly straw bale keeps it a lot drier than before.
We had two deaths over winter, both rescue hens: one we adopted only a year ago--she would have only been 2 years old--and our venerable old lady Rainbow who did a great job of hatching and raising 2019's chicks. Rainbow was 5 years old which is a fine old age for a chicken bred for a factory farm. To be honest, I'm expecting our other two oldest, ages 5 and 6, to go any time now--they've both lost weight and have become very slow.
We're putting up fencing at the allotment--well, trying to anyway--to get some of the hens up there: we're allowed 12 (though most of our hens look pretty much identical so we might be able to sneak all 14). The husband has put in some posts and we need to order some heavy gauge wire now. Slight problem: we had to shell out for a new boiler earlier this month which kind of wiped out our savings, so allotment fencing isn't quite as high on the priority list as before. Still, we'll get it done eventually--hopefully within the month, and the chickens can get to work up there again.
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