Yesterday, I finally finished off my first bag of layers pellets. I have had the chickens for 11 weeks, and a bag of pellets costs £15.99. This means that I spend about £1.50 each week on feed, which is about 50p per chicken. Obviously this doesn’t take into account grain and mealworms that they get on occasion but they are optional anyway.
This means that it costs me about 50p to produce 6 eggs! Not bad until you realise that I have probably spent £300 – £400 on equipment!
Before work this morning I checked in the run for more eggs and another egg had been laid outside in the run. The egg was in a similar place to last time and was also cracked. I think whoever is laying there likes to lay on the wooden platform that I put in. I might have to have a move around in the run after work today and see if removing the platform will discourage them from laying there…
Yesterday, when I opened the coop up to clean this is what I saw:
Soft Shelled Eggs
I had a few soft shelled eggs when the girls first started laying but I thought that was the end of it. Today when I managed to drag myself out of bed my girlfriend told me that there was an egg in the run. I managed to get it out of the run without letting the birds escape but it was already cracked. Then when I got home from work today there was only 1 egg in the nest box and that was cracked too! Today wasn’t a good day for eggs!
I have no idea why this egg was laid here...
This egg was laid in the right place but had a thin shell and was cracked
I am wondering if they have a calcium deficiency – I put some grit with oyster shell down in the run so hopefully that will do the trick. I’m not convinced though as they have had access to grit since I first got them.
Yesterday I decided it was about time I had a bit of a clean out in the chicken run. This is the second time that I decided to clean it out – last time I wanted to turn over all of the soil in the run but the ground was too hard. As it had rained yesterday morning, I decided to dig it over while the ground was still soft. It was a lot softer than last time but still hard work!
I turned over all of the soil in the run
When I had finished turning over the soil I put down some Stalosan F which is a powdered disinfectant that should hopefully keep the smell down. It took me about 2 hours to clean the whole run out but hopefully it won’t need doing again for a while.
It might not look tidy but you should have seen it before!
Today I went out in the garden to change the chickens’ water and the girls were really misbehaving. I opened up the back of the run to let them out in the netted area and then left a small hole at the base of the net while I went back to the house to fill up their drinker. On my way back to the house I got distracted and did a little bit of weeding, and when I turned around all 3 girls were out in the garden, and Victoria had made a bee line straight for the flower beds and was having a great time digging up all of my poppies. I had only turned my back for about 30 seconds!
I put the girls away and put the flower pots back on the bottom of the net to stop the girls from getting through, and went to fill up the water. When I got back out Victoria had managed to escape again through a tiny gap at the end of the net. I then had to chase her around the garden for 5 minutes to get her back in the run.
I always used to leave one flower pot on the net when I was out in the garden but it seems that the girls have learnt how to get out of that now. They really love trying to mess up my garden…