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  • From: sjc <indexer AT localnet.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] How many hens?
  • Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2006 13:21:17 -0400

At 09:31 AM 7/9/2006, we wrote:

>It takes about a dozen heavy-breed hens to keep warm enough in the
>winter here;

Common belief denied by the many chicken books I have.

Hmmm. Don't know about 'chicken books' but I lost plenty of gals as I tried over a period of years to pare down to what I actually needed. Also, a even dozen of the lighter weight 'modern' breeds doesn't quite cut it. Other than the Cochins and Orpingtons, Jersey Giants have done the best for me so far as cold tolerance goes and they lay better than the others. I've had several of them that laid every other day right through our puny 7-hour days. I don't run power down there but they do have a nice big window and I let them out every day unless it's actually nasty. If I shovel for them (have to shovel down to there anyhow) and give a bit of scratch they like to come out and spend some time but otherwise they sit in the anteroom (air lock) doorway in the sun.

I really am not too keen on too many eggs in the winter because they almost always freeze; I usually only make 3 trips a day down there to take down warm water and 10 minutes exposed to the air is more than enough to freeze them to the cracking point through much of the winter. The JGs are lousy setters, though, so we keep a few of the others. I don't eat chicken so trade partner does all the culls and takes young birds at fryer stage; she raises my strawberries in trade for that.

Interesting thing about chickens/freezing; maybe you have noticed it: the roosters freeze before the hens. Not talking about just combs, but about those that meet their demise by freezing. For one thing, the hens will be together on the floor in the deep litter, rooster more likely to stay on roost bars, but other than that, don't know what factors come into play. Have had several roosters freeze right in place when they were down with the hens, though, when all the hens seemed perfectly fine, so guess something else at work too.

I love the hinged door idea for egg-gathering but here it would be one more place to shovel and to chip ice off of. And currently I have my nest boxes on an interior wall so the eggs hopefully don't freeze quite as fast. In my next chicken house..........

Someday I'll move to a warmer clime and make life easy on all of us. Of course I've been threatening that for a loooong time. I'm looking now, though, in east Tennessee and western Virginia, so it's getting closer.

Susan Jane, in Maine





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