Homestead mailing list

[sjc <indexer AT localnet.com>]

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