The days are getting longer. Slowly but surely we have more daylight hours and the first ones to notice this and to react to the change are always the chickens and suddenly slowly but surely the egg numbers start to creep up.
Jack starts crowing a little earlier, the girls are eager to leave the confines of the henhouse even in the half light of the early morning. They root and scratch in the wet earth eager to get the early worms and bugs that are around before the day starts to lighten up too much.
The longer daylight hours instantly means their body clocks alter and they start producing eggs again. Last week I was pleased to find the first of the blue eggs appearing in the next boxes. All through the Winter we have been getting a steady three eggs each day from the newest Welsh girls, but the hens that moved with us from Southern England, for the second year running, stopped laying as soon as the days shortened, the Skylines that lay the blue eggs included.
It's amazing the difference this 250 mile shift has made to their body clocks, I would never have thought of it before the move. In a couple of months we will invest in four more local birds to keep our numbers up and make sure that we have a continued supply of eggs, for us, for family and for friends.
But for now we are very happy that egg numbers are up to around six a day, which means the chickens are completely self financing as this means we earn enough to cover all their feed and bedding costs and still have free eggs for ourselves.
Sue xx
