Cranking up production

Our hens have been laying eggs like clockwork for the last couple of months. Frog lays for four consecutive days, and then has a day off, whereas Lemon favours a three days on, one day off approach. Pepper has been a little more erratic, tending to lay for six or seven days before taking a break. Fizzy, of course, has yet to lay anything.

And so imagine my surprise over the last week when my egg log looked like this:

That's right - seven consecutive days from both Frog and Lemon. Each day I went outside expecting to get no eggs, and each day there were another three waiting for me! Maybe they think spring is finally here?

BST and a new sort of freedom

Three cheers for British Summer Time!

It may not have got much above freezing yet, but the hour of extra sunlight in the evenings is still very much appreciated. It makes such a difference to the feel of the day to get home from work and have a few hours of sunlight still left to enjoy - even if I need a hat and scarf to do so!

For the hens this means a change of routine too. Giving them the freedom of the garden under close supervision at the weekends has given us the confidence to decide that we will do so more often. It gets them out of the mud bath that is their run and gives them access to greens, bugs, dry soil and a bit of space to run and flap.

We'd also noticed that the last few times we'd released them that they would happily wander back into the run to get to water, or to the nest boxes which convinced us that they were settled and that they knew where home was which makes the whole thing a lot easier.

So, from now on the plan is to let them out when we get home from work until they decide that it's bed time. We've done this each night this week and it's worked like a treat. We let them out at about six, they enjoy themselves greatly and then at about eight go back to their coop and settle down for the night. Bingo.

Checking out the odds I have corn hidden behind my camera...

Everyone enjoying preening in the late evening sun

Spring has sprung?

I always love this time of year. Not particularly because of the weather which can still be quite wintery, but because the amount of daylight we receive is getting noticeably larger by the day. At the lowest point of the year we get a sunrise at about 8.15 and sunset at 16.00. This means that I spend pretty much every hour of sunshine at the office - not very inspiring.

Fortunately, this doesn't last forever. We've now reached that lovely point where the sun gets up before I do, and still hasn't completely set when I get home in the evening. I could sing for joy!

This reawakens me to the fun we had trying to put the chickens to bed last summer (check out my day-in-the-life post to read all about it). Over the last few months I've nipped over to the chicken coop when I've got home from work to find the girls snuggled up in bed. This has made shutting the coop door a doddle.

However, this week I've got home and found that they've only just gone inside for the night, and are wide awake really. I went to shut the coop door on Monday and discovered a face peering back at me - Frog had decided to have a look at what I was doing. Not very helpful! On this occasion me checking the nest boxes for eggs was long enough for her to decide that she did want to go to sleep really and I was able to slide the door home. Soon we'll have to start sneaking up on the coop again so that they don't all come running out to see whats happening. Let the games begin!