Winter Wrangling

Winter chicken chores in Juneau can prove to be fun. Bundle up and head out to fill feeders and waterers, and tend to their litter and straw. After a two day wicked cold spell of -5° F, the chickens were restless, and could use some time out in the yard. Its warmed up now that its a balmy 30° F. Nicholas is giving them our cooking and table scraps for the day, and they seem to be enjoying it. Bell pepper tops, zucchini ends, some bread and a cookie that hit the floor make up today's treats. We have been putting the scraps out in the yard on a couple of stumps. We also put down some straw under the wood shed as sort of a 'hang out' for them. They dust up down there, and its dry enough for them to scratch for bugs. The chickens seem to like any sort of activity we may provide for them after being cooped up for 2 days.

Fatty Bravey shown in front,
and Sesame behind her.

The chickens are getting big and close to maturity, technically, they are still pullets, as they haven't molted yet. Most have large combs and wattles now and at least two have started laying eggs. Where they lay those eggs has proven to be tricky. One morning, we found one egg in a nest, and found one out in their run. Even after building them two nests the next day, complete with golf balls to simulate eggs, only one chicken used it. So, PLOP another egg down! It cracked as I'm guessing the chicken was on one of the outer roosts, and it came down from a significant height. So I lowered the roost and spread a lot more straw under it. Then the cold spell hit so I locked them in for the night, and both nests were used, as they had no choice. Now we wait and see where they start laying again. Its tough to catch them in the act, I have only seen one chicken sitting in a nest, and it was the one tagged with the black foot ring, which my son calls Fatty Bravey. This also happens to be the nest we found our first egg, which can be shown getting eaten below. Delicious!

First Egg

First Egg! After months of cleaning and building and buying and feeding and watering and protecting these chickens from predators....the payoff fits in the palm of your hand. The first egg is probably a bit larger than a walnut, and even though we haven't tasted it yet, it looks delicious.

Nicholas was very excited, as he was the one who got to find our little treasure. I wasn't at home but I heard it went something like: "EGG! EGG! EGG!" its the kids and chickens thing in full force. Welp, tomorrow should prove to be another egg day as they lay them about every 25 hours. So an update will be coming, and I will try and get some chicken photos up as they have grown quite a bit.

UPDATE: After further research, it seems a pullet in the beginning of their egg laying, lay a single egg about every 2-3 days. As it is difficult to see a chicken actually laying an egg, we were of the assumption that one chicken had started laying eggs before the others, yet it was more like they all started at once, and just sort of took turns.