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Thurston Garden wrote:

red wrote:as commercial egg producers certainly use artificial light

They most certainly do - that's the only way to continue to supply stores throughout the winter. A former colleague once worked for an egg producer and he was tasked with altering lighting and feeding systems to kid the hens on that there was 8 days in a week!

This is quite normal to make them think they are working more than sleeping, i have tried this in the past when i had them deep litter, and it worked ,

red wrote: and that combined with freezing some of your summer excess will see you through. Just have to eat less eggs in winter.

Might be a daft question, but how do you freez an egg. I had no idea that you could.

Eve

Well, it turns out I have had to give the girls extra light. They were obviously trying to lay eggs in the dark, early in the morning, and just ended up dropping them all over the floor under the perch. So they broke. I have put the lights on early in the morning so that they can see their way to the nesting boxes.

Cheers
Zoe

evelyn wrote:

red wrote: and that combined with freezing some of your summer excess will see you through. Just have to eat less eggs in winter.

Might be a daft question, but how do you freez an egg. I had no idea that you could.

Eve

you beat them raw, then put them in a pot, and freeze labeled with how many eggs are in there. to use you thaw and cook as normal. only good for quiches cakes etc. (no boiled egg and soldiers!) but still handy

Thomzo wrote:Well, it turns out I have had to give the girls extra light. They were obviously trying to lay eggs in the dark, early in the morning, and just ended up dropping them all over the floor under the perch. So they broke. I have put the lights on early in the morning so that they can see their way to the nesting boxes.

Cheers
Zoe

sure they were not egg eating?

red wrote:

Thomzo wrote:Well, it turns out I have had to give the girls extra light. They were obviously trying to lay eggs in the dark, early in the morning, and just ended up dropping them all over the floor under the perch. So they broke. I have put the lights on early in the morning so that they can see their way to the nesting boxes.

Cheers
Zoe

sure they were not egg eating?

No I don't think so. The eggs looked like they had fallen and broken but the girls were pretty much ignoring them. Now that the lights are on early, they all lay in the nest boxes and no evidence of broken eggs/eating.

3 of the girls regularly lay before breakfast so I guess they are larks really.

Cheers
Zoe

odd.

never heard of hens not finding the nest box in the dark..

red wrote:odd.

never heard of hens not finding the nest box in the dark..

Trust mine to be different

I have found that there is a little bit of laying difference between winter and summer for my chickens - though I have only had them just over a year so I don't have that much experience! Last winter I was getting around 8-10 eggs from 14 chickens and 10-12 last summer.

I find what really makes the biggest difference is how cold it is. On a cold day I can pretty much guarantee lower egg production than on warm days. I suppose it is all about the amount of energy they use up? Not all that sure how it works *blush*

It certainly does have to do with the amout of energy that the birds are using to keep warm. In the days when you were allowed to feed them kitchen scraps, I used to slowly boil my potato peelings overnight by leaving the pan at the cool end of the Rayburn. Then in the morning I would add layers mash to the water which was still warm and feed that to them. You should have heard the clucking that went on when they got the warm feed! It helped egg numbers greatly as they were not using up all the normal feed to stay warm. Pity you can't do that now! Organic tattie peelings from my own garden too...

We have 36 ex-battery hens and we are still getting two dozen eggs a day. Not sure what is going on here but I'm not going to complain about it.

Jon