We have been chicken farmers at the Kuegler mini-farm for over 18 months.  During this time, we have had many exciting moments:  a runaway chick, the first egg, the chickens’ first encounter with snow.  However, in early December, we realized that our chickens’ time with us may be ending sooner than planned.

Although we like having chickens, our decision to get a flock of eighteen was for eggs.  We didn’t want eighteen new pets, we wanted chickens that would provide us with eggs.  So, in late November when our girls’ egg production dropped from six or seven eggs per day to one or two eggs per days, we thought their laying days might be over.

We knew that lack of sunlight would lessen their egg production, as it did last year, but this year, their production of eggs simply ceased about mid-December.  We began to contemplate our options.

1.  Butcher the chickens and make soup for us.

2.  Continue to feed the chickens, making them pets instead of “farm” animals.

3.  Donate them to a friend who would butcher them and use them in her restaurant.

We had become comfortable with choice #3.  In fact, I was going to call her at the end of this week to arrange a date for the chickens to be delivered.  However, when I went to their coop on Monday night, I discovered three eggs, and then on Tuesday, I discovered four eggs.  Did they know about our plan?

Obviously, the amount of sunlight has improved egg production, and for this we are very glad.  We had been disappointed that they laid eggs for only slightly more than a year, as we had hoped to get closer to two years of laying from them.  We also weren’t enjoying buying eggs at the store.  Most of all, we weren’t excited about having to tell the kids about the chickens’ demise.

So, for now, our girls are back to doing what they do best.  Laying eggs.  And trying to avoid all of the snow.

The first snowstorm of the 2009-2010 winter arrived at the Kuegler mini-farm during the night.  Inside the house there were great cheers at the school cancellation announcement.  However, outside in the coop, the reaction was quite different.

Entering the chicken pen, I found at least six inches of snow covering the ground.  As I opened the coop door, I was greeted in the typical manner with the girls crowding the entry, ready to jump out.  However, seeing the white coating on the ground, they stopped short.

Thankfully the chickens reacted quickly, and no one fell out of the coop and into the snow.  That would have produced an angry chicken.  Seeing that their food was filled, and they had plenty of water (and snow) for drinking, I returned to the house.

About a half hour later, I decided to see how many chickens had braved the snow.  The answer? Zero.  I am sure they were quite thirsty, as their water is on a platform outside of the coop, and most mornings they fight over a drinking spot.  However, today, the desire to stay out of the snow outweighed their desire to quench their thirst.

By midday some of our girls finally had braved the snow, although they tended to hide under the coop and peck at the snow around the edges.  Taking pity on the girls, I shoveled a path in their pen while I was outside shoveling our walkways.  Providing a glimpse of bare ground, the remaining water deprived chickens left their coop for a drink.

As we learned last year, snow is not their thing.

In New Hampshire, one of the biggest pest problems is skunks.  They tend to roam around, digging up gardens and harassing people and pets.  So, I have dealt with my fair share of the little buggers.

In the cities, the skunks are definitely worse.  My dad lives in one of the cities of New Hampshire, and at his house, the skunks are more obvious and populous than anywhere else I’ve been.  They just wander into yards, eating grubs and trash, while occasionally spraying things.

Our biggest problem is the fact that they love to live under our shed.  The skunks would build a nest under it, so in order to block or trap them, we used chicken wire to block off all but one way out, and placed a Havahart Skunk Trap there.  The skunk woke that night and stumbled into the trap, so the next day we just carried him off to a new home.  The next year, a mother moved in but was hit by a car two days later.  So, we assumed all was fine, but the yard still smelled every night.  We looked around and learned she had babies under our shed.  So, using the same technique we trapped all four babies, one at a time.

In the smaller town in which my mom lives, we have similar problems.  Often, I can look outside at night and see a skunk sitting in the middle of our yard.  They tend to burrow for grubs or, occasionally, nose around our chicken coop.  One afternoon a skunk ambled into our yard. This was very odd, because skunks are nocturnal, so we thought it was rabid, and we couldn’t see it well enough to tell.  The skunk went over and managed to slip into the coop.  The chickens began to freak out, thinking, ‘Who are you and what  do you want?!’  Fearing it would hurt them, my step-dad grabbed a .22 caliber small game hunting rifle and leveled it at the skunk but couldn’t fire because the girls were jumping in the line of fire.  Fortunately, the skunk left.

Skunks will harass you, but by taking some measures, you can fend them off.

There has been big news at the Kuegler mini-farm over the past month.  While TK and I were away on a business/vacation trip, two of our children and Grandma were left in charge of our flock of 15 chickens.

As all of our kids thoroughly enjoy having chickens, they frequently go to the chickens’ pen to give them apple cores, bread crusts, etc.  While we were away the children began visiting more often, checking inside the coop for the arrival of the first egg.  One early October day produced exactly that.  As we were 6,000 miles from home, we received a picture message displaying this most exciting of eggs!

In the month that has since passed, many more of our hens have become layers.  Although not all of them are “big girls” yet, we are collecting an average of 5 eggs a day.  With such excitement, there are multiple visits each day (adults included), seeking an egg or two in the nesting boxes.