Here is a quck picture of three of our hens in the laying boxes … errr … buckets. They are just free 5 gallon pails from the grocery store that I cut up with my jig saw. It took them a day or so to get used to them, but for the past two days we have picked out 5 eggs each day!
***UPDATE***
I just thought I would add a quick update to say that all six of our chickens laid yesterday! We had topped out at five layers a few times, but we had one black hen that hadn’t laid since the day we brough her home. Well, yesterday she got back on track and hopefully we will be able to average about five a day from here on out. If we can do that then we will begin selling some eggs to help cover the costs. We will just be looking for 2-4 people to buy a dozen eggs every week or two. Hopefully this can be a small step in the farming direction for us. It would be a very small step, but a step nonetheless.
I only have 5 hens, and I average about 3 eggs a day, sometimes only two. My girls are three years old, so production has been waning. If I wanted to keep my family of four in eggs, and have some to sell, then I’d need 12 reliable layers. As of now, I still buy eggs to keep up with our demand; I use about 5 to 9 eggs a day, then there’s baking to consider. I marvel at those who think their family of four will be kept in eggs with only 2 or 4 hens. I guess we eat a lot of eggs!