Changes we are making to our winter chicken set-up скачать в хорошем качестве

Changes we are making to our winter chicken set-up

Experience is the best teacher. We learned a lot last winter in regard to keeping chickens and we are making some changes to our winter chicken set-up. Molting is new to us this winter and we have experienced a slow down in egg production, but it's good to give the hens a break from laying. We still have plenty of eggs for us and several customers so we are happy. We learned about supplemental light for winter chickens. In Minnesota we can get down to 8 hours of daylight which leaves the chickens spending 16 hours in the dark. I wouldn't be happy with that and guess they aren't either, so we are adding just a few extra hours of daylight. We also learned we don't like straw for bedding so this year we are using wood chips instead. We are fortunate to have our Greenhouse in the Snow to house the chickens during winter so they stay above freezing for the most part during winter. The varieties of laying hens we have are cold hardy so they are able to stand temps below zero, but in our greenhouse it doesn't typically get that cold. I was starting to worry about whether we would get our garlic planted or not. Sourcing compost had become a problem and with the snow and cold temps; I was worried about the ground being too frozen. We are thankful for good neighbors! Kristin and Adam came to our rescue and let us have some of their composted cow manure. I'm so excited to see how our Music garlic grows next spring!