This past weekend our son saw the critter and attempted to skewer it with a pitch fork. But last night, it returned and killed one of our large, black austro-lorps.

This afternoon, the weasel got brave and attacked a large turkey tom in broad daylight. Nathan was going into the barn when he saw it on the turkey – he hit it with the blade of his machete (he had been hacking weeds with it) and it took off and ran straight into a metal trashcan (used for feed). he said it left blood on the trashcan, so it must be bleeding pretty badly.

Nathan and Marilyn butchered the turkey, since it was still alive, but mortally wounded. he said “it’s ok dad, it was Thanksgiving”.
YOU see, Nathan had named the 3 remaining toms – Thanksgiving, Christmas and Tom. Tom was to be the sire for the hens we have…

Our flock has been reduced from 75 layers to 44 in the course of 2 months, so we are down to about half the egg production we had in June. Instead of 6 dozen per day, we are getting between 2 and 3 dozen.
We ordered more hens, and have about 10 – 15 left of 50 we had been raising, that should start laying this next month.

By February, we should be back to 6 or 7 dozen eggs per day – but in the meantime, I have to put some 1/2″ hardware cloth all around the bottom of the barn walls – immersed in concrete, so the weasels, minks and other vermin couldn’t possibly dig under it. And I thought I was finished with that part of the barn addition…

Dealing with “electrically alive” systems is NOT the same as dealing with “biologically alive” systems. There are some things I just don’t know, or understand about the biological systems – but then, I might add, neither do the geneticists that insist on tampering with the natural rhythm of life on this planet and destroying natural species of plant and animal – or modifying them without fully considering the repercussions of those alterations – but… I’m walking down a bunny trail here.

The “system” in this case is the chicken, and the issue is the mysterious loss of eggs. Eggs from our 70+ hens. Normal output is approximately 4 dozen of these little golden treasures on any given day.

We have had chickens for about 3 years now, and they don’t seem to be a mystery to us any longer – or should I say, they didn’t seem to be a mystery. We have read numerous books, done research on the web, and of course – we have at least 3 years of experience…

We have had lapses in laying in the summer due to weather changes, or stress ( like when the boys forget to water them in the middle of summer and it’s 90 degrees outside), or because of the decrease of light-hours per day. But I must admit, that all my troubleshooting prowess had failed me miserably on this issue.

We were missing eggs!! No, the farm dogs didn’t get them and no animals got them – there were no telltale signs.. .like the cracked pieces of shells left over. Plus, when a varmint gets eggs, they usually like them so much… they come back for the layer!

Anyway, the chickens had been down in production for about 2 weeks. I did notice that there were a lot of feathers around – more than usual – but I didn’t put 2 + 2 together. I had sent the boys on an egg hunt – to the hay barn, out in the fallow pasture where there are tall grass and some weeds – all of the places that chickens like to hide eggs ( but where we always find them).

It wasn’t until I received an email this morning from my lovely wife that everything came back into perspective – the chickens were molting!

Well, of course they were! I had read up on this phenomena; once a year, they will lose all of the feathers and replenish them. A new coat – and it takes all of their energy to manufacture it. We had this happen 2 summers ago, but it was not to this extent – not all hens molted, and it was in summer. We are in the middle of an out-and-out revolt! I mean “remolt“! It seems that this year, all 70+ hens decided to  molt at the same time!!!

Well, I have to explain this to our customers who have been very happy with egg delivery – until the last 2 weeks. And I have to tell them that it could last a couple of weeks longer.

I guess once you get over 50 – the first troubleshooting step should be to make sure your own memory system is functioning normally before attempting to troubleshoot any other type of system. And if it’s a biological system – all bets are off…

Pat

Sure enough, the 2 chicken tractors holding the 25 black Austral-orp hens had blown over, and the chickens were not in them.

Well, it was pretty hard to see solid black hens in the solid black night! I went back in the house and got Nathan. We went out with flashlights, and when we spotted a cluster of them huddling, we would lay down our flashlights and catch as many as we could and relocate them to a larger house for the night. This went on for about 30 minutes, but we think we got all but one – that one elusive chicken was no where to be found, so we called it a night ( since it was after 10:30PM).

I’m awaiting a report from Nathan this morning on the actual head count of chickens…