This series of posts will tell how I went from an average of 15 eggs a day (from 18 hens), to no eggs for nearly 6 months. My problems really started in December, 2012. I just didn't know it at the time. My hens had just started laying, after a few weeks, I noticed that the majority of their back feathers were missing. Why did they have bare backs? Overeager roosters. Now, skip forward to around April 2013. I was averaging 15 eggs a day from my hens, often getting as many as 18 eggs in a day (one day I got 19 eggs after getting 18 eggs for 2 days before that). I started only getting between 12-14 eggs a day. I didn't know what was wrong at first, until one day, I went in the roosting room (I had the nesting boxes in there at the time) and heard a loud noise. I caught sight of something crawling out of the top of the room. It had a long, bushy, gray tail. So, my war with the squirrels began. Some days I only got 10 eggs. I had to do something. I tried a few distractions (seeds and corn away from the coop), deterring them, and many other things, but the squirrels kept coming. My Grandfather gave me his pellet gun to try on the squirrels. After a few attempts, I managed to kill the first one. Then my dad and I managed to take out the rest of the egg stealing squirrels.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of my egg laying woes. I will tell you what happened next, in the following blog post.
Chickenman
Edit 4/1/14: Sorry for the delay, I will try and have the next post published within the next day or two.
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