Is the Strike Really Over?

No, I'm not talking about the NBA strike. (That was actually a lock out I think and I could not care less!)


I am talking about the strike which my laying flock apparently was participating in. You see, it used to be that my laying flock was housed in two seperate buildings. We had about a dozen hens and a rooster in a little frame building with about 900 sqft of fenced run. and we had another thirty hens and three roosters in a hoop house that I moved every few days. These birds were also allowed to free range about 5 days a week. Then we had two groups of 20 -25 young birds I bought as straight run chicks this past summer in two seperate chicken tractors.


During the last few days in October, I consolidated all the mature hens in a new hoop house along with what I judged to be pullets from the two chicken tracors. There were also ten much younger birds hatched by two of the older hens from the frame house that I put in the new hoop house. All totaled there were and are about 80 birds in the new 200 square foot hoop house. You can see various pictures of it in the sidebar. The 15 or so roosters sorted out of the flock have been relegated to the old hoop house. The plan is to butcher some of them and then reintroduce the others into the laying flock after the first of the year.


The initial response of the layers was to quit laying. Work Stoppage! They were moulting and I am sure the trauma of being caught and moved kind of knocked them out of the egg-laying mood or what have you. It did not knock them off their feed though, that's for sure.


Well today I finished the fencing for the chicken run around the new hoop house. The birds were released into it about two this afternoon and seemed to love getting out in the sunshine. Every now and the one or more of them would run and then take off on the wing for a few feet. Of course, they don't ever get very far off the ground. I went out just after dark and all of them were in except for one who moved on in with little coaxing.


My intent is to keep the hoop house where it is for the winter. In the spring, I will get the wheels back on it and begin moving it. We will see. As my Grandpa used to say: "Man proposes and God disposes."


Oh and by the way, the birds are now laying around 18 eggs a day. Hopefully, I can encourage them to maintain and build on this. We will see.