Egg production down

We have finally started to see a decline in egg production. We've gone from a corker of a day last week with a record 23 down to today's low of 8.
The middle hens have eaten one of their own as I saw them at it when I went in. Therefore we've no idea how many there could have been.
This cold snap we have had will be affecting them too. The weather has a lot to do with the amount they produce.
It's not got above freezing all day.

Food cost of raising chicks and hens.

2017 is going to be our start in trying to get things to pay for themselves and see what income, if any, we can generate from the smallholding.  We've lots of thoughts as many people who have done this, will have had over the years.  Ultimately the main goal is to feed and sustain ourselves from the smallholding.  Part of that may also be financial but it isn't the main focus.  Self sufficiency is the focus with a side order of thoughts on making an income.  Clear as mud?

So to do this we need ideas and records.  Lots of records!  I don't mean LP's, I mean the kind I should have kept last year but didn't manage to 100%.  So we're off with a flying start when I report in with this.

We started a little experiment when out chicks hatched in December.  It took 14 chicks 39 days to get through a 20kg bag of chuck crumb.  The bag was £7.50.  That means the cost per day was 0.19p so it was slightly over 1p to feed each chick per day.  We will weigh one tonight to see what weight it got up to over the same period.

I’ll run the exercise again in the summer to compare a summer hatch to a winter hatch and then we know if it’s worth it or not.

Here they are trying to make an escape:

The cockerels will either sell or go in the freezer.  There's 7 cockerels and 7 hens.

In addition our remaining 46 poultry (including 4 geese and 4 ducks in that total), got through a 25kg bag of layers pellets plus almost 2 20kg bags of corn in 6/7 days.  This is around £20 worth of food in a week!  The corn was fairly expensive this time round, however as we will get it from the farmer most of the time, it’ll be a lot cheaper then.

Eggs sales have made us £25 in 10 days, so I’d say at the moment, they are just covering themselves!  Of course it is winter and we’re lucky to be getting eggs at all, however we got 15 eggs yesterday, and the previous days haven’t been too shabby so as long as we can keep up the egg sales and they feed themselves then that’s ok.  However we need to be mindful of these figures going forward.  I haven’t taken into account bedding  or time and effort. 

They will potentially bring some pennies in if we sell a trio of the chicks, and some geese and ducklings when they hatch some out, plus there’s always our rare breeds.  So watch this space. 

Of course the eggs are feeding us too, so that isn't a bill I need to pay the grocery shop for.  Little things...