4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[loopy12]

I think my 3 girls, Milly, Molly and Mandy are 18 weeks-ish now, and our male, Donald ( ) had just got his drake feather in the last week. When do they normally start laying, and will they lay less over winter than in spring/summer like chickens?

[Guest]

Hi

 

I dont know anything about Pekins but if we have good weather ie lots of autumn sunshine you may be luck to start getting eggs(? stll a bit early though) however I did get eggs from my Aylesburys and campbells from their first winter onwards but it wasnt daily. They do have a bit of a rest.

 

Hope someone with pekins will be along fingers crossed for you indie

[Lesley]

We have Campbells and a Runner - they started laying later than hens - about 24 weeks I think.....and that was early summer time for them. They do lay less through the winter but still lay more than the hens.

 

I hope you have eggs soon.

 

Did you move from UK to persue your dream of the good life? - edit.....just seen that you left Cambridgeshire..........are you enjoying it?

[loopy12]

Ok, will keep an eye out in a month or so...although the weather is still warm here (in the 70s most days) its getting dark about 7.30-7.45pm and the day length seems to affect my hens more than temps.

 

Lesley: yeah, kind of enjoying it here - we like having lots of space (7 acres plus a 10 acre field) but its soooo expensive living here - land and houses are cheap but property taxes and health insurance are cripplingly expensive. My 2-year old enjoys all the animals and gives visitors a very cute guided tour!

 

I think I now appreciate some aspects of the UK that I hadn't even really noticed before - like the getting dark early here - hadn't realised that the UK being so far north had so much more daylight, and I really miss the mildness of the UK climate despite being so far north. I am dreading winter - last year wasn't too bad we're told but I found 4 months of continuous snow on the ground very limiting and a bit depressing.

 

We've done so much in our first year - cleared 2 acres of brushland and turned it into grass and put in a 60ft x 40ft fenced-in (to keep deer out) veggie garden with raised beds, planted a 19 tree orchard, planted fruit bushes everywhere, dug a pond and got the ducks, hatched chicks for the first time, landscaped the back garden, learnt to manage our 2 acres of woods for firewood, raised two pigs (now in the freezer), built a polytunnel and grew more vegetables than we know what to do with. And that was just the non-snowy months! The house we've done a lot on when it was snowing, and we've had a roof-ful of solar panels installed but we're low on money for house projects for now so will do less this winter.

Next spring we still have a lot more to do and I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. Our intention was never to be self-sufficient but we are surprised to find that if we could just get our beadmaker going and if we deal with the lack of dairy (i.e. get a goat) then we'd have all the basics covered.

 

Phew! Bet you wish you hadn't asked now!

[Lesley]

No, I'm glad to hear how you're getting on - it's pretty much the same as we've been doing here! We have 8 acres which cost an arm and a leg but it sounds like running costs are slightly less!

[loopy12]

No - you're way ahead of us...

 

I can only dream of your calves, sheep and bees...

 

I do wonder if we should've stayed closer to home and just suffered a painful mortgage instead. DH convinced me that we would own our house here ouright so would at least have security but it didn't work out like that as we couldn't sell our UK house because of the housing market so now have two mortgages...

 

Somehow its not the easygoing relaxed lifestyle I dreamt of...should've known better

[Lesley]

Closer to us than you know - we had a bridging loan for 15 months, it nearly sunk us!!

 

We're not out of the woods yet - who knows where we'll all end up??

 

Seriously off topic now