Rain, Rain GO AWAY!

It started raining here in the DFW area in mid-September.   I think we've had about 5 days of sunshine since then.  The ground is saturated and there haven't been enough sunny days to even come close to drying out.  My chickens stopped laying eggs when it started raining.  The girls are from Arizona and the worst rain they've seen before had been one or two big monsoon days in 2008.  They've been hiding out in the hen house but not producing any eggs.  That wouldn't be a big deal except I finally have a few regular egg-buying customers.

So, we decide to buy some more hens - 14 to be exact.  We make a 45 minute drive to south of Ft Worth on a rainy, dark and gloomy Sunday night to get these "good layers".  Well, they must be homesick, cause they haven't been laying any eggs here.  Now we have 25 hens, eating 50 pounds of chicken feed every couple weeks and I have no eggs to sell.

The new girls are a variety of breeds and some mixes.  This one is very pretty with her gold markings.  If you look, you can see a lot of feathers in the background as some of the hens are molting now - probably due to the days getting shorter and colder and lack of sunlight for the past month.  When chickens molt, their reproductive system shuts down and they produce no eggs.

The AZ girls were very stressed when the TX girls moved in.  They were like 2 rival gangs.  The AZ girls all huddled together as the newcomers took over their turf.  There was a quite a bit of fighting and posturing to determine the new pecking order.  The TX girls were pretty sassy about taking over the chicken yard.

I guess patience is going to be the key while we get through this transition time.  I've read that the molting can take up to 3 months.  Hopefully we'll have some sunshine back by then, too!