This is a problem for chicken keepers everywhere. The winter egg production drop off issue. It goes from gathering several dozen eggs a week in summer to nothing in winter. Some of us have even resorted to buying eggs from the store in winter. Yuck!
I stumbled upon a trick that keeps me in fresh eggs year round. The best part is, I don't have to add supplemental lighting. My electric bills don't go up. I don't do anything fancy and I get farm fresh eggs year round.
This method takes a tiny bit of forethought but it's one simple move that will keep you in farm fresh eggs from your own happy chickens....even in winter!
Are you ready for this? You're gonna ask yourself "Now why didn't I try this before?" It's this simple, quit getting your chicks in the spring! That's it. Whether you hatch or buy chicks, just do it a few months later then normal and you'll have eggs in winter.
Let me explain.
It's that time of year again! Time to decorate for Christmas. I was trying to think of a way to decorate the coops this year and I wanted to do it in a 'waterproof' way. It seems like all my outdoor decorations quickly become waterlogged, so I needed something that can withstand the snowy winters here.
This was on my mind hours later when I was standing in the garage looking at the different chicken supplies and I spied the stack of feed bags I was going to turn into totes "eventually". I decided to make some Christmas stockings. Since I was already using this free McCalls pattern for another project it was easy enough to make a few stockings out of a feed bag.
All I needed for 2 stockings was:
1 feed bag
Sewing machine with regular thread and medium weight needle
Hot glue gun
Decorative trim
You can do this 1 of 2 ways. Either print out the pattern, or simply use a stocking that is the same size as the stocking you want to make. For the sake of simplicity I decided to post the pictures using a tracing method. (...and as, I had one on hand....I also didn't want to explain enlarging and printing patterns, it's a pain the first time lol) I did 1 stocking using each method and as you can see...they turned out about the same.
