The hens have sure noticed the change in the season and they have came off their winter egg strike and started laying!
The girls are wintered naturally (no lights or heat) so when eggs stop coming you just wait until they start again I think this gives them a nice rest for a season well done. If you don’t already know they stop or significantly slow production when the daylight hours diminish this is their way of making sure that they are not raising baby chicks through a cold winter, you can trick them into laying by adding a light to the hen house to make up for the lost daylight but sometimes (almost always!) nature knows best and following what happens naturally makes (in my mind) for a better healthier bird which should give a better healthier product.
The picture below shows off the new nest boxes which are made out of old recycle bins (getting recycled themselves!)
The bins are tilted and filled with hay, the tilting was to stop the girls from roosting on the boxes at night and pooping in the nest it has worked better than before but still needs some tweaking as they occasionally sit on the upper rim on the top boxes still maybe a small roof above each box?
Anyways the girls are lining up to lay and it looks like adding another box might be good, last season they would lay in the corner of the house on the ground when the box was in use too long so more boxes were added but also more chickens are going to be laying this season as some were added to the flock as always we will see how it goes and adjust as needed!
