Aloha,
Today I would like to share a little about our laying hens. We have 18 happy hens in our mobile coop. They are helping us with our weeds, pest management, fertilizing the soil as well as providing us with delicious eggs!
We started them in the walkway to clear the weeds, so I wouldn’t have to cut it down by hand. In the first picture you can see the heavy weed pressure all around the coop except for in the front, where the coop was just moved from. Moving them every other day ensures that they effectively take care of the weeds but don’t linger too long in one area.
We just added the rolling nesting box so when the hens lay their eggs it rolls to the front into the covered box. That prevents the eggs from getting dirty and the hens from pecking at their own eggs. This is especially good with the Hawaiian rainy season nearing. The hens feet get dirty and we definitely want to keep the eggs dry.
We feed our hens organic layer feed and organic vegetable and fruit scraps from the farm. And they eat the weeds and bugs as we move their coop.
We collect the eggs 2-3x per day. Once in the morning when we feed them and again the we toss in the farm scraps and check in on them.
So far we haven’t encountered any predators. We have had problems with loose dogs eliminating our entire flock before but as of this writing we have been lucky with this new flock.