The girls are happily producing. Ten hens, and I'm getting seven to eight eggs a day, 49 this last week. What's odd is this happening in our cooling weather - temps were down the last few days, with frost finally appearing. Maybe it's the residuals of the lovely Indian Summer we've had. There was that time in October when they slowed down to five eggs a day or so, but production has been up since then.

It could also be that they're back on layer feed, although since I let them free range, they're rather easy on the feed. Since Labor Day there was starter/grower in the feeder since the meat birds don't range, just hang around the coop and eat and defecate. I made the switch back last week since I knew the meat birds were going away to be converted.

Or, it could even be the four Silver Laced Wyandottes proving their pluck as cold weather layers - even though the real cold weather has yet to set in.

Anyway, whatever the case for the production, I'm not going to argue with the results.

This weekend I spent Saturday putting the finishing touches on the stall for my daughter's goat. I got a short wall put up to limit the space we'd need to clean up, and mounted boards around the fencing that was already in place to hopefully keep the new kids from exploring in forbidden areas of the old barn. I also got the lumber cut for what will be the two-way gate. I've designed it so that when the doe is out ranging in the barnyard, the two wethers are locked up, and when the doe is locked up, the wethers can be outside ranging. Hopefully I won't botch the construction job, and it'll actually work.

We'll see what happens.