This week, the heron returns, a super-exciting stack of food bags and fun egg math, and assorted duck and chicken pics.

The heron landing:

The ducks swam over to investigate:

A while later, taking off again:

The ducks by their frosty-roofed house:

Ducks from below the pond deck, while I was wiping off the pond cam:

A peek of some chickens through the fence:

The aforementioned exciting pile of bags of chicken food, and a flock block:

Let’s do some fun math.  The chickens go through about a bag per week between the two coops — I typically get about six bags of feed every six weeks or so. (The ducks eat it too, but there are only a couple of them, so negligible difference.)  Each bag costs $29.95.

We’re currently averaging about 6 eggs per day, ramping up as the weather warms up.  At their peak production it’s more like 10.  So that’s 42 to 70 eggs per week, or 3.5 to 5.8 dozen per week.

So in terms of food, each egg costs $0.71 to $0.43, or $8.52 to $5.16 per dozen (they eat at a fairly constant rate, so the more eggs they lay, the cheaper each is).  And we give away the majority of those.  Certainly not a cheap way to get eggs, but we enjoy the chickens, and you can’t beat the taste of farm-fresh eggs!

Sometimes it’s best not to look too closely at the numbers.

Anyway, back to the pics. The chickens in the new coop, waiting for their mealworm treats (let’s not factor those into the math too!):

They are still mostly roosting above the nesting boxes in the new coop:

For completeness, the old coop too:

Finally, some pictures in the old coop just after I gave them the new flock block: