A month ago I wondered when they'd start laying. Now I wonder how we're going to get through all these eggs: we have about 4 dozen, of which 18 are store-bought! My five RIR hens are laying on average three eggs per day. Today I found four. Time to break out the souffle recipes, I guess.
I finally found time to start building my LED (Light Emitting Diode) lighting system. There are three 1 Watt LEDs mounted to an aluminum heatsinking block that is screwed into the ceiling of the coop. I'm using a surplus 12Volt Lead-Acid battery from an emergency light that I got for about $6 (yay Ax-Man surplus!). Tonight I tested it and it's bright enough to get the birds off the roosts and looking around for something to eat. Next will either be a timer that will run the light for four hours every day, or depending on how much I get done, my Bluetooth remote monitoring system will be ready so the computer in the house can turn the light on and off as necessary. It would actually work right now, but while the Bluetooth module on the monitor hardware has 300' range (Class 1), the one on the PC only has 30' range (Class 2), so they can't "see" each other over the distance between house & coop.
But first I have to get other chores done: like getting my Xterra roadworthy again after the accident in August. Snow's coming: gonna have to stop driving the car soon.
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