We've been under a terrible drought the past couple of months. It has finally started raining again, though, and I'm very happy and thankful for that. It has almost come to late to save my garden beds, but at least some things will still produce into the fall. I'll be canning, freezing, or dehydrating what I can.
We lost a couple of quails due to the high heat, too. I hated it but then, we really only want the strongest, fittest of them to survive. The ones that are left obviously got pretty hot, but with plenty of fresh water and shade, they made it through the worst days. I'm figuring to buy about 10 more females so we can start having more quail eggs and incubate them for new birds. We will rotate the quails out -- killing the older birds and raising the younger ones for meat and eggs.
The rabbits are doing well. We have kept a fan on them during the hot afternoons and supplied them with frozen water bottles to lay against for cooling down. In the past, I've lost rabbits in the heat and only this year learned of these two tricks to help them beat the heat and be comfortable.
It's time to separate the buck from the does now, so that means a new hutch or at least partitioning off a portion of the current one. We don't want any unexpected breeding to occur. We will also need to build a grow-off hutch for young rabbits that we plan to sell or eat.
The chickens seem to be tolerating the heat OK. They have a very shaded area and plenty of water. They aren't laying eggs yet, so they aren't too stressed. They should start laying in a couple of weeks. The potential for laying hens is pretty impressive. Averaging 300 eggs a year times 8 hens, that's 2400 eggs a year possible, if all goes well. If I break it down into weekly production, it's about 4 dozen eggs a week. During high production months, it can go higher. During low production months, much lower.
Now, we'll never be able to eat all those eggs but in my state we are allowed to sell "country eggs" without inspection or licensing as long as the carton is clearly labeled. We can use cartons we've collected as long as the original printing has been obliterated in some way and we've re-labeled them. We do have to wash the eggs well before we sell them, of course.
