Main production hens molting at our place

We have 6 White Leghorns that have been our main egg layers because the other birds aren't up to full production, yet. While we were on vacation it rained every day. Even though we had people coming over to check on them it rained so much that a lot of their food was ruined before they could eat it. Between being on short rations and the weather and the shorter days these ladies have started molting.

The pen looks like someone blew up a chicken in it. There are enough feathers to make 3 pillows. The bad part is that they have stopped laying. The Rhode Island Reds are also suffering from stress because they have just about quit laying as well.

We had to buy eggs from the store this past weekend!!! That's the first time in a long time we've had to do that.

The black chickens and the mixed ones we hatched are not quite old enough to start laying. Hopefully the stress didn't set them back very long so they can start laying soon.

Fortunately, we have some eggs frozen so we aren't that short. We haven't tried cooking the frozen eggs but we have made some muffins with them and they seemed to be fine. When the ladies get back on the job I will probably freeze more of them, especially next summer before they molt.

Our process for freezing eggs is to break an egg into a bowl. Stir up the yolk and white. Pour the egg into a plastic cupcake liner. Ours are the reusable, plastic liners for individual cupcakes. They are stiff enough to stand up and hold about one egg each. We put a bunch of liners on a cookie sheet and put one egg in each. Then set the tray into the freezer. When they are frozen you peel off the liners and put the "egg cupcakes" into a ziplock freezer bag or you can vacuum seal them. Then put them in the freezer and you have a supply of eggs when your chickens molt.