December report:  I am positive again by $19.84 for the month on an average 27 hens laying.  My net income total is – $241.43 for the year.  I would have almost broken even if I had not spent $220 on the chicken butler automatic door.  It was an abysmal failure.  I was sent a second one for free and it didn’t work any better.  Not sturdy enough to handle the chickens and child and predators.   I had $37.16 in expenses for feed (150#) this month.  We collected a total of 226 usable eggs (decrease of 7 eggs)  averaging 7.3 eggs/day collected.  My productivity for the month was 27% (decrease of 3% from last month).  The chickens ate 0.66# food/egg (a decrease from last month of 30%).   It cost $0.16/egg or $1.92/doz for feed (a decrease of $0.48/dozen over last month).  My monthly net income is a loss of $20.15/month this year (a decreasing loss of $3.60/mos).  Chickens cost me $20 month just to have!!  I had so much predator kill this year that I had to buy two separate batches of baby chicks.  Crazy problem.  I will electrify the outside fence again in the next couple of months.  The predators always start up in the spring.  Annmarie got me a remote night vision camera that I will allow me to watch the coop 24/7.  I am going to try and get her to set it up soon and maybe even get it to stream live to our website!  Will see how it goes.  It is slowly getting better despite production dropping off. 

For the year 2011, I had an average of 24.6 laying hens.  I collected 11 eggs/day.  For a total productivity of 45% for the entire year.  The chickens consumed on average 0.71 pounds of feed/egg.  My average egg cost was $0.17 or $2.04/dozen.  I lost $20.15 /month over the whole year.  Not going to do the automatic door again next year.  May get a temporary woven electric fence.  Not sure where I am going to go with the chickens.  We did learn that 40 is the maximum number of chickens that I can have.  Here’s hoping 2012 is a better chicken year.  

I did call our insurance agent today.  We are looking into converting our insurance into a farm policy.  This would hopefully cover more outbuildings and give us some more protection when selling the animals. 

November report:  I am positive again by $13.58 for the month on an average 26.3 hens laying.  My net income total is – $261.27 for the year .  I had $46.42 in expenses for feed (200#) this month.  We collected a total of 233 usable eggs (decrease of 20 eggs)  averaging 7.8 eggs/day collected.  My productivity for the month was 30% (decrease of 6% from last month).  The chickens ate 0.86# food/egg (a decrease from last month of 15%).   It cost $0.20/egg or $2.40/doz for feed (a decrease of $0.36/dozen over last month).  My monthly net income is a loss of $23.75/month this year (a decreasing loss of $3.78/mos).  It is slowly getting better despite production dropping off.  I keep changing the light bulb in the chicken coop.  The chickens keep flying around and breaking the light bulb.  I keep changing the bulb every week.  Gonna need to fix this eventually.  

First coat of gold paint, pretty colorful.

I spent most of the day painting today.  Three walls of gold and one wall of dark green.  Color, lots of color on the walls.  White is my normal color of choice.  I also mounted railing for two different shelves in the furnace closet.  Still need a second coat of paint every where then I get to paint the ceiling.  The yellow tape is special tape that gives a clear paint line.  Will know next week if it actually works.  I have to let the paint dry for 24 hours then I supposedly can apply the yellow tape to the new paint without it causing any damage.  I have to tape the new paint so I can paint the ceiling next.  Hopefully, by the end of next week I will have the room all painted and ready for floor work.

Spare room primed.

Furnace room/closet primed.

Well, I got the spare room all primed.  It took two days, I always forget how long it takes to paint.  Since I truly despise painting it just seems to go that much slower.  We decided to just use our kestrel white for the closet.  It just needs some fresh paint on the walls and ceiling so I can install the shelves on the walls.  I am going to put a shelf over the top of the door to store our used paint from various projects.  I am going to put a 20 inch shelf over the entire back wall.  I am even going to squeeze in a 12 inch shelf between the return and outlet ducts.  Not a lot of room, but I don’t want to waste the space.  I can store the empty canning jars on those shelves. 

Old cutting board, with new one.  I oiled it after this picture was taken.

I cut and sanded our new cutting board today.  I used a piece of plywood and another piece of that oak flooring from the lot bought for the utility sink.  The oak made the facing piece.  I was going to reuse the old face, but obviously it had tried to come off several times in the past.  There were 12 different finishing nails trying to hold it in place.  For a finish I just coated the new board in olive oil.  I just kept coating it until it was all soaked up.  I will continue to soak the cutting board occasionally until it is totally saturated.

Annmarie brought home paint chips for us to choose colors for the spare room.  We are going to go with Olde world gold for three walls and Vogue green for the fourth wall, with Greek villa, off white, finishing out the ceiling.  This will be the only room other than Sarah’s that will actually have some color on the walls.  Who knows, eventually I may get brave and change the colors inside the rest of the house.

Furnace room/closet painted