Patricia, how many eggs do you get daily from your 110 hens? It sounds to me as though a lot of your hens must be unproductive, but I am not getting a clear picture from your post. This time of year, you can't really expect too much from them but if it doesn't start to improve as the days lengthen, I would be inclined to cull the layabouts and let your broodies raise some replacements. Protein contents in the birds' diet is a major factor in egg production. You don't say what you are feeding, but you could try a higher protein feed and see if that helps. If you have surplus milk, this is an excellent source of protein. Fish is also good... here I could feed smelts or suckers when they are running in April/May, but I don't know what your area offers. You can raise mealworms or red worms in bins to provide free protein. Plant a patch of alfalfa. It will give a high protein forage that will be productive for years. I have a small flock, just for our own use, because I find it difficult to sell eggs on a regular basis. I free range them and yes, I do lose the occasional bird to predators. But although we have coyotes, foxes, raccoons, hawks, fishers, mink and weasels here, our losses are light. If you lock your birds up at night, you may not experience the heavy losses that one might expect. I'm posting a link to a website that I think you will find interesting. Hope it helps. Here is a link that might be useful: Chicken Feed

Emyers, I second Nelda's vote, start off with day-old chicks. I ordered from McMurray hatchery my first time and all the chicks showed up alive and healthy so in that respect they're pretty good. As far as the quality of the breed I'd rather go with Ideal Hatchery. My RIRs from McMurray are consistent layers but they lay small to medium eggs and RIR are suppose to lay large. Also the Americuana roo from them doesn't have the earmuffs they're suppose to have. My Americaunas from Ideal are beautiful and are breed standard. So for quality of breed I'd go for Ideal hatchery. Plus they allow smaller orders. As for raising chicks, they definitely don't need a chicken to raise them. In fact if you stick a bunch of chicks in with a chicken that is not it's mom chances are she'll kill them. Here's how I raise my day old chicks... First of all you need a brooder box. Chicks need to be kept very warm at first, 95 degrees the first week and then decreasing 5 degrees for every week after that until they are feathered out. I usually get my chicks in the summer because it makes it much easier to keep them warm. I built my brooder box myself and I designed it with a removable bottom so I could let the chicks be on the grass and eat bugs during the day. (you shouldn't let them free range until the are almost full grown or they will get picked off by hawks. It's basically a 3'x4'x3' two by four frame with hardware cloth sides, a hinged plywood top, a bottom that connects with 4 latches, and my nephews training wheels attached to two corners of the bottom so I can move it around easily. At night I cover the whole thing with a old comforter. I pull back one part of the comforter and I put one of those radiant dish heaters up against the hardware cloth to keep them warm. I always keep chick starter food in the brooder box and plenty of clean water. If the chicks are crowded or bored they can peck each other bloody. Putting them on grass during the day alleviates that and to help at night I throw a bunch of grass clippings on the bottom. If you do this, it'll probably keep them from starting to peck which is good because once they start they are really hard to break of the habit. When they are a couple weeks old I add some roosts to the brooder box so the get used to roosting. If you don't do this when they are young they may not roost at all. This kind of brooder box also helps when introducing new chicks to an older flock. I did that this summer and it worked great. The big chickens would come everyday to check out the chicks through the sides of the brooder box so they really got used to them early on. I've heard some horror stories about big chickens killing chicks when people tried to put them in together. They say to wait until the chicks are grown before trying to blend the two flocks or there will be trouble. But because my chicks and chickens got to visit with each other everyday I was able to combine the chicks with the chickens at 6 weeks. I watched them closely when I combined them and gave them a lot of supervision for the first week or so but they did really well. The chicks were definitely bottom of the totem pole but beyond the occasional "watch it youngun'" peck from a chicken everyone got along well. Another bit of advice, when you build nesting boxes build them with the tops at 45 degree angles so chickens can't decide to sleep up there. I think 18 inches wide is a good width for the nesting boxes. My coop came with our house and the nesting boxes were built with flat tops and half of them are only 12 inches wide. The chickens like to walk around on top of the boxes before they go in to lay which means chicken poop to clean up. Also they all fight over the bigger boxes, sometimes they're be two or three hens smooshed into one of them. My nesting boxes also came with nailed on fronts that go about a quarter of the way up. This keeps the hay in the nesting boxes well but makes it a hassle to clean out. I plan on rebuilding them when I get the time and when I do, they'll all be 18 inches wide with slanted tops and hinged fronts for easy cleaning. Okay and for the end of this book of a post. Chicken poop doesn't really have a strong odor if it gets mixed with litter. It's only when a bunch of it is on it's own that it gets stinky. (which is why I'm always cleaning off the top of the stupid nesting boxes!) My hen house is in a stall of my barn which is about 300 feet from the house and I have never gotten the slightest whiff of the chickens at the house. Actually though, I usually don't smell anything until I'm in the barn. If there's a strong smell in the barn then I know I really need to clean out the coop. To sum everything up most of my work goes into setup to make my life easier. The training wheels on the brooder box keep me from killing my back. The detachable bottom means I can hose down the bottom instead of scraping it out. The grass clippings greatly reduce the amount of stuck on poop. The hardware cloth sides mean I can combine the flocks sooner which means half the work. The new design on the nesting boxes means easier clean-up. You get the idea Jenica

Hey Shaun, LOL, I think you are on to something. I was wondering why I look like the cat that denied eating the bird, when he clearly did. pith..pith...pith I used the same marinade recipe on halibut a few nights before and it was delicious. Maybe, after many years of eating chicken, I don't like it anymore? Maybe it's what they feed them. Maybe I need to thin the breast for better penetration of the marinade and add something acidic, like rosecmd said. Thank you everyone.

There are so many false ideas promoted in the posting by Springroz. I have pursued physical fitness for 4 decades. I won't even attempt to link all the articles that de-bunk the loss of femininity due to exercise and weight lifting. There are too many to list. Just do a Google search on Testosterone and women. We have it and we need it and we can't do without it. As far as the idea of reducing movement to increase weight loss. I can't let this pass without citing at least one link. Again please do your research. There isn't ANYTHING worse for the human body than reduced movement and exercise. Nothing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3567319/. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/downloads/growing_stronger.pdf