Chicken eggs: when home grown bounty is an omen for climate change

I'm not the only one noticing the strange winter weather this year. Or lack of it.

There has been no snow. None. And the temperatures have been so mild that our kids have been out playing on the farm in t-shirts and shorts.


Days and days of sunshine and mild temperatures, with not a snowflake to be seen. As I sit here writing, my son is downstairs dressed in t-shirt and shorts - at Midwinter! WHAT is going on???

Usually we would have had a few snow days by now, and the temperatures would be hovering around 5 degrees, with a real need for puffer jackets, thermals and woolly hats.

Then there's this:


Two days worth of laying at Midwinter! I won't complain, but something is very wrong. Normally we'd be getting 3-4 eggs a day, not this many!

Humans use calendars, but animals sense the weather and the air and earth around the them.

Humans can deny the weird weather all they want, but when my chickens start thinking it is Spring barely a week past Midwinter, you know something is wrong.

At this time of the year, all but my brown shaver hens, the ones I call my "Everready Battery" hens that just keep on laying, no matter what the temperature, should have stopped laying pretty much.

And that is what had happened - up until a week or so ago. From fourteen chickens, we were down to getting 2-4 eggs a day - and yes, we have three brown shaver hens, so that made sense. Nobody was laying except them.

That is totally normal for winter. There is a reason Easter is celebrated in Spring (in the northern hemisphere) - it's the time when the chickens started laying again, and for the first time in months, after the cold winter, eggs would again be available. So people celebrated - as they should.

But we shouldn't be getting a glut of eggs in Midwinter. That has never happened in history - not 46 degrees south of the equator, in a cool temperate climate, as we are.

The first coloured eggs crept in last week, from my fancy hens. I thought it was odd, but brushed it off as an anomaly. It was just one or two at first.

Then the number of eggs increased, until now we're getting 7-8 eggs a day from our hens again - a sure sign that our birds think Spring is a-happening and it is time to "feather their nests", in a not-so-metaphorical manner of speaking.


The bigger picture goes beyond a celebration of bounty

I wouldn't complain, if it weren't for a few worrying signs. First of all, we need winter. The chill helps certain fruit crops, and it also keeps certain pests at bay. Without the cold temperatures, we're sitting ducks for pest and disease invasion, as well as crop failure.

Then there's the bigger picture: climate change.

If you don't accept climate change by now either a) you don't spend any time gardening or farming, or even outside, because if you did you'd be very aware of it just by the dates changing in your almanac for first frosts, first germinations etc., or b) someone (probably politically or financially motivated) has done a real good job of pulling the wool over your eyes.

Climate change worries me because our species developed in certain climates, and just can't adapt fast enough to deal with sudden, unnatural change.

It also worries me because if this year follows last year's trend, winter may decide to kick in very late, after the newborn lambs are here.

Last September that caused devastation, with thousands of newborn lambs dying of cold in Southland, here on the south island of New Zealand.

Winter came late and very hard, after the ewes had given birth and after farmers would have expected the coldest weather to be over.

Without a normal cycle calendar to go by, farmers are working in quicksand.


It isn't just the animals confused by the weather...

Here on the farm, we're seeing spring bulbs sticking their shoots up well before Spring should happen - months before it is due, in fact.

Here's more proof of skewed weather: daffodil bulbs coming up. They've been visible for about three weeks now, and I only planted them in April:


Spring bulbs coming up among newly fallen autumn leaves. The oddity of this scene is striking to me.


Change - fast and worrying

What can we do about all this? I'm not sure I know. Our so-called political "leaders" seem intent on doing nothing, we're stuck in a rut of fossil fuel abuse that even the greenest of us can't find a way out of, and world population and energy use is expanding exponentially.

In the meanwhile, we'll enjoy our eggs, but I really wish I wasn't aware that this wonderful bounty is a bad omen in disguise. Because no matter how much political and financial interests try to muddy the waters in the issue of climate change and what must be done, our chickens know better: the world is changing. Fast.


Have a lovely day!