Two good questions.
1. How long can I expect my hens to lay?
I've heard a lot of people giving a prime 2 year egg laying span. I read something on the chicken lady blog that suggests much longer. I will likely do a yearly flock reduction after the first round gets around 2-3 years old. (Stew pot). I guess I will watch the time frame for a noticeable and consistent drop in production to schedule the culling?
The studies that have been done on this are generally of the hybrid commercial layers, not the backyard breeds we typically keep. I will give you some general information based on those studies but breed and strain can make a big difference. And you have to have enough for averages to mean anything. Individual hens can be way different from the averages regardless of breed or strain.
What I mean by strain is that if you breed a flock of chickens to reinforce a trait, you enhance that trait over time. Most people don’t do that for longevity of laying but some do. If you breed hens that lay well later in life, then you will get a flock where they lay well later than others of the same breed. So yes, the best thing you can do is to monitor, keep records, and make decisions based on your chicken and your flock. I don’t do that. I have a different system.
Whether you provide extra lights or not, it is fairly normal for a pullet that starts laying late summer or early fall to keep laying through the winter. They just skip the molt entirely that first fall and keep laying. It doesn’t always work but it’s fairly normal.
With all that said, the studies show that pullets lay really well their first year. Then they molt and stop laying to refresh their systems. When they start back up they lay really well again and the eggs are larger. That is the two years you have heard. After their second adult molt, productivity normally drops for the flock by about 15% to 20%. That’s maybe less than one egg per hen a week. That may be enough to really hurt profit margins on the big commercial growers but you might not find it that bad. Then after each molt, they drop another 15% to 20% on average. That’s when it starts to get pretty noticeable.
I don’t know how many you are looking at but I keep a laying/breeding flock of 7 or 8 hens. Every year I keep four new pullets to add to this flock. I let the previous year’s pullets molt and keep them around another year. When the laying season is over and they molt and stop laying I process the oldest ones. This way I have eight hens laying during the main part of the laying season, these eight plus four at the end of the laying season when those pullets start, and the pullets laying some eggs in winter when the others are molting. Different people use different systems.
2. The northwest has a very short daylight span during part of the year. I plan to turn on coop light in early am and also turn on small 25watt red lamp during the night. Is this going to prevent molting?
Different things can cause a molt but what you are talking about is the seasonal molt when the days get shorter. Technically it’s the nights getting longer that matters, not the days getting shorter, but the effect is the same. Chickens normally lay eggs when it is OK to raise chicks, spring and summer. We’ve domesticated them and messed that up some, but they still tend to follow this pattern. When the days get shorter they quit laying and molt, using the nutrients they can find to regrow the worn out feathers instead of using it to lay eggs. Many people believe it is a set number of hours of daylight (14) that makes this happen but it’s not. It’s the change in the length of days. Chickens so close to the equator that they never see 14 hours of daylight follow the same cycle. Chickens a long way from the equator may already be molting by the time the day gets down to 14 hours. If you are going to provide lights look at your longest day of the year and base your light schedule on that.
You don’t need a lot of light. As long as you can read a newspaper in there you have enough light. Each coop is different. I don’t have a clue how many watts your coop would need. The higher the wattage the more the electricity costs.
Don’t leave lights on all night. Chickens need their dark hours like we do. Leaving the lights on all the time not only costs money to pay for electricity but it can cause certain egg quality problems. I suggest you use timers to set your lighting schedule.
Many people use lights to extend laying. I don’t but I consider that a personal decision. Egg laying follows a curve. The flock will ramp up to peak production and maintain it for a while. But after a while that peak production starts dropping, both in number of eggs and in quality of eggs. Each flock is different but with the commercial hybrids, productivity is down to about 60% of peak maybe 12 to 18 months after they start to lay. That’s normally where it becomes unprofitable to feed them so the commercial operations either force a molt or replace the flock. They will go through that same cycle again but they normally reach that 60% a little quicker the second time around.
Good luck!
