My very 1st questions and hopefully this is right place

[Kristen Marie]

Ok so like I said I have no idea what I'm doing but 8 have 96 chicken that were given to me during that cold storm I want to find out my best egglayer but right now I have like9 separate cages and no idea which one s is laying so I guess my question is best way fore to figure it out in u guess experience, do I put hen in cage all by her self or would that stress her out too much, I was going to take a big cage and put a separate in it so she wouldn't be alone but separated to find out who is laying but the owner of land says that's a waste of time and wants me to put them in small little cage where they will hardly be able to stand up I think that's mean, what do u all recommend

 

[SmiYa0126]

Are they all the same breed? Do you hear an egg song before they lay in the morning?

I wouldn't cage them, that's cruel.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

If you put your general location into your profile it will help us help you with your questions since climate often matters.

How many chickens do you have? Your post says 96, which seems unlikely for a new chicken owner, especially since there are also a couple random numbers in the text elsewhere -- computers and, especially, phones being weird about that.

Chickens are flock animals who don't do well isolated and alone. They are almost always better housed together.

Here are some generally accepted recommendations for chickens' space needs:

The Usual Guidelines

For each adult, standard-sized hen you need:

• 4 square feet in the coop (.37 square meters)
• 10 square feet in the run (.93 square meters),
• 1 linear foot of roost (.3 meters),
• 1/4 of a nest box,
• And 1 square foot (.09 square meters) of permanent, 24/7/365 ventilation, preferably located over the birds' heads when they're sitting on the roost.

If you show us photos of what you have we can help you get it all sorted out.

As for figuring out which bird is your best layer, well, there are a number of ways to do that. Watching the nests is one option, which is useful if you have different breeds who lay different colored eggs. Then, once you know which hen lays what you can keep track of who lays each day when you gather the eggs.

Trap nesting is the professional's way of keeping egg records, but it's not easy and presents some risk to the bird if the nests are not checked VERY frequently so it's not to be done casually.

And yes, you can put the birds into separate cages -- though sometimes they won't lay in an unfamiliar place and the stress of being isolated from the flock will stop their laying.

Since you mentioned the cold snap I'm guessing that you are in North America, where it's winter. That means that your birds are probably going to soon start laying more abundantly so a snapshot of who is laying *now* won't be particularly meaningful next month. They'll start laying more abundantly as the days lengthen into spring.

 

[Mrs. K]

Well you don't need to leave them in the cage all day. Just pop them in there in the morning, and let them out when they lay. You would only need to do it for a week, and you would have pretty good statistics and you could take a picture of hen and egg, and at least have an idea what color and shape of egg each hen is producing.

Mrs K