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Quote: Generally speaking I have found my roosters don't live as long as my hens, probably for that reason. I recall an ad from the 50's for a Ralston Purina (I think) product call Lay Or Bust that featured an exploding rooster--it was a cartoon character btw.

True, we never analyzed why they died, if we found one dead bird here or there and it didn't look sick to us it went in the incinerator. For the BYCer each death, whether from pile up, predator or whatever is a tragedy--just read the disease and predator post--so no sense in adding to it.

Quote: The basic physiology is the same regardless and there are recommendations out there that say that the birds can benefit from extra calcium right before they start laying. Perhaps if you can't anticipate the start of lay it would be more appropriate to wait until first egg... As I said...

Quote: That's my point the "rules" are written for large uniform breed flocks not a backyard flock of 6 to 8 birds of different lineage. Frankly a lot of breeds just don't start production at 18 weeks--even my red sex-link comets went almost to 24 and I now have 26 20-week Black Stars that...

Quote: Why, were they laying? There is no good reason to feed layer to nonlaying pullets. As far as the grower is concerned--once your chickens start to lay give them some oyster shell in an separate feeder and feed out the grower or gradually mix it with layer. The biggest difference...