14 hours of light to lay eggs?

[LizaBlue]

Trooper, that's good to know. We are getting electricity at the coop next week, and my husband wants to put some of those rope style Christmas lights in there so we can see w/o disturbing the chickens. We figured the plastic tubing would protect the bulbs, and the lights would be dim, but we could spread them out and see all around in the corners. I think we need to get a timer too.

 

[Cindy in PA]

Quote:
I checked your latitude and came up with you getting on the longest day of the year of about 15 hours of daylight. So a drop from that to 14 hours is enough to trigger a molt. Interesting.

Yea, I never knew that 14 hours constantly could keep them from molting until you said, but I have never seen that here. I just read an Organic Gardening article on chickens in 1992 & went from there. Never had any complications until I started reading here (LOL)!!! Still learn things here everyday though, so it's all good. My girls are just finishing molting now. Got 6 eggs from 12 girls for the first time since Sept. 14th.

 

[themenagerie]

I have a flock of eighteen 25 week old pullets, a mixture of BO, BR, EE, SS, GLW ,Welsummer and Australorp. NOT ONE of them has laid an egg yet. I'm in New England, where right now we have about eleven hours of daylight. Does this mean that they won't lay until spring?