Chick, pullet, layer, cull cycle?

[seventreesfarm]

Hello!
I've read BYC postings off & on since the beginning, but never had time to participate more. I do recommend it to any friends looking for advice on their new flocks though.

I've raised chickens for a few decades, but have only been doing it as a business for around 5 years. I'm curious how other market producers cycle their flocks to keep production steady. My customers are pretty understanding when my flock is in moult or slows down some for winter, but I really want to avoid that as much as possible by cycling in new hens and culling out the non-productive ones on a regular schedule.

I have a brood coop, a hen barn, and am converting a part of the hen barn to a pullet run (for that awkard age between heat lamp and point of lay).

How do all y'alls do it?

-Joanna

 

[ChicKat]

Welcome to the BYC forum!!

I'm really surprised that you haven't gotten answers yet from the BYC community. I'm subscribing to see what the experts will weigh in with.

 

[off-grid hen]

In my travels here a BYC over the last year, I have seen this mentioned a few times. However, I have no idea how you would word such a thing for the search engine. Good luck!

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I'll give you the basic outline of how I do it and the parts that I have yet to take up but plan to.

The bulk of my birds are commercial in origin and I prefer to order them early spring/late winter so they'll be laying before the summer solstice. The egg market in my area slumps in midsummer (big university population) so demand is slack and it's a good time to get birds through their pullet egg stage so they can be up to size by the time the market picks up. Also, spring between the last hard freezes and the first seriously hot weather here in Florida is the peak of the bird selling market so if you have birds that are out of the brooder and approaching point-of-lay they will move.

I also hatch some of my own and prefer to do so at about the same time my chick orders come in so they'll be out and out of the way before I begin setting the turkey eggs.

Brooder to grow-out pen. This is where I begin pulling started birds out to sell. I do on the fly sorting to keep the birds that I want as I do this.

Grow-out pen to layer tractors. About two weeks (ordinarily but not this year) I move the almost-ready-to-lay birds into the layer tractors so they can get accustomed to the place before the first eggs appear. Typically about sixteen weeks for the commercial birds. Eighteen weeks for the ones I hatch.

Layer tractors to fixed hen yard. The birds will usually spend their entire first lay cycle in the tractors. They're all the same age, all raised together, so the pecking order is well established before they start producing and there are no older birds who might be carrying diseases and parasites to contaminate them. My tractors are moved every day and they do not ordinarily cross the same patch of ground again more than once a month. At the end of their first lay cycle when their shell quality is at its worst just before they start to molt they go into the henyard. Lot of stress then as they are incorporated into an existing flock so they may just stop laying and start to molt. But as it's the slack time of year this is OK because my egg demand is usually low enough that the temporary dip in production is not a problem.

Now ideally this is also the time I'd cull the non-producers. Historically this is how the business was run. All year long you'd occasionally give the flock a visual inspection to spot the obvious non-producers and/or sick birds. Eliminate them as found. At the end of their first lay cycle the entire flock would be closely checked (comb and leg color, pubic bone spacing, and all that) to sort out the good producers from the bad. The poor producers are culled. The good producers retained to molt out their old feathers (they'll often look pretty ratty by then) and lay one more cycle. Fewer eggs from those, but they will usually be larger. At the end of the second cycle all but the very best hens are culled. The super-stars are incorporated into the breeding flock if you'll be doing that. The biggest reason I am not going to that extent yet is that I simply hate plucking chickens. But I ordered most of the parts I needed to build a Whizbang last winter so I'm hoping to start putting it together in the next few months and perhaps I can start processing spent hens and cull roosters instead of selling them at cost (or less) at the swaps.

One refinement I unintentionally added last year was a fall bird order. They were originally for my kids to do a "pullet management contest" at the local fair and were all commercial red sex-links. The kids received them in October and they were laying by March. This was nice because we started getting in plentiful eggs of great shell color and quality just as the spring birds were beginning to show they were coming to the end of their first lay cycle (as in pale color, declining shell quality). No late spring or early summer quality decline. I may do it again for my own purposes this year both to keep up the quality of egg production, but also give me something to sell (started pullets) at the late fall and winter swaps when I'd ordinarily be coming to the last of the turkeys so have little to sell.

My problems this year is lack of grow-out pens. Need to build two more tractors to eliminate the bottleneck between brooders and production tractors.

 

[Mrs. K]

that is a great answer, and I think very reasonable.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Thanks for the detailed account of your methods!

I do like the sex-link breeds for how fast they come on to lay, but I also think they peter out faster than some of the old fashioned breeds. We've trialed them (red & black star, cinnamon queen, golden comet) 3 times I think and have gone back to mostly barred rocks with a sprinkling of welsummer & easter eggers since my customers like a little color. We just bought a few maran chicks to see if we like them or not.

Right now I have some hens from 2010 in my flock. I usually don't keep them that long, but they passed inspection and I only ordered 1 batch of chicks last year for replacement. I did laying tests, isolating each breed in my small coop and seeing who laid best. A little disruptive, but interesting. http://seventreesfarm.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/chicken-inspector/

We don't raise meat birds, but we do put 'used' hens in the freezer for soup. Since they don't need to be pretty for table, we just skin them & save the hassle of plucking. Someday I'd like to raise my own replacements, but I have a lot going on with other critters and crops, so I let the professionals do it for me right now

I'm trying to track down a publication I found online about flock management that had a schedule for cycling chicks. It must be saved on my work computer I recall it was like add a 2nd batch 10 weeks after the 1st, then one more batch after that in the year. The idea being to time point of lay with demand, and to have a batch coming on early spring.

I think I will also add a fall batch of chicks, since my current ones will be ready for the pullet run by then and I've love to have more eggs early. Plus it's just fun to have little peepers when it's dark & rainy here in the PNW.

Just wanted to add that we're not using tractors, even though I see why they are so popular. With a small place & flock, we decided to establish rotational runs off the main henyard. The hen house was originally my milk cow barn that we took over for layers when we decided to have a bigger flock. Easier to do that then go the tractor route, and our pasture is really nice & recovers fast. There is enough to rotate them through with a long time before going back to the 1st paddock.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Allow me to over-simplify, for the broad strokes perspective.

We have a small egg business and having a consistent supply of eggs is essential. To achieve that, spring chicks, every spring. Commercial birds, btw. Those spring chicks will "kick in" by July-August and will lay right through their first winter, very well. By the following spring, more chicks. As fall, the second year, rolls around, the 1 1/2 year olds will go into moult and laying will drop big time. BUT.... This year's spring pullets are in full lay and have taken up the slack.

Some folks dump their entire older birds at this point. The don't even want to feed them through a 4 week moult and don't want the slightly lower egg production of the second year either.

We also have breeding operations and we also have some heritage birds, just because. These two things are side issues, so I won't go into them. Hope this helps.

Simple? New pullet chicks every spring. The fall, a year later, flip the flock. Basically, that's it in a nutshell.

 

[seventreesfarm]

Simple? New pullet chicks every spring. The fall, a year later, flip the flock. Basically, that's it in a nutshell.

I think that's about what I usually do, just hadn't really made it 'scientific' yet. I still might add a few in the fall, just because I like the higher electricity bill for the brood lamps

Here is the site with the 3 chick batch rotation - http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4628E/y4628e03.htm It's from FArg so geared toward developing nations. Some interesting ideas for lowering inputs.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Here is the site with the 3 chick batch rotation - http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y4628E/y4628e03.htm It's from FArg so geared toward developing nations. Some interesting ideas for lowering inputs.

Thanks for posting that. I had found it some time ago then lost the link before I'd saved a copy.