Chicken Littles in South Central PA

[Bunnyhopping]

Living in Carlisle PA. We have two little bantams in an eglu. The eglu was given to me by one of my sisters who thought I would really enjoy having chickens. In fact it came occupied by these little bantams which I called my practice chickens. They are over 5 now, I am calling them geriatric practice chickens. They only lay under optimum conditions ie when the weather is perfect and they are completely happy with their feed, water, and my attitude! LOL...Weather has been so brutal here have not had an egg for several months now. Looking forward to enlarging on my practice chicken knowledge here.

 

[roostersandhens]

 

[gander007]

Living in Carlisle PA. We have two little bantams in an eglu. The eglu was given to me by one of my sisters who thought I would really enjoy having chickens. In fact it came occupied by these little bantams which I called my practice chickens. They are over 5 now, I am calling them geriatric practice chickens. They only lay under optimum conditions ie when the weather is perfect and they are completely happy with their feed, water, and my attitude! LOL...Weather has been so brutal here have not had an egg for several months now. Looking forward to enlarging on my practice chicken knowledge here.

Alright Bunnyhopping,

great to have you joining the flock

Chickens tend to slow down the egg production as they age so no surprise there
so if you want egg's more often you need to raise some pullets every couple of
years and they will be the ones producing most of your egg's ......






gander007

 

[drumstick diva]

You must take very good care of your birds, to raise them to a geriatric age.

 

[TwoCrows]

Great that you have elderly birds! You must take very good care of them and give them all the lovin!

Enjoy all your poultry adventures!

 

[Marthab1953]

Welcome to BYC.

 

[Bunnyhopping]

I did not set out to have elderly chickens. These are birds I am practicing care on and did not want to make too many mistakes with a whole flock. I guess I did not plan well though because now what I have is essentially two pet chickens and no eggs. I did see that someone said I needed to get pullets every other year to stay in egg producing chickens and wonder how to introduce new ones to the old ones, especially since what I have are bantams which are small. I am not wanting to get more bantams, but standard size chickens ( is that the correct description? ) These two ladies were good egg producers for me and they are fond of me, so they will live out their golden chicken years here but I do not want a retirement home for chickens, so I guess I also need to know how do you manage your girls when their egg laying days are over?

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Welcome to BYC!

 

[Kelsie2290]

Hello and Welcome To BYC! If not being kept as pets, people do various things with their chickens when they have finished laying, but usually they wind up being eaten, true "retirement homes" for old laying hens are hard to find. So usually either process and eat them yourself or give or sell them away to be processed. Most people who are keeping birds strictly for eggs will replace them at 2.5 years old when they go into molt the second time, after they have molted they will still be decent layers and some people who are happy with fewer eggs a week will take them so you may be able to do that, but even then they will usually be precessed eventually.