Do chickens have..

[gvillebass]

Do chickens have a time of day (ie morning, afternoon) that they prefer to lay or is it just whenever they get the urge?

 

[bayouchica]

Hi there, my hens mainly lay in the morning & there are some who lay in the early afternoon.
Miriam

 

[pegbo]

My hens usually are not done laying until 4:00 p.m. Some lay very early and some lay late. Who knows what goes through their little minds!

 

[jimnjay]

If you watch carefully you will see that the time they lay will change a bit each day untill one day a particular chicken will lay late in the afternoon, then they will skip a day. Chickens take about 25 hours to process an egg from start to finish so it follows that each egg will be laid at a different time each day. Some production breeds go for months and never miss a day but they time varies slightly each day. My laying girls are all second and third year layers and they are across the board on the time they lay. I find an egg in the nest when I let them out one day and they don't lay at all the next day then one in the afternoon the day after that.

 

[gvillebass]

Thanks for the replies. We check them several times a day and have determined that they are not morning birds (so far) it seems around midafternoon before they decide to leave a present.

 

[SpottedCrow]

When Obelisk was younger, she'd start at 7 in the morning and her last one of the bunch would be at 6 at night.
Now that she's older, she's only been laying in the afternoon 1, 2 or 3.

 

[bigzio]

jimnjay, I agree with your thoughts. Pullets lay smaller eggs than adult hens and are more consistant with laying time in my opinion. The cycle changes like you said, and older hens seem to wait longer in the day to lay.

Seems like after the molt, the cycle starts over with the hens starting to lay early in the morning, then slowly progressing to the mid-day and later. Gotta love them hens!

bigzio