Egg laying

[Haybaler72]

Our austrolorp chicky seems to lay an egg in the evening around dusk. Do chickens prefer day or night??? Do anyone else's hens have a certain time they prefer??

 

[sloanbychoice]

I hear a lot of people say theirs are done by noon. Mine lay all day. I have several early morning layers. But I also have some that don’t lay until well after lunch time.

 

[rosemarythyme]

They lay when they lay - don't know if it's really a preference, but each chicken has their own schedule/cycle. Overall you'll tend to get more eggs earlier in the day but I've had a couple of eggs show up late enough in the day that the layer ran out of daylight and can't quite make it back to roost.

 

[aart]

Our austrolorp chicky seems to lay an egg in the evening around dusk. Do chickens prefer day or night??? Do anyone else's hens have a certain time they prefer??

How old is this bird?
New layers can take some time to find their 'schedule'.
Most mine are done laying by about 2pm, most days.
It varies tho, because....
It takes about 25 hours for an egg to form, a new ova is released shortly after an egg is laid.
A new egg could be laid approximately every 25-26 hours, so an hour or so later every day until one is laid late in the day and another ova might not be released until the following day, so a day off. BUT..very hen is different and only time will tell what a particular hen/pullets schedule might be. Not every hen/pullet lays every day..some only lay a few a week.

I think it's explained in this excellent video, which is worth watching regardless:

 

[buddyellie]

This was a very informative video. Amazing. I do not provide extra light during the time of the year that daylight shortens to keep production levels up. I just think they need that rest because that is how they are created. It must take a great amount of energy to go through this almost daily.

 

[Duckfarmer1]

I check my nest boxes twice a day, morning and afternoon. It seems to be about 14-16 in the morning and about 10 or so in the afternoon. I don’t really worry about when they lay, as long as the shells are healthy, the hens are healthy, no egg eaters, etc.

 

[Haybaler72]

How old is this bird?
New layers can take some time to find their 'schedule'.
Most mine are done laying by about 2pm, most days.
It varies tho, because....
It takes about 25 hours for an egg to form, a new ova is released shortly after an egg is laid.
A new egg could be laid approximately every 25-26 hours, so an hour or so later every day until one is laid late in the day and another ova might not be released until the following day, so a day off. BUT..very hen is different and only time will tell what a particular hen/pullets schedule might be. Not every hen/pullet lays every day..some only lay a few a week.

I think it's explained in this excellent video, which is worth watching regardless:

Shes about 7 months old

 

[Ridgerunner]

To expand a bit on what Aart said. It takes about 25 hours for an egg to go through the hen's internal egg making factory from the time the yolk is released to start it's journey until it pops out of the rear end. About 25 hours can be less than 24 or more than 26. Each hen is different.

There are different triggers that tell a hen when to release that yolk to start its journey. One of them is when the previous egg is laid, the next yolk may be released about 20 minutes after the previous egg is laid. Another trigger is light. This trigger is set up to try to avoid a hen needing to lay an egg after dark. I'm sure there are other triggers, I don't know what they are.

If a hen is laying practically every day a normal progression is that the egg might come later each day until it gets too late, then they skip a day. How much later each day will vary by the hen. I've had at least one hen that didn't do that, my only green egg layer. She'd lay an egg every morning before 9:00 or she would not lay an egg that day. She'd lay 6 or 7 straight days then skip a day. So each one can be different.

Some hens do not lay practically every day, maybe every other day. These tend to lay in the mornings but again each one is different. It depends on how their triggers work.

The entire egg laying process is pretty complicated. Many things have to come together for that process to work the way it is supposed to. That's more than how to put the egg together, which is complicated on its own and why pullets sometimes lay weird-looking eggs. When and where they lay is also part of this process. It sometimes takes a pullet a while to get the kinks out of her system. To me its kind of surprising that so many of them get it right from the start.

Your Australorp may not be "typical" but she sounds perfectly normal to me.