Egg Production - What to Expect

[DigitalEd]

Hey all,
When I first started out as a newbie (which I still am), one of the common questions is how many eggs will I get when trying to pick breed and number of chicks. Below is a graph of the eggs per week of two years of laying.

This is for a flock of 8 Easter Eggers (EEs) that according to the hatchery web site we could expect about three (3) eggs per bird per week. As you can see in the first spring they totally blew that number away.

Important dates to note:
In Oct 2011, we lost one bird so the 2012 numbers are less
In late Dec 2012, we put a light in the coop and they started laying again.

Click for a larger image.





We kept a count of eggs per day on the calendar on the refrigerator and then every couple of months I'd put all the numbers into a Google Docs spreadsheet.

----- Ed

 

[Fred's Hens]

As hens age, they slow a bit, most times, especially their second winter. They have to moult and re-charge. As spring approaches and the daylight increases, laying picks up again. In order to have consistent, or at least more consistent trend on egg production, it is often wise to always have spring hatched pullets coming into the flock each year. Some people integrate 30% of their flock, as new pullets every year. Others? They sort of do an "all in, all out" exchange at the two or three year mark. Different ways of accomplishing the same thing, which is a more consistent level of egg production. Decisions, decisions.