How Many Eggs Did You Get Today?

[SCchickens2011]

Flock Age
11 months
​

Zoe​

Nandi​

Inara​

Kaylee​

Yolanda​

Saffron​

Bridget
B. Leghorn​

SLW​

SLW​

EE​

EE​

EE​

EE
Date​

Laying Record​

# of
Eggs
3/25​

4:45pm​

10:00am​

9:15am​

7:45am​

2:00pm​

day off​

3:00pm​

6
3/26​

day off​

11:15am​

11:45am​

9:00am​

5:00pm​

10:00am​

day off​

5
3/27​

9:00am​

11:45pm​

2:30pm​

10:15am​

day off​

11:30pm​

7:45am​

6
3/28​

11:00am​

12:15pm​

day off​

2:30pm​

8:30am​

12:30pm​

9:45am​

6
3/29​

1:00pm​

1:45pm​

8:45am​

day off​

11:00am​

1:15pm​

11:30am​

6
3/30​

3:00pm​

3:15pm​

11:00am​

8:00am​

day off​

2:15pm​

1:30pm​

6
3/31​

5:00pm​

day off​

1:00pm​

9:30am​

12:00pm​

3:30pm​

day off​

5
4/1​

day off​

8:00am​

2:30pm​

10:00am​

4:30pm​

day off​

9:30am​

5
4/2​

9:00am​

9:00am​

4:30pm​

11:30am​

day off​

10:00am​

10:30am​

6
4/3​

~10am~​

~10am~​

day off​

~1pm~​

~9:45am~​

~12pm~​

~12pm~​

6
4/4​

~1pm~​

~11am~​

~8am~​

~2pm~​

~11am~​

~2pm~​

~2pm~​

7​

In theory, Yolanda's already laid her egg... But she's been a little off since the 30th, so, we'll see. I actually haven't been out there yet today... It's 9am... I'll be going out there now to tidy up in there.

So, yeah... my going out there interrupted little Yolanda, she was still on the nest, until that handful of scratch hit the ground. But after scooping the coop, making sure their water was clean and their feeder full enough...and after paying some attention to the poor neglected dog next door (some kind words, scratches behind the ear and a yummy little piece of bacon), she was right back in the nest again. So, she'll lay in the next 30 minutes or so. So, I'll update the chart to reflect that.

How do you keep such a detailed record of the laying times and such? I never know who lays what, just an overall count.

 

[3forfree]

I got my first egg from my 20wk old hens on april 1st. Got 3 more yesterday and 3 today. I have five heinz 57's and 2 roosters. I hatched them out on the last week of october, couldn't give them away so I kept them, Now they're starting to lay. I'm going to incubate some of these eggs just to see what I get from them.

 

[wayneclea]

Well, 2 eggs so far, don't know if Austra will lay one today.
I weighed yesterdays eggs.
Red laid a 70 gram egg.
Austras was 40 grams.
Still to take pix of the two to compare.
I don't know if it has a yolk or not, as it is barely as big looking as some of the yolks I have been getting...

You know, i had one person that insisted that the eggs were all soft shelled when they came out and hardened after the fact.
reminds me of what my mother said my stepfather thought.
he thought that babies were tiny when they came out and inflated like a balloon afterwards...

 

[mistressangyl]

LOL i am getting two to four eggs a day now that the time has changed and the days are longer... I have five hens and one roo now

 

[twinzmom]

My Red Sexlinks just started laying yesterday and today..we got a total of 4 from 6 of them, but one was found early this morning so we think it was from yesterday
And so far 6 from 11 of our 1 year olds.
I have finally won the fight about washing the eggs with my husband mostly due to telling him what everyone here has to say....thank you all very much.
Last weekend we moved our nest box to the outside of our coop, putting a hole thru the wall to it of course. I thought sure that was going to disrupt everything since the box was unavailable to them for about 2 hours. They did plenty of complaining about it but basically did fine.
Now our next trick is to combine the new girls with the old. They have been living side by side, separated by chicken wire in the run. The new girls sleep in a temporary coop. Does anyone have any suggestions for successful integration, they all seem to be getting along fine. It will probably be another week or two before we pull down the separation.

 

[LoveChickens123]

today i got 5 out of 6

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

today I got 12 from 20 Barred rocks

 

[Mr MKK FARMS]

today i got 5 out of 6

Nice

 

[bruceha2000]

The old dishwasher is in time out on the back patio while the new dishwasher is giving it shiny expensive looks from the hole out of which it came... Finally... You know how it is installing standard appliances in non-standard houses and all...

Sooooo, you are out on the back patio and WHO is doing the dishes looking at you?

(I should have ducked faster!)

And Austra laid one maybe the size of a larger pigeon egg
will weigh both and take a picture...

Yeah, I want to see if my 8 gram egg from yesterday still holds the record

I offer oyster shell free choice for my ladies, but if I feel like their shells are getting thin, I sprinkle a handful or two in the tray of their feeder.

I also get the odd one every now and then. I figure the "factory" just has an "oopsie" every now and then. A teenie tiny egg, a HUGE egg, an oddly shaped egg, very thin or no shell egg. They are rare compared to 820 eggs (that number amazes me!) laid since the girls started

Hello All! I recently had to administer antibiotics to my flock, the last day was 03/19, so it is almost three weeks since then, in the meantime I have been keeping good count of how many eggs I am not able to use each day (because of the antibiotics) and I am wondering how many eggs I SHOULD expect to see every day out of 14 birds? Some days I have 8, some days 10 - 12, once or twice I got 14 exactly. 9 of my girls are a little more than 12 months old now, then I have 5 white leghorns that are about 7 - 8 months old.

I am not totally convinced until I hear from some of you long timers but I am beginning to wonder if neighborhood kids are stealing eggs from me. I have my coop latched up high for exactly that reason because our property is not fenced (yet) but my run gate is latched lower and accessible to small hands, but I couldn't imagine they would crawl in thru the chicken door?! Would they?

Any help would be great!

Mine are all over the place but I have 6 different breeds. I guess if you have all one breed, you might be able to expect a regular pattern of laying. I've been getting 7 to 9 this month but there is the occasional 5, 6, 10 or 11. They aren't all going to lay an egg a day forever so if you get only 8 one day I bet you get more the next day. I doubt your neighbor's kids are stealing your eggs but it is certainly possible. And depending on how small they are, sure I can see a kind going in via the chicken door, just for the "fun of it" even if they aren't stealing eggs.

I have finally won the fight about washing the eggs with my husband mostly due to telling him what everyone here has to say.

I guess you shouldn't push your luck and suggest chores that he can do with extra time that he used to waste washing eggs.

7 eggs today. The girl that we ASSUME put out the puny egg yesterday laid one in her usual range today. These things happen.

Bruce

 

[Gifa]

How do you keep such a detailed record of the laying times and such? I never know who lays what, just an overall count.

Well, I only have 7 hens...and they all lay a slightly different color from each other... that's a big help right there... But I am also home all day... and their coop and run is only 40 feet from my back door... So it is easy to just look out and see when someone is out of the nest or hear an egg song. I have made it a little science project to observe and record the laying cycles of my hens for my own personal education. Mostly so that I could monitor their health and/or "happiness" by observing any deviations from their regular pattern.

At first, I was going out and checking every 1-2 hours. Since this was my first winter with chickens, and I am not providing supplemental heat or lighting, I worried about frozen eggs. But because I set up a spreadsheet that tracked how many, from who, what time and how big the eggs were, it soon became apparent that there was a very specific pattern to their laying.

Because I have an automatic Pullet Shut chicken door that lets them out in the morning and locks 'em in at night, I don't do the whole getting up before the chickens do. But I do go out there between 8 and 9 to clean up under their roost everyday and deliver their water (I brought it in the house on nights that dipped below freezing for more than a couple hours). After that, I would go out at 10, 12, 2 and 4. Sometimes I'd go out there in between if there was a hen in the nest and I looked out and saw that hen hitting up the waterer or feeder as they tend to do right after they finish laying. But I also got pretty good at kind of telling how long an egg was in the nest by how warm or cool it was when I collected it. As you can see from the chart, it's all on quarter hour resolutions... because there's really no need to have it down to the minute.

After a few weeks of recording their laying habits, I could start to predict with pretty decent accuracy about how many and at what time each day I could expect eggs from my girls.

So I still go out there between 8 and 9 to clean, feed and water... but then only whenever the chart says they should have laid by after that... cutting my helicoptering down to just three times a day or so... and I still go by how warm the eggs are to guesstimate approximate laying times. Now that sub-freezing morning temps are becoming fewer and farther between, and freezing water is becoming less and less of a concern, On days when I am not expecting eggs right after sunrise, I totally put off the first morning visit to the coop until 11am sometimes.



And I've been thinking about it... and I wonder if my being so expedient and punctual with removing eggs from the nest boxes has helped create and maintain their predictable regularity and also helped in preventing the onset of broodiness. If the fact that "the nest box is always empty" has any impact on their cycle at all. Because I've got to say... I do feel very fortunate to have such incredibly reliable layers without any heat or light. I am extremely interested to see how their performance changes through their first hard molt in the fall and how their second winter will play out.