How often do you cull your older birds?

[abhaya]

my plan is chicky will never go to the freezer for sentimental reasons. I have 6 pullets that should start laying soon. 6 2 month old chicks should start laying in spring. I plan on haveing 6 laying hens at all times at 2 years in the fall I will cull 6 and add 6 chicks so my flock will be 6 hens 6 pullets and 6 chicks most of the time. My silkies are pets and will not be culled unless it is for medical reasons. Besides they make great broodys. I find that spring birds just start laying and the weather gets cold and they poop out so I add birds in the fall and feed them over winter to get them to laying age instead of feeding them all summer to get to laying age and then stop laying because of cold short days.

 

[Mrs. K]

It was excellent advice, and well explained. I will follow something similar. I have such a predator problem, that culling is often not a real problem for me. I like to let them out, but every so often, lose one.

But for the most part I have the predators handled, and this summer, I had year old hens laying well, 3 Red stars and 2 BO, the BO's went broody, and I used them to raise a clutch within the flock. Worked very well for me. I butchered the roos this fall, and got 3 pullets out of the clutch. Lost a BO to a predator

Kept one rooster. So have a nice flock of 7 hens and a roo. The pullets (hatched end of July) should lay early in the spring, so should have really good eggs going into summer.

The Red Stars are laying machines, but the end of next summer, those I plan to cull. I think I will get some more red stars as I like them. Now my flock is colorful, and crossbred, but I like the color, and they have good flock dynamics for the most part. I am a bit attached to my BO, and hope she goes broody again in the spring. I will replace those two breeds, I have been happy with them.

The thing with culling is then you have room for new, always fun. mk

 

[michickenwrangler]

I'm probably going to cull my gold comets at the end of next summer. We're going to keep DD's favorite as a pet and probably sell the others as stew birds since neither DD or DH wants to eat our own.

We plan to hatch out gc and bsl crossed with our EE cockerel. Hopefully get a few colored egg layers!

 

[Stefrobrts]

Ridgerunner, thanks for that excellent response. I came here today looking for just this topic. I have not really put any planning into my flock management, and so I am feeding 15 birds and getting one egg a day! Bad planning on my part! I want to do better going forward. I'd like to provide a steady supply of eggs, and rotating new layers in is the way to go.

One question - do you really find your pullets lay smaller eggs than your hens? I have had several pullets added to my flock over the years, and except for the occasional oddball egg, I can't tell any difference. My girls all seem to lay large light brown eggs pretty consistently. I have a couple individuals that lay smaller eggs, but that doesn't change as they age. My flock is primarily BO.

 

[Beekissed]

I cull in the peak laying season in early spring....Feb/Mar. Any birds that are laying consistently will be doing so then. I don't usually go by age but by egg production. I have a flock of 3 year olds and one 4 year old right now and a new flock of 6 mo. olds coming right up. I have culled vigorously for laying the past 5 years and these 3-4 yr. olds made the cut last spring.

As we had an unusually harsh moult and slow down this summer/fall that I do not believe was related to my bird's ages, I am willing to winter them over to see how they recover....if they recover. Come February, if I do not see the normal laying from my older flock, they will be culled and the new generation will take over.

As for the taste of old laying hens....no chicken on Earth could measure up to the rich flavor of an old hen. Tenderness is the only issue and I can mine, so that issue is removed. Anyone who disparages the flavor of an old laying hen apparently has not been preparing them correctly!

 

[mississippifarmboy]

Hi, Ridgerunner as usual hit it on the head. That's the way most people I know rotate out the layers year to year.

I do the same except I only rotate about two out of eight each year in a few of our flocks, so some chickens might be as much as four 1/2 years old when I cull them. The reason for this is that I raise a lot of large slow growing breeds like Cochins, Giants and such that don't fully mature until they are two years old. Also as we raise hundreds of chickens, we've always got plenty of eggs. If you only have a few chickens then egg production would be much more important for each hen and you would also be best to go with higher production birds.

Also some birds won't hit the formula. Our Orloffs lay great the first year and production is about half the second year and by the fourth year you get almost no eggs. The Giants, Orps, Cochins and a few others lay best in the second year and slowly drop in production each year after. The Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, New Hampshire Reds, and others are almost exacly on the formula that Ridgerunner used.

Everybody has their own way of deciding when to cull. This is just my personal preferance.

 

[briteday]

I have decided not to keep hens for a second winter. My experience with a number of breeds (RIR, delaware, sussex, EE) is that they have not produced eggs over the second winter nearly as well as they do the first winter. And egg size doesn't seem to be a problem. It takes my new pullets about one month to ramp up to jumbo sized eggs.

So I hatch chicks say in Spring 2009. They are laying in the Fall 2009, winter over laying well. New chicks hatch in Spring 2010. When those chicks start laying productively, Fall 2010, I sell off the 2009 chicks. People here are very willing to buy 18-month hens here as both yard art ("oh, aren't they cute! and we get eggs too" they email to me later) and known egglayers. I never deceive the buyers regarding hen age.

I try to start chicks as early as possible in the Spring. Hopefully this year I will be starting them around March1.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Quote:

This is what I get. One is from a 21 week old pullet. The other is from a hen that has molted once. My pullet eggs do gradually get larger as the pullets get older, then they jump again in size after a molt. The larger egg was laid by an Australorp. The pullet egg was laid by her daughter. The rooster involved in this was a Speckled Sussex, hence the difference in egg shell color.

They are not as consistent or dependable as I probably made them sound as far as winter laying. Last winter, each of my pullets laid on average 4 to 5 eggs every week without any supplemental lighting. It is still pretty early in the winter laying season, but it looks like I can expect them to lay only 2 to 3 eggs a week this winter season. That is still more than my older hens that are going through a molt.

We all have different goals and different set-ups. What I do is certainly not going to be right for everyone. That's one reason I like this forum. We can all mention what we do and the results we get, then people can pick out what might work for them in their specific situation.

 

[henney penny]

That was my plan when I first started with chickens,to cull the older ones that was not laying good or not at all ,but dh says no to any culling so I guess he will have to build a retirement coop.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

Ridgerunner outlines a good program.

I favor culling at the end of January or early February and then again in July. Everyone that can lay should be laying then.

The old poultry books I collect favor those months because back in the day February was about the time the price of eggs was going to go down and the high to later summer culling was to eliminate the early molters that weren't going to lay again before the next spring.