How to get your chickens to lay year round

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myminiture farm

myminiture farm

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I was wondering if there was any ways to get your chickens laying year round or to lay a higher percentage each year ? All info and comments are appreciated! Thanks !
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Welcome to BYC. Glad you decided join our flock. Light is the key factor as light stimulates a hen's pinneal gland which induced her to lay. You can put artificial light on a timer and set it to come on before sunrise. Just make sure that it goes off before sunset or you will mess up their roosting cycle with will have long term adverse effects on their health. Also having high yield layers such as sex links, Leghorns, or Australorps helps a lot. My Black Sex Links have been my best layers, consistently churning out more than 300 eggs per hen per year, and I have been very impressed with their laying persistence even in cold, short day-length winters. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have. We are here to help in any way we can. Good luck in getting those eggs.
 
Welcome to BYC! Please make yourself at home and we are here to help.

X2 on @ChickensAreSweet and @Michael OShay
Lighting in a coop helps when cleaning a coop, checking for eggs and counting chickens properly. During the cold winter months when the daylight hours drop, adding light can help a hen to continue laying eggs. It’s imperative to have windows in the henhouse as this will strengthen and encourage the hen’s natural response to lay eggs. A 40 or 60-watt bulb positioned 7 feet off the ground produces plenty of light for a 100 square foot coop. For a bigger coop, 60 or 100-watt should be used. In cold climates, a bigger bulb or a heat bulb might be needed. In order to mimic longer hours of daylight, turn on the lights in the morning, evening or both to have a total amount of 15-16 hours of light a day. Amazingly, studies have shown that using red bulbs helps prevent picking, encourages sleep, is soothing to the birds and even helps increase egg production! Pullets need fewer hours than layers, (ten to twelve hours will do) however, exposing pullets to too much heat/light may cause them to mature early.
 
Hens are born with all the eggs(ova) they will ever produce, if they lay continuously throughout the years, they will run out of eggs sooner. If you allow nature to take its course, so hens get rest periods - off season, they will lay eggs for a longer period of time - before you will need to replace them.
 

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