I am surprised so many hatch this late in the year

[Egghead_Jr]

Yeah, I too read from two sources the downfalls of fall/ winter chick raising. To counter the light cycle obviously you provide it. Using florescents and timers mimic sun spectrum and spring through fall daylight time. Increasing half hour per week or two raising daylight time then come back down until it's equal to spring daylight time and winter is over.

ETA: Thinking about it some I realized these sources of ill effects for late year hatches were before the widespread use of lighting in coops on timers and good spectrum light. So contemporary flock raisers who typically use between 12 and 14 hours lighting wouldn't observe them.

 

[rarely bored]

Quote:
California, dude! Our green season is from the second good rain storm (October/November) until mid May. From July till the first freeze (mid November) we have meat bee issues, which is a deterent from processing the few roos I have right now. (at least for me they are, maybe I need to get over it... but Ow, their bite hurts!) And of course our winter season is actually pleasant - yes it freezes, but days can easily be in the high 60's to low 70's.

I've never heard of a prolapse connection to laying age ... will consider it, but with my hatch of 3, probably won't have enough of a sample size to make any conclusions.

 

[GoChick]

last year, I read the
''...chicks that are coming into maturity during increasing daylength, like birds hatched in the last half of the year, tend to start laying TOO EARLY resulting in greater incidence of prolapse, etc.
Whereas birds hatched earlier in the year, come into sexual maturity during DECREASING daylength (i.e. right after June 21) and are less likely to have this problem..."

and i got chicks last fall, so I researched and created a spreadsheet with the amount of light they needed each day so they would not mature early. I then got a timer and set it every 4 days or so, so they actually grew up with shortening daylenght (or light length) - as if they were spring chicks.

That was some work... having to reset the timer 2x a week, etc...

I guess i'll never know if it helped or not... But i figured better safe than sorry

 

[rarely bored]

Quote:
Could you tell us how many hours of light they need to not be adversely affected??
And is there an estimate on the percentage of layers who would be affected?
any good webpages you recommend?

 

[GoChick]

This site has very good info on the effect of light on broilers, pullets and hens:

http://umaine.edu/publications/2227e/

They have a link to the Naval Observatory, where you can find out sunrise/sunset for your location. I created a spreadsheet based on decreasing the light 15 min per week, until the pullets reached 22 weeks of age.

For $19.00, I bought a good electronic timer with back up batteries so I wouldn't have to reset it in case of power outage. Twice a week I would change the time by 7.5 min for a total of 15 min per week, thus artificially creating decreasing daylight.

I really don't know if it worked or not, but their eggs have a good size. I guess only in the coming years I'll find out if they will be more prone to prolapsed vent, etc. But from readin Gail's book and this article, I decided it was with the extra work.

I hope this info helps!

I still have the spreadsheet I created, if you want to check it out.

 

[BairleaFarm]

trays came from Ebay. Ive got those and 3 for big eggs such as turkey and duck. They work well and are fairly cheap.

 

[they'reHISchickens]

I think it's late in the season to hatch.
But I forgot to tell the RIR that is due with a brood on Sunday. I figure if her hormones want to take care of chicks, who am I to tell her differently?