Laying questions

[Themamakitty27]

Hello new chicken owner here!

We have chickens ranging from 3-6 months. I've read about ages they start laying but now I'm curious. I was so excited to raise chicks and have the girls when they first start laying because I've heard that's the time they are most productive (am I wrong?). But I realizing it's fall/close to winter here in CA, will that largely affect their production?

 

[sourland]

Day length affects egg production with 14 hours of daylight being most optimum. Variety of bird is the greatest indicator of onset of egg laying. What breed do you have ?

 

[ReseisCL16]

It takes them about a month to stabilize after they begin laying. The time they start really depends on the breed. We keep a heatlamp on our birds all winter to keep up production. It actually really helps if u just use a red bulb. Otherwise they will either stop laying or only lay infrequently. We have about 30 birds and before we put a heat lamp on them, we were only getting max five eggs a day

 

[Themamakitty27]

That's a great idea. Do you have a heat source you love? My fear is fires.

It takes them about a month to stabilize after they begin laying. The time they start really depends on the breed. We keep a heatlamp on our birds all winter to keep up production. It actually really helps if u just use a red bulb. Otherwise they will either stop laying or only lay infrequently. We have about 30 birds and before we put a heat lamp on them, we were only getting max five eggs a day

 

[ReseisCL16]

We keep it pretty high off the ground. Ours has little clamps on the side and we clamp it around one of the beams along the side of our coop. We then put nails thru the clamps to keep it from sliding down. A good height is about 2 feet of the ground. We haven't had a problem with fire before. Make sure u get the red bulbs though, because the regular ones make it too bright for them and interrupts their sleeping patterns.