Only 7 cockerels from 12 that hatched! That’s pretty good. One of my hatches this year was 6 cockerels and three pullets. I’ve had worse in the past. I hardly ever get a 50-50 hatch, most of mine are generally closer to 2/3 one sex and 1/3 the other. It can be either sex. Over several hatches it usually averages 50-50 but each individual hatch can be really tilted one way or the other. Your next hatch may be tilted even more toward cockerels or you may have mostly pullets. You may even get a 50-50, it happens. Until they hatch there is just no way to know what you will get.
You can have different kinds of molting, fast or slow with variations in between. That’s controlled by genetics. It’s not about how fast the feathers grow back, it’s about how fast they fall out. A fast molter can have bald spots and look really ragged. That’s what you want because they get over the molt a lot faster and can return to egg laying. With a slow molter you may not even be able to see that they are molting just by looking at them, it’s such a gradual process. Depending on the individual the molt can last for one month all the way to six.
Some hens will return to egg laying pretty soon after the molt is over regardless of time of year, day length, or whether the days are getting longer or shorter. Those things affect some hens more than others. They shut down their internal egg making factory while molting and have to work on the plumbing after the molt is over to start back up so it’s not instantaneous. Some hens will not return to laying until the days get longer and maybe warmer. If you have production breeds they are more likely to start back up after the molt is finished regardless of these other things but if you have decorative breeds they normally wait. It’s still an individual chicken thing, there are always exceptions.
