Newby questions

[Wetsnail]

We just started raising chickens for there eggs. How long does it take for the chickens to aclimate to a new coop. When will they resume laying. Thanks, Cork

 

[TalkALittle]

Could be a couple days or a couple weeks. It really depends on the individual birds. How old are the birds? Pullets in their first year of lay will generally lay through winter but older birds usually stop or slow way down during winter when the daylight wanes. If your birds are more than a year old it might be a couple months before they start up again.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Cork, even with a lot more information it’s impossible to say. Are you north or south of the equator? Putting your location in your profile could help some with these types of questions. If you are north if the equator it’s quite possible they are molting and won’t lay again until the molt is over. That could be months. It’s not that unusual for people that have chickens start the molt to sell them so someone else has to feed them through the molt. Do you know their laying history, not just age but were they laying when you got them. How long had they been laying?

Whether the days are getting longer or shorter can influence it too. Once they stop some won’t start until they see the days getting longer. Length of day is not nearly as important as whether the days are getting longer or shorter.

How old are they? As TalkaLittle said, pullets often continue to lay through their first winter, but some don’t. It’s also possible that the stress of moving them will start a molt when normally they would not have molted.

It’s not that unusual for chickens under stress to stop laying for a while, or tremendously cut back. That stress could come from extreme weather conditions (hot or cold), introducing or removing chickens from the flock so that the pecking order has been upset, moving them to a new coop, a predator attack, running out of water for a length of time, many different things. Some hens will continue to lay through all this, but a lot won’t. How long they stop laying will depend on the individual hen. For some it’s not at all or just a few days, others may take weeks. If it involves a molt it could be months.

There is no easy cut and dried answer. Welcome to the forum anyway. Wish I could help more.