Please tell me this is not uncommon! Pics

[Sammi_0411]

My girl whose 2 normally lays a standard egg this was hers today it happens xx

 

[aart]

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September will be one year of laying. Would that be beginning or end of laying cycle? Thank you sourland. I appreciate your input.

So she's about 18 months old?
End of her first laying season, should molt soon.

She's still in her beginning stage. End of the cycle is about 3-8 years depending on breed and living conditions.

No, they have an 'end of cycle' each year when the days shorten and they start to molt.

 

[Ridgerunner]

September will be one year of laying. Would that be beginning or end of laying cycle?

Semantics start a lot of arguments or just lead to confusion on here and other places. For a lot of us, maybe most, a "laying cycle" runs from a pullet's first egg ever or a hen's first egg after a molt until she is ready to take a break from laying and probably molt. Commercial egg laying operations control when their hens start to lay and go into molt, mainly by manipulating lighting, so their laying cycle could start any time of the year and usually run for 13 to 14 months. For those of us that have mature hens the laying cycle is often thought of as from when they start to lay in the spring until they molt in the fall but that is not correct all that often. Some hens will return to lay whenever they finish the molt regardless of time of the year. With pullets their first egg could come at any time of the year and who knows when they stop. So this meaning can be ambiguous.

I think where this terminology comes from is the commercial egg laying operations. If a hen lays for a certain length of time her egg laying factory kind of gets worn out and needs to recharge. She recharges by molting. After maybe 13 to 14 months of continuous laying with the commercial egg laying hybrids production drops off to where it is no longer profitable. The number of eggs a hen lays drops. Some of the eggs they lay can be funky, not commercial. This is the end of their egg laying cycle where they have to decide to either cause them to molt by manipulating the lights or replace them with another flock.

Most of our hens don't have this problem. Most of us don't have the commercial egg laying hybrids. Our hens are not as finely tuned for egg laying as the commercial hybrids. Most of us don't manipulate lights like that.

I think you may be a little different. It sounds like yours were pullets when they started laying last September. They could be approaching the end of their first laying cycle. Not to worry. Each hen will be different so the results will be different and spread out. You may see production drop and you may get a few more weird eggs. They may not all molt at the same time but they will molt this fall (or maybe some sooner), recharge their system, and you will be back in business with great production when that is over with.

What some people are talking about is another type of cycle. In a pullet/hen's first laying cycle she typically lays really well. For some that may be 6 eggs a week, for some that may be 2 or 3, but in that first laying cycle she lays about as well as she ever will. In her second laying cycle, after her first adult molt, she again lays lights out, whatever that is for her. After her second adult molt, in her third laying cycle, production typically drops some. For commercial operations that's usually around a 15% drop for the flock, for them that may mean one egg per hen less per week. For ours it could be more, could be less, but it is usually noticeable. After each adult molt after that production drops more. The later you get in this cycle the more likely you are to get funky eggs.

Some people get great production out of older hens but that is more the exception than the rule. That's why many of us have a rotation system where we keep some of our laying flock young.