Pullets predicament

[VanUnamed]

Hello there!
I am in a bit of predicament. It has mostly to do with my being too much of a softie though.
This spring, I hatched out some eggs, and purchased some mixed breed chicks at the hatchery (to replace some chicks that got ate by a fox). Fall has come, (total birds 40) I have already put alll the boys in the freezer, most of them were quite aggressive and large. Of the mixed breed group, i have 12 pullets. Of the other group. 9 pullets. I put the 12 in the permanent coop (they all were on pasture), and the other 9 remain on pasture for now.
The original hens that have laid the eggs are still on pasture too, but i will keep just one that is still laying good.
The issue here is, for my family and for a sustainable breeding flock, I would need around 12 hens total. But I do have 21. AND 5 lohmann brown. If I am that weak to keep ALL, i would have to pay more than 1ton of feed a year. That is definitely too much. Real problem is, HOW do I KNOW which hen is a good layer and which is not. The 9 on pasture are not laying yet as they are younger than the hatchery (hatchery sells 3 weeks old and above, likely they were older than my other chicks), the 12 from the hatchery are a mix of ranger and other breed, every single day, I find between 7 and 9 eggs. Not all are perfect, most are. Any idea how do I know who to keep and who to cull? An idea I had is to use an empty chicken tractor, in a small area, with feed water and nesting boxes, and keep a couple at a time for a week and see how many eggs are there, but now winter is approaching, despite I could light up the coop in winter, that won't tell me which is a good layer and which not. I would have to wait for spring to do this trick.
Thanks in advance!!

 

[aart]

lohmann brown

I believe that these are high production hybrids?
Those types usually lay a lot for a couple-few years then sharply decrease production.

ranger

Here in the USA, 'rangers' are slower growing production meat birds.

I would have to wait for spring to do this trick.

Even then you might not know.

'Sustainability' can be a delicate balance.
If your goal is eggs year round, getting or hatching new pullets early each spring is the way to go, IMO. Even then, there will be times of feast and famine.

 

[Ridgerunner]

What you are wanting to do is not easy. This link shows how commercial egg laying operations do it, but their situation is different.

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/4aj/4aj07po/4aj07po.PDF

The loss of yellow pigment only works if the chickens are yellow-skinned. If their skin is black or white it is no help. This is probably why commercial egg layers are typically yellow-skinned. This measures persistency of lay, how many eggs in total have they laid in this laying cycle. That is different from intensity of lay.

Intensity of lay is how many eggs they are laying right now. When they go from laying to not laying (or the other way around) their body changes. They change the internal plumbing and body proportions. A hen that is laying well right now might not lay that many eggs over the entire year.

The commercial operations have feeding the hens down to a fine point. They know exactly how much each hen needs to eat for maximum production and they have feeding techniques to insure that each individual hen eats exactly that much. They release a certain amount of feed by machinery when the hens are hungry. The bullies are so busy eating they don't bully the weaker ones away. They have enough feeder space so all of them can eat at the same time. When they are hungry again they release another certain amount. By the end of the day they have all eaten just the right amount. I don't feed my hens that way. I'm not sure the fat pad is a good indication of how well they are laying. I've butchered enough of my hens and pullets to really not believe that.

Some hens are fast molters, some molt more slowly. That has nothing to do with how much extra protein you feed them, that is how fast the feathers fall out. That is controlled by genetics. They typically do not lay while molting. So the faster they molt the sooner they can go back into egg production. Commercial egg laying hybrids like your lohmanns will have been bred to be fast molters. A lot of our backyard birds could be slow molters. The issues you have with this is that many pullets skip the molt their first fall. Many does not mean all but it is pretty common. This type of determination can only be done when they are molting.

I really don't see much here that is going to help you determine which pullets are the best to keep. The way I do it is to mark each pullet so I can identify them, then spend a lot of time (I'm retired so I have time) trying to see what eggs each pullet lays. That way I can eliminate some. But the final choices are based a lot on guesses.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I failed to mention some of the methods mentioned above assume all the pullets or hens started laying at the same time. Commercial operations manage that by breeding, diet, and manipulating the lights. I don't manage mine that way.

I lean a lot by reading how the commercial operations manage thing and the studies they do. But a lot of that does not translate directly to how we do things.

 

[Mrs. K]

Very interesting article. I will go and look at my birds differently.

To the original poster: my thought is, the feed savings for the winter, will offset the possibility of selling or culling a good producing bird, if you wait to decide. So you might do a gate cut. Which is just the first ten out in the run in the morning are gone. Or the last 10 in the coop which ever way works best.

Course do that, after you really look at them, anything with any physical ailment, should go first, anything that you didn't like for whatever reason, goes. Anything that is looking pretty old (course that can be hard, cause they all look ratty this time of year.)

Mrs K

 

[VanUnamed]

hey ridgerunner, thanks a lot. I do know the lohman are excellet layers. all the others, I dont know. So far today 9 eggs out of 12. they are well fed with the appropiate amount of calcium. Some still lay a shell-less egg, whereas when the lohmann started laying, they did zero shell-less eggs. So basically for now I should first wait that they are fully developed (is that 6-8 months) and then judge. I also have problems with these in the permanent coop, they do have nice nest-boxes, some uses them, some other are in love with the table that is in their run which I use to mix feed, they always jump there, even in groups of 3, and lay there.