"Spent" Hen Enterprise

[JayColli]

I'll follow along out of curiosity...interesting concept.
Good that you are keeping them separate for both biological reasons as well as cost accounting.
Should be pretty easy to track feed/supply cost and egg production and sales...as well as observations on behaviors, health, etc.
Agrees infrastructure (housing, equipment) costs should not be included.

Will you employ lighting techniques for winter laying?

ETA: I'd be wary of restricting feed.

I hadn't considered supplemental lighting but it's definitely something to consider since laying dropped off drastically in mid-October last year with my pullets but the weather was still very mild into mid-November so I would likely keep the hens until snow was imminent. I have noticed that my chooks stay active, even with very little light, so that's something for me to consider especially since I have a 45w solar panel and a couple goodl 12v atv batteries handy.

I'll keep an eye on their feed intake as 1/4 lb. per day seems to be the average rate of consumption for battery hens and I'm not sure if they'll get enough extra from the grass and bugs to make up for the increased variation in their environment and added physical activity so we'll see!

I don't have a huge sample, just one bit to share....

I had a sale at the end of September. A man brought half a dozen red sex link hens he wanted to get rid of cause they weren't laying. 18 months old, they were just coming out of molt. One or two still looked pretty scraggly, but the others had grown feathers back and looked nice. I was busy with other customers, so my Honey gave him I think $25 for the lot. They did have some mites, so we treated them for that, otherwise they were fine and healthy. We kept them a month, at the end of the month we were getting 4 eggs a day from the group. Sold them for $60 for the lot to a friend who has been thrilled with them all winter. Not sure exactly how much they've produced over the winter cause the friend free ranges and is more interested in just "having chickens" than getting eggs, but they were doing well for us.

I'd give it a try and see how it goes. You're not out much if it flops.

I don't think the daylight cycle should be too different, if you're getting the birds in May. Should be a smooth transition in that regards. Probably just have to deal with the normal "you moved me and I'm not sure I'm going to reproduce right now" issues of not laying right away. When I move birds, I find it's about 2 weeks til they kick back into production.

Thanks for the input donrae! Always glad to hear from someone who has a bit of personal experience with the productivity of second-cycle brown layers. Four eggs per day with 6 hens is less than 5 eggs per week from each hen so my numbers appear to be a bit optimistic for only 5 hens but we'll see what happens.

 

[JayColli]

I'll also add that the chooks will be living in a Joel Salatin-style tractor, 6' x 8', on a well-groomed segment of lawn and the lawn will have 2 months to recover before the tractor comes past again.

 

[feedman77]

I have bought a few battery hens. There a lot of egg producers in my area.

Most are let go at 18 months old.

Some start right back up after the molt some take a long time to start laying again.

There immune systems tend to be weak. Sudden temp changes and rain can stress them out. Usually develops into upper respitory issues. Plus the stress of moving.

Expect a few losses and wildly varying egg production.

Most birds around here can be had for about 2 to 3 dollars apiece.

A lot are sold on Craigslist to people that want cheap chickens. 5 to 7 apiece.

Good luck on your venture.

 

[donrae]

I'll also add that the chooks will be living in a Joel Salatin-style tractor, 6' x 8', on a well-groomed segment of lawn and the lawn will have 2 months to recover before the tractor comes past again.

I'm not an intense student of grasses and grazing, but I'm thinking you may be a bit optimistic about a bird getting much actual nutrition from that. Lawn is simply blades of grass, it rarely has seeds...I guess depending on your definition of "lawn"...it may vary quite a bit. Yep, there will be insects, but maybe not as many as you'd think. I believe a lawn is more like a mono culture environment, not as rich and varied as we'd like to think. If you have access to pasture type land, something with more diversity, that would probably be better forage for the birds.

There have been a few threads over the years about making your backyard the optimal forage environment, and user centrarchid has lots of good information about forage/insect availability.

 

[seventreesfarm]

We often sell our spent hens on Craigslist, but none of our regular customers want production breeds for food purposes. Not old enough for good stock flavor, and too scrawny for the hassle of butchering for pet food etc. Most of the varieties we've tested had a drastic drop off in production that was not worth the time, labor and feed to wait out.

There's a "pastured" egg operation near me (if you consider crowded squares of mud to be pasture) that did the regulatory work so they can process and sell their own stock made from spent hens. I think they only recently started clearing enough income to hire a helper in at $10/hr.

Anyway, just seems like a lot of hassle for a small return. But my operation has gone the opposite direction, homebred stout winter laying olive eggers, and we always have a waiting list for eggs, chicks, pullets and spent hens.

 

[JayColli]

@feedman77 everything I've ready has been written like a research paper and talks about hens like they're little machines so I'm glad to get some input from someone that acknowledges individual variations!

@donrae The "lawn" isn't really a lawn by suburban standards but anything cut short is considered lawn around here haha. It's a mixtures of grasses and other weedy plant species like dandelions and plantains so while they won't get much out of it calorie-wise I think they'll have enough access to greenery to produce the deep yellow yolks that people look for in farm gate eggs.

@seventreesfarm it's likely not worth the effort from a purely economic stand point on such a small scale but it'll be fun! If nothing else it'll be an interesting proof of concept... Or not lol.

 

[donrae]

I get that. Lawn can mean so many different things.....here, like you said, it's pretty much any grass around the house the animals aren't grazing on a regular basis

 

[lazy gardener]

A few more details to be added from my research:

• Some commercial producers keep hens to 31 months of age but they tend to be less profitable due to the decreased value by weight of eggs in the XL to Jumbo range which are less desirable for sale by the doz directly to consumers so usually get sold in bulk to processors. This is probably why there are so many "spent" hens for sale. Any producer with sufficient capacity and facilities to raise replacement pullets wouldn't be maximizing their profit if they kept them any longer.
• Commercial lines of White Leghorn can still be expected to lay at approximately 75% during their second cycle up to 31 months of age which is slightly more than 5 eggs per week.

Finding specifics on brown layers is proving more difficult but there are references to them being only slightly less productive than white egg layers so I suspect an average of 5 eggs per week is a reasonable number to expect from these hens.

I'll also add that I plan to have a stocking density of 10 sq.ft. per hen, their feed (layer pellets) will be rationed to 1/8 of a lb. twice a day per hen and their tractor will be moved each evening so that they'll wake up to new pasture

Can anyone comment on their experience with reduced laying rates during molting in commercial brown layer hybrids? I have one myself but she is still a pullet and hasn't molted yet.

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but one thing you can do to help them return to optimum health is to put them on fermented feed. It will give their guts an infusion of beneficial fungi and bacteria, it will cut the anti nutrients in their feed, so that they are able to achieve maximum benefit from the feed they do eat, resulting in over all less consumption, even if you give them free choice. I do a limited supplemental lighting routine with my flock, and it seems to do well for me. I let my flock have natural light through the summer and into the fall until mid to late November. When most of the birds have started or completed a molt, and egg production has all but stopped, I then start the light, and ramp it up about 1 hour/week until they get to the 14 hours. Interestingly enough, by doing this, my flock lays consistently better than the flock of a friend who keeps supplemental light on his birds starting in late summer. IMO, you should be able to sell those eggs quite easily, especially if you use a marketing strategy that plays up the fact that this flock is made up of battery hens who have been given a new lease on life, and are now living the good life, on pasture, and getting to experience sunshine, insects, grass and soil.

 

[JayColli]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but one thing you can do to help them return to optimum health is to put them on fermented feed.  It will give their guts an infusion of beneficial fungi and bacteria, it will cut the anti nutrients in their feed, so that they are able to achieve maximum benefit from the feed they do eat, resulting in over all less consumption, even if you give them free choice.  I do a limited supplemental lighting routine with my flock, and it seems to do well for me.  I let my flock have natural light through the summer and into the fall until mid to late November.  When most of the birds have started or completed a molt, and egg production has all but stopped, I then start the light, and ramp it up about 1 hour/week until they get to the 14 hours.  Interestingly enough, by doing this, my flock lays consistently better than the flock of a friend who keeps supplemental light on his birds starting in late summer.  IMO, you should be able to sell those eggs quite easily, especially if you use a marketing strategy that plays up the fact that this flock is made up of battery hens who have been given a new lease on life, and are now living the good life, on pasture, and getting to experience sunshine, insects, grass and soil.

Thanks for the input! I've often heard of fermented feed but hadn't looked into it... Although I think I will! The target market will be middle-upper class farmers' market goers if the concept proves viable and I decide to ramp up to several dozen hens and those customers will find the ex-batt hen info really attractive! For the test run I'll just be selling from the end of the driveway with a sign pointing into the field that says "complaint dept" haha

 

[Howard E]

I've never been to Nova Scotia (always wanted to, but never have), but I suspect your winters can be pretty rough. Your tractors will be OK in warmer weather, but what about winter? Those battery birds are kept in climate controlled space that never freezes. So what breed are these brown egg layers? A sex link or similar hybrid? At any rate, will these birds survive your climate if not in climate controlled housing?

If the only reason for getting battery birds is cost, are you sure that is the best option? You might be better off to buy the same pullets ready to lay as the battery barns do. The cost of the bird is not as great as the cost of feed that never results in an egg, which is why they turn them when they do. It is one thing to have a dozen or two birds that won't make or break us. It is another to have a million or two. Economics gets amplified pretty fast at that level.