You probably get this a lot, but I'd like to suggest a list of chicken breeds and at what age they lay.
As a new chicken owner, one of my first questions was "when will my chickens lay?" From reading the forums, I know I am not alone in wanting to know the answer. While I understand that start of egg laying varies with each bird, BYC is in a unique position to help answer that question.
My thought is this: a form where members could enter their hen's breed, what hatchery she came from, and at what age she started laying. BYC could take this information and average it out and for each breed provide the average (mean and mode) age the chicken would start laying. Other information that could be included is earliest and latest ages for laying.
I would find this information very interesting, and it would help me be more patient as I wait on a welsummer that seems to have no interest in laying
I think it would also be useful to people who are selecting breeds for production. They could avoid breeds that are late layers, and possibly pick strains from hatcheries that lay earlier. It's also possible that there isn't much variation between breeds or strains, but I think even that information would be useful to have.
As a new chicken owner, one of my first questions was "when will my chickens lay?" From reading the forums, I know I am not alone in wanting to know the answer. While I understand that start of egg laying varies with each bird, BYC is in a unique position to help answer that question.
My thought is this: a form where members could enter their hen's breed, what hatchery she came from, and at what age she started laying. BYC could take this information and average it out and for each breed provide the average (mean and mode) age the chicken would start laying. Other information that could be included is earliest and latest ages for laying.
I would find this information very interesting, and it would help me be more patient as I wait on a welsummer that seems to have no interest in laying
I think it would also be useful to people who are selecting breeds for production. They could avoid breeds that are late layers, and possibly pick strains from hatcheries that lay earlier. It's also possible that there isn't much variation between breeds or strains, but I think even that information would be useful to have.
