My girls have been laying since Sept 1. I have 12 chickens...had 12 with one Wellsummer and a *#**# mountain lion invaded and took her, Ginger, one of my pets. A friend gave me an 18 week old white Wyandot (I have a golden and a silver). She is larger than the other two and quite well feathered and is already laying. I think the other two are although Lacey is very small in comparison and at the bottom of the pecking order. I also have one Coo coo Maran, one of the first to lay and a big hen. I did not start them right...listened to bad information from the person I bought them from. They were about 8-10 weeks old and she told me use lay mash as she was (they were mixed with her big hens). Wrong, wrong, wrong! And I see why now as Snowball (the white Wyandot) was raised right, is laying sooner and the rest did, has already caught up on size of eggs. From the 10 I usually get from 8 to 10 eggs a day, have never gotten 11 or 12. Twice I have gotten perfect peewee egg, last the size of a small jawbreaker. Perfect dark brown (not as dark as Ginger's were though) eggs with yolks. If this common in younger chickens. They are fed 20% lay mash, scratch at night, and table scraps (apple peels, celery, bread crumbs//no potatoes, tomatoes, or other nightshade relatives, sometimes meat scraps for which the dog hates me). They get either green grass (fast fading in our Colorado Mountain location) or alfalfa, normally in soaked pellets, have night lights, deep wood chips for litter, oyster shell scattered in the yard about once a week. Shells are all good and strong. I keep them in fresh water, warm on cold mornings (like 11 degrees today). I do not have the water in the coop as it would probably freeze) so they are without water the first about 3 hours of light in the morning. Since the yard is large and gravelly no grit. We now call the yard the Fortress and MAYBE a bear could break in but he'd have to work at it. No more lions for sure. Although I've had chickens always before I bought two-year old hens from commercial producers (Leghorns) and butcher after a year or two. Pullets are something new for me and I've already made may mistakes. Any advice on improving things? Wind eggs are cute but I don't need very many. Don't think mycustomers want them. Oh, yes, the balance of my hens are Rhode Island crosses. She called them productions varieties. Nell the Novice
Hi, Nell! "Pullet eggs" are the first, tiny eggs that a pullet lays. They are often perfect pee wee eggs, or they can be perfectly round but without a yolk, or they can be teeny and have huge meat spots on them... it is the chicken's body learning how to lay eggs, basically. The egg size should begin to come up soon. I would look carefully at how much protein they are getting. More protein is correlated with larger eggs, and most layer rations are at the lowest possible amount of protein. You are then feeding a LOT of extra feed other than layer pellets (which is formulated to be fed as the sole ration) and might be messing up the protein balance. Remember, a chicken only eats about 1/3 lb. of food a day. Just like a child, if she eats a whole bunch of treats, she might not eat as much layer ration. You may be going overboard on low-protein treats. Speaking of treats: relax! Chickens are birds. Just like the birds flying around your home, they are not going to keel over from eating tomatoes, or potatoes, or apple seeds, or anything that a human can eat (I'd stay away from chocolate, etc). Your birds can eat almost anything, and if it's poisonous to them, they probably won't eat it. They can also eat a lot of things a human can't eat, like poisonous bugs, etc. Let your poor birds have the tomatoes, they'll be just fine. Here's what I do at the end of the summer: Oh, by the way: tomato leaves aren't poisonous to humans, either. A tomato leaf simmered in the tomato sauce gives it great flavor.
