When do chickens start laying after winter & molt

[CKfarm22]

Your cream legbars should start 2 to 3 months or sooner.

Your pullets will lay between 28 to 50 weeks. Since they will experience the onset of spring and the more gradual light levels.

I read that pullets generally lay in the inter because they don’t experience the molt?

 

[Tonyroo]

Not true, there's other factors that play into there incentive to lay an egg. The pullet breeds you got take longer to mature, especially the Wyandotte. I know I use to have one.

 

[Tonyroo]

That only happens if they mature before winter starts.

 

[CKfarm22]

Not true, there's other factors that play into there incentive to lay an egg. The pullet breeds you got take longer to mature, especially the Wyandotte. I know I use to have one.

My hens laid last year in the winter time…. I’m just saying what i read on a different thread

 

[Suzz]

They will lay when they are ready to lay and not a minute sooner my ladies are unpredictable so I’ve given up trying to calculate the whole thing and just wait for the treasures

 

[tlcmurphy]

My hens also laid through the winter last year, but they were less than a year old and had just started laying in the Fall. I got spoiled last year They did not molt last winter.

 

[MotherofOrpies]

My 3 girls are exactly the same age and 2 stopped laying when they went through a hard molt in November. They’re done now, but the days are longer and still no eggs
My 3rd girl is a BIG Orpington (ie fat) who stopped laying in July (15 months old), and hasn’t molted yet. Don’t know what’s up with her…

Orpingtons tend to get fat, fat hen equals no eggs, usually, they love to go broody, during that time they loose some weight, and after that, they start laying eggs again.

 

[CKfarm22]

My hens also laid through the winter last year, but they were less than a year old and had just started laying in the Fall. I got spoiled last year They did not molt last winter.

Mine were a year old

 

[Ridgerunner]

You have two different situations. Your older girls are mature and are going through or may have completed a molt. They may start laying again when they finish the molt or they may wait for the longer and warmer days of spring. I've had them do both. The molt can be over in a little more than a month or it can last as long as five months. That is genetic. It's based on how fast the feathers fall out, not how fast they grow back. If your hens dropped a lot of feathers quickly they are fast molters. If they feathers fell out slowly they are slow molters. I'll include a link to a Kansas State University article about that.

https://bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu/pubs/MF2308.pdf

Some pullets will skip the molt and lay through their first fall/winter, laying all the way until the following fall when they molt. Some does not mean all. There are several different factors involved. The production type pullets are more likely to continue laying than the decorative but not all of them do. Some does not mean all, that is very often misunderstood on here. From what many people post on here you can easily get that impression.

Your pullets will start laying when they start. That could be in the warmer longer days of spring. It could be tomorrow. I do not extend lights. I've had pullets start laying in the early days of December a couple of different times, during the shortest days of the year and while they are still getting marginally shorter. Mine break the rules all the time because there are no hard and fast rules. There are tendencies that some follow, but some does not mean all.

Breeds may have tendencies but I find the individual differences even among the same breed often outweigh any breed tendencies. Not to mention different strains of the same breed. I've had a pullet start laying at 16 weeks, I've had pullets of the same breed from the same flock and raised together not start laying until 29 weeks. Say the average from that flock is 22 weeks to start if you have enough for averages to mean anything. If you only have one pullet, do you have an early, late, or average one? I see it a lot on here. Somebody has one chicken of a breed and assume they are representative of every chicken of that breed. It doesn't work that way.

I can't tell you when your hens will resume laying or when your pullets will start. It could be any day or it could be a while.

 

[Bodhisan]

This is the "thing" I'm learning with backyard chickens - when you're limited to six (city code), and they're basically all the same age, into their second year, you probably won't get eggs from November (or earlier) until spring. That kinda sucks, ha! Feeding them and cleaning up their do-do as pets, basically - which I don't mind. My chickens make me laugh every day. It's good medicine.