why keep time in weeks?

shaggy

Songster
10 Years
May 11, 2009
594
22
141
Orange, Texas
just curious ... i have a hard time keeping up with how many weeks old they are


months seems much easier


i.e. most recent chicks i got were in early april ... april - oct = 6 and a half months





6.5 * 30 / 7 = 27.8 .... counting back on the calendar comes out to 28 weeks ... so it is not horribly off
 
I have noticed that most chicken owners only count the weeks until they are laying. After that you hear the age in months, season they were born or "I don't really remember". It's just like new human parent who say their child is 22 months old but stop the month to month counting after two or three years. You never hear a chicken parent say their bird is 50 weeks old just like humans never say their children are 48 months old.
 
It's more precise. Some months have 31 days, so there are 4 1/2 weeks in them. Saying "3 months" could mean anything from about 11 to 14 weeks.
 
I think people do it because it makes it sound like their birds are older which gives them more reason to fret because they aren't laying. Last I looked, however, the chickens weren't using calendars--not even the 2010 BYC one. Whether you use weeks or months, it doesn't have anything to do with the bird's maturity, that was programed in at conception and regulated by diet and climate.
 
The first reason that came to mind is that the big poultry companies keep there birds age data in weeks. Therefore most poultry research is in weeks as well. So it's like a trickle down effect to us.

Another reason (which I guess is linked to the first) could be their life expectancy is usually only a year or two in production setups (not backyards, more along the lines of Perdue, Tyson, etc). Therefore it's more precise to go by weeks instead of months. They actually refer to bird age as weeks.days. So a bird that is 22 days old would be 2.1 weeks. Where they track so much data that is age dependent (weight, egg production, feed conversion, etc) they tend to want to be as accurate as possible.
 
Quote:
For the same reason that people don't say their kid is 13 months old instead of just saying he's a year old. It's a mom thing.
 
I think it is in the interest of accuracy. When children or chicks are so small there are many little milestones that come at varying weeks/months of age. It really does reflect the development better to express it in more accurate terms. When you get to a certain age, or a major milestone is passed, like egg-laying, the age isn't really a factor anymore, unless it comes to another milestone/breed factor, like broodiness. It's the same way with small children. Ages at which a baby coos, smiles, holds their head up reliably, rolls over, sits without assistance, first teeth, etc. all relate to those small increments of time. As a mom and a nurse, that's how I relate to the expression of time measurements with animals and children.
 
More accurate when tracking something like laying first eggs as has been mentioned. A week is 7 days long, period. Twelve weeks is 84 days, period. One month is maybe 28 days, 30 days, or 31 days. If you are talking about the months of February March and April, (89 days btw) that's three different periods of time since all months are not created equal. A week is a week is a week.
 
I couldn't even keep my kids ages in weeks or months after they were about a year and a half.

Right now I have 39 chickens and 1 egg in the egg box.......
something is up!
Caroline
 
Quote:
... unless you're raising your chickens on Jupiter... oh EARTH weeks!

(Jupiter completes a revolution in about 10 hours! About 2.9 Earth days to a Jupiter Week)
 

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