Winter Egg Laying - What Can I Expect?

[akf93]

Hi there!

I’m in NE Indiana. We get pretty cold winters and usually a couple good snow storms each season. I’m wondering what I can expect my girls to do with egg laying come winter. The first group was born in March 2022. The second group in June 2022. Will they stop altogether or just decrease? Will this last for a few weeks? Months? I know it has to do with daylight and I do not plan to use artificial light. Just curious what I can expect.

I have RIR, BCM, OE, Ameraucanas in the older group. I have Cinnamon Queen, Sapphire Gem, Buff Orp, Barred Rock, Calico Princess, Dark Brahma, White Leghorn, Prairie Bluebell in the younger group.

 

[sourland]

Since they are young birds, I would guess that at least the sex links and leghorns will lay throughout the winter.

 

[TooCheep]

You can expect a collapse in egg laying for roughly three months. Most all of them will outright stop. Being first year pullets, you may have a couple continue laying in the winter.

Of the 6 hens I've had (over 5 years) only a RIR continued laying in winter and that was only in her first year.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

There will likely be a noticeable decrease, but that young, eggs aren't likely to completely stop depending on how many birds there are

 

[saysfaa]

If you do a net search, you will see that chickens need 14 hours of daylight per day to lay eggs. Some sources say 14-16 hours. That isn't exactly true.

You can expect full production with about 14 hours of light per day. Full production meaning more hours of light through the winter don't result in more eggs through the winter. It doesn't mean more eggs per year; it is actually fewer eggs per year.

About nine hours of light per day is the lower threshold - the amount needed to lay at all.

There is a time lag between a change in the length of lighted day and the egg production - not necessarily the same amount of delay when the change is a longer day vs a shorter day.

The color of the light matters. There is a threshold of intensity of light needed so if your coop doesn't have windows or doesn't have east or west windows your natural day may be shorter than it otherwise would be.

The sensitivity of egg production to light and to other factors has a strong genetic factor. This doesn't matter much in production lines of layer breeds. It matters more in breeds or lines that were never heavily selected for egg production.

These are some of the reasons people have different results. That and how far north people are. It can still be helpful to hear other people's experiences.

I didn't put lights in the coop. My brown leghorns are a heritage breed; not close to as productive as production white leghorns. My black australorps are more of a production breed but not as much so as the sex linked layer breeds. I have a very small sample size - only three australorps and two leghorns.

Mine all hatched the first week of May. The australorps began laying at very close to 20 weeks. It was very close to the fall equinox so they were getting very close to 12 hours of light a day. The leghorns started laying a couple of weeks later.

The australorps gave an egg a day, each, for a week or so longer than the leghorns. All the pullets were noticeably skipping days by about Thanksgiving. The leghorns stopped completely a little before the middle of December. We got the last egg from an australorp on Christmas Eve - after the solstice.

The first of the australorps started laying again the last week of January or first week of February. The leghorns started a few weeks later. It took about a month or six weeks to be getting a egg a day per pullet almost every day.

 

[WIchickMama]

Last winter (my girls 1st winter born March 2021) most continued to lay. Leghorn and Barred Rock continued as normal, Brahmas laid just not as much, Wyandotte laid pretty frequently and Polish did not lay at all. Everyone was back to normal laying by mid Feb. I do not give artificial light.