Winter eggs after 2yrs?

[Duckfarmer1]

This sounds more like the cost of started pullets, and even that is high. Of course shipping has cost too. Can you not have roosters where you live? Our answer to getting rid of cockerels is to sell at auction. I just googled "livestock auction near me". I have sold cockerels two separate times at a monthly auction. While they may have ended up in a stewpot, I did try to ensure that they had a better chance of living life in a flock by caging them separately (in a home made cage of cardboard bottom, chicken wire sides and top), labelling with breed, egg color genetics, source, hatch date. And there has been a bidding war on a few of the cockerels, so am guessing not purchased for dinner.

Oh we can have as many roosters as we want, we have 35 acres. And we’ll just eat the ones we don’t keep because, it’s over an hour for farm auctions. I told him last night..we’re buying new birds..period. He wasn’t thrilled, didn’t get it,but when I said I would pay, he was ok. That just means he’ll pat for more feed that month...lol. He’s thrifty, and that’s why we’re Blessed to have retired at 40. But, when I explained how we really didn’t get a good deal at TS, he agreed on buying sexed chickens. He’s still not sold on worrying about them laying after 2yrs. One step at a time.

 

[Duckfarmer1]

Atificial light, not heat--it's convenient that light is cheaper than heat!

You've pretty much listed your options, but I can see two more:
--rescue more chickens from another source next year (hard to plan for in advance)
--keep your current hens until they die of old age, and at some point have to buy eggs because they aren't laying enough or not laying at all. (I'm guessing you already rejected that one.)

Have you had chickens through one winter yet? If not, I suggest you see how things go this winter, before making final plans for next spring. If you run short of eggs vs. having too many, you can adjust your plans. (Too many eggs this winter: just letting the same hens get older would "fix" that for the next winter. Not enough eggs this winter: get new pullets and/or add light for the next year.)

It is good to plan ahead, but it's sometimes easier to plan when you have a bit more experience.



Unless you like to eat lots of cockerels, you're right about that! Hatching chicks (if you have a rooster, and if you have an incubator or a hen goes broody) usually gives a mix of males and females, and can seem to tend heavily toward whichever gender you didn't want.

I will definitely be rescueing more animals..that’s my thing. And I’m great with letting them live forever... but I also want more chickens for eggs.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yours is a real common problem. I'll put my two cents worth in.

Before they were domesticated chickens evolved to follow a certain life cycle. They would hatch and raise chicks in the spring and summer when food was plentiful but stop laying and molt to replace warn out feathers in the fall/winter when food was scarcer. What food they could get went to feathers and keeping warm, not laying eggs. The trigger to stop laying and start the molt is technically the nights getting longer, but we usually talk about the days getting shorter.

Now we have domesticated them. We've bred them to lay a lot more eggs and to not go broody that often. We provide a lot of food for them year around, not just in the spring, summer, and early fall. We often mess with the light. Their basic instincts is to still follow that life cycle but we've really messed it up. It's even possible some will still lay an egg when they are molting, we've messed them up that much, but it is still pretty rare. Another example that with living animals anything can happen.

If you provide light so the days don't get shorter they do not receive the signal to molt and stop laying. You can keep them laying. But after they have laid continually for a length of time, with commercial flocks around 13 to 15 months, egg production suffers. That is the catch. They lay fewer eggs and egg quality drops. They need to molt and recharge their system. At some point profitability drops to a point that the commercial operations have to decide whether to feed them through a molt to get them back to a great egg producing cycle or to replace them. Typically after a second adult molt egg laying drops enough that they are better off replacing them. You are probably not working on that fine a margin.

Often, not always but often, production breed pullets will skip the molt their first winter and keep laying all the way until the next fall when days get shorter.

The way I manage this is that I do not add any lights to keep them laying. Most of my pullets still lay through the first winter. Most of my adult hens will start to lay after they finish with the molt, they do not necessarily wait for the days to get longer, though some do.

Every year I keep half the number of pullets that I want as hens in my laying/breeding flock. I hatch my own replacements with an incubator or broody hens. I eat the excess cockerels and excess pullets. I keep the hens that were pullets the previous year and feed them through the molt. But I eat the ones I fed through the molt the previous winter when they stop laying and start to molt.

I want my laying/breeding flock to be 8 hens. Use your own numbers. So each year I keep four replacement pullets and eat four older hens when they start to molt. I feed eight hens and pullets through the winter and get some eggs. The next summer I have eight hens laying well. In the fall when that year's pullet's start laying I get a lot of eggs.

This is the way I manage it. I'm capable of eating my excess hens so the numbers of chickens don't get out of hand. Doesn't sound like that part will work for you.

Good luck!

 

[Duckfarmer1]

Yours is a real common problem. I'll put my two cents worth in.

Before they were domesticated chickens evolved to follow a certain life cycle. They would hatch and raise chicks in the spring and summer when food was plentiful but stop laying and molt to replace warn out feathers in the fall/winter when food was scarcer. What food they could get went to feathers and keeping warm, not laying eggs. The trigger to stop laying and start the molt is technically the nights getting longer, but we usually talk about the days getting shorter.

Now we have domesticated them. We've bred them to lay a lot more eggs and to not go broody that often. We provide a lot of food for them year around, not just in the spring, summer, and early fall. We often mess with the light. Their basic instincts is to still follow that life cycle but we've really messed it up. It's even possible some will still lay an egg when they are molting, we've messed them up that much, but it is still pretty rare. Another example that with living animals anything can happen.

If you provide light so the days don't get shorter they do not receive the signal to molt and stop laying. You can keep them laying. But after they have laid continually for a length of time, with commercial flocks around 13 to 15 months, egg production suffers. That is the catch. They lay fewer eggs and egg quality drops. They need to molt and recharge their system. At some point profitability drops to a point that the commercial operations have to decide whether to feed them through a molt to get them back to a great egg producing cycle or to replace them. Typically after a second adult molt egg laying drops enough that they are better off replacing them. You are probably not working on that fine a margin.

Often, not always but often, production breed pullets will skip the molt their first winter and keep laying all the way until the next fall when days get shorter.

The way I manage this is that I do not add any lights to keep them laying. Most of my pullets still lay through the first winter. Most of my adult hens will start to lay after they finish with the molt, they do not necessarily wait for the days to get longer, though some do.

Every year I keep half the number of pullets that I want as hens in my laying/breeding flock. I hatch my own replacements with an incubator or broody hens. I eat the excess cockerels and excess pullets. I keep the hens that were pullets the previous year and feed them through the molt. But I eat the ones I fed through the molt the previous winter when they stop laying and start to molt.

I want my laying/breeding flock to be 8 hens. Use your own numbers. So each year I keep four replacement pullets and eat four older hens when they start to molt. I feed eight hens and pullets through the winter and get some eggs. The next summer I have eight hens laying well. In the fall when that year's pullet's start laying I get a lot of eggs.

This is the way I manage it. I'm capable of eating my excess hens so the numbers of chickens don't get out of hand. Doesn't sound like that part will work for you.

Good luck!

Actually, tthats exactly what my husband wants to do. I just tend to get carried away with things. You know..if we can get 11 eggs a day..then why not 20, etc... He said to me he’d be perfectly fine with four eggs a week. Hmm

ok, so here’s a big question..the incubation costs. They seem high! Plus the time. Wouldn’t it be much cheaper to pay TS for 10 sexed pulleys? Can you tell me about what you have in it to incubate eggs, or is that too personal?

 

[Ridgerunner]

To incubate eggs you need an incubator. You can probably get a relatively inexpensive one at Tractor Supply, most likely some model of the Little Giant brand. Or you can find some online. You can get all kinds of different incubators, some a lot more expensive than others. The cheaper ones usually require more hands-on to set up and operate. As you would expect people have had more bad experiences with the cheap ones, but a lot of chicks have been hatched in them. If you are going to hatch several times year I'd suggest spending the money and getting a better one. If you only hatch a time or two a year I'd go with the less expensive.

The eggs need to be turned at least three times a day or you can buy an automatic turner. Additional expenses include a thermometer and hydrometer. The thermometer needs to be a type that shows the temperature to the tenth of a degree, better quality than the ones you hang outside to see what the temperature is.

How much work you put into them depends on which you get. An automatic egg turner cuts down on your commitment to be there at least three times a day. There are different ways to add water to maintain humidity. That's not hard to do but you need to monitor it so you know when to add water. I generally check mine twice a day to make sure temperature and moisture are OK.

An incubator needs to be placed where the temperature stays pretty constant and above 70 degrees F. You do not want it set in a window where sunlight can heat it up, where a heating or AC vent blows on it, or near a door to the outside.

Once you come up with the original investment that's pretty much it. But it can set you back some. I don't know what Tractor Supply charges for pullets but that is probably the cheapest way to go.

You can check Craigslist to see if you can find an incubator cheap. Hatching is stressful. You never know how many eggs will really hatch or what sex they will be. In one hatch it's usually not 50-50. Mine are typically 65-35 one way or the other though you never know.

 

[Peggsblueinc]

Yep, that's pretty much true. They need to molt plus the days shorten which is what stops the ovulation, both happen about the same time of year.

Yep, new chicks every year, the earlier in spring you hatch or buy, the better chance they will be laying by the time the older ones are taking their sabbatical.

It's not about heat, it's about day length.
Here's a pretty good article on supplemental lighting....that explains the biology of light and ovulation.

 

[Peggsblueinc]

Chickens will still take a break from laying when they molt, so you never really get year round eggs from a chicken. But supplemental light in the fall/winter/early spring will keep them laying, in general.

We add supplemental light using a lightbulb on a timer. This way they get 14 hours of light per day when combined with sunlight. However, This past Jan/Feb were soooo overcast for days on end, we actually saw a reduction in eggs, which surprised me. However, our oldest chickens turned 1 year in Feb, and a few were molting, which may have been the main reason for the reduction, but I think the super overcast days impacted egg production as well. Oh, and our girls seem to really dislike windy days - we have always noticed a reduction on days when the wind is hitting their run. Usually their run is protected from the main winds, or only half of the run is impacted, so they can utilize the other half. But, every once in a while, the wind just blows through their run for several hours when a front comes through and they seem to hold their eggs in until the next day

You certainly can use Christmas lights to light your coop. They should be attached to a timer, if possible, so they are always getting light at the same time every day, for the same amount of time. LED lights will use the least amount of energy, and the cost should be negligible. When lights are used, usually they are turned on early morning, then off mid morning (after the sun is fully up) and not used in the evening so the birds can naturally find their roost as the sun is setting.

My chickens are molting. But I have a couple that are still laying. One of the hens eggs have started coming out soft not soft but thin shelled. What can I do to help her out is it cause of the molt or lack of calcium

 

[Acre4Me]

My chickens are molting. But I have a couple that are still laying. One of the hens eggs have started coming out soft not soft but thin shelled. What can I do to help her out is it cause of the molt or lack of calcium

calcium is needed for strong egg shells. She wouldn’t likely be laying eggs if she was molting. Do you feed a layer feed? Do you provide supplemental calcium (such as oyster shell)?

 

[Ridgerunner]

My chickens are molting. But I have a couple that are still laying. One of the hens eggs have started coming out soft not soft but thin shelled. What can I do to help her out is it cause of the molt or lack of calcium

Are they all molting or just some? They don't all always molt at the same time.

Before we domesticated them they set up a seasonal rhythm where they laid eggs and hatched chicks in the good weather, then stopped laying in the fall when food supplies were harder to come by. They used what food they could find to molt and replace worn-out feathers instead of laying eggs that weren't likely to produce new chickens.

But we've bred them to lay a lot of eggs and we typically feed them really well year around. Most still follow the rhythm of the seasons, quit laying and molt when days get shorter. But a few will still lay some eggs while molting, especially if you feed them a nutrient rich diet. Not many but it does happen. There are exceptions in practically everything chickens. So it is possible for you to have a hen or maybe even two that are both molting and laying.

What are you feeding them? Some people like to cram a lot of protein down them when they are molting so feeding patterns might be disrupted. Are you offering supplemental calcium? They need a certain amount of calcium for egg shells as well as other body functions. That's not based on how much calcium is in one bite, it's how many total grams of calcium do they eat in a day. If the only calcium they are getting is Layer feed and you are feeding them a lot of low-calcium treats they may not be getting enough calcium whether they are molting or not. Are you offering them a calcium supplement like oyster shells?

They need some other things to process calcium, not just calcium. Have you altered how you feed them?

Feathers are about 85% protein, calcium is really low or non-existent. So growing new feathers will not rob her of calcium. I don't think molting would affect how their bodies process calcium but maybe there is something about the molting process that does affect how it is deposited to make egg shell. After all, laying while molting isn't exactly normal.

My guess is that it probably has a lot more to do with how much total calcium they are eating and processing than it does with molting.

 

[Peggsblueinc]

My chickens are molting. But I have a couple that are still laying. One of the hens eggs have started coming out soft not soft but thin shelled. What can I do to help her out is it cause of the molt or lack of calcium

Yes a layers feed but I ran out of calcium. I guess I’d better go out and get some.