winter time for layers

[cackleberryhead]

Last year my hens stopped laying, all 150, from Oct through April. I thought it was because of several stress factors, molt, lice, and cold....We are in SE North Carolina and it isn't really cold here usually.

But I have several ppl tell me that hens stop laying if they are allowed to walk on the frost.
Anyone know this to be true??

thanks.

 

[Fred's Hens]

No, forget the mythology and old tales. LOL

Hens rest in the winter. Now, grant you, a first year pullet is a pretty strong winter layer, but older hens quite often take the entire winter off. It isn't the temperatures, nor standing on frost, nor a zillion other things. It is simply the lack of light. A chicken is photo reactive which means once the daylight hours fall below 11 hours of daylight in October, there is nothing hitting her retina, triggering her brain to lay. It is that simple.

Some folks add a few hours of pre-dawn light, artificially with a light on a timer. Others? They prefer to go natural and just let things take their course.

 

[mickey328]

Shorter days are natural triggers for hens to reduce production. That way they can maintain more of the nutrients for their own body health, and typically shorter days mean less forage. Just like it's the shorter days that trigger trees to drop leaves.

Do you provide any artificial light for your hens? Try giving them 2 hours of light just before sun up and I'm sure you'll see some production. If you give them more hours, you may get more production, but you also run the risk (IMO) of "wearing them out". The light in our coop is on a timer and comes on at about 5:30am. Sun's up by 7 or 7:15 and that's when we let them out. So far, it's balanced out what we've lost in daylight thus far, and we haven't seen any reduction at all.