Well, it’s coming up on two weeks now and all the chickens are still alive. Productive, too – 2-3 eggs a day.
Which means somebody’s letting me down. But that raises a question for the chicken-raisers out there: You’ve got three chickens that look pretty much exactly alike, and anyway they lay their eggs in private. Two of them (I presume) lay an egg every day. One lays an egg most days. How do you tell which one to “retire?”
I mean, c’mon. I’ve gotten the axe before. But for these ladies, “getting the axe” involves an actual axe. I’d hate to fire the wrong one.
“I mean, c’mon. I’ve gotten the axe before. But for these ladies, “getting the axe” involves an actual axe. I’d hate to fire the wrong one.”
Were all folks as judicial as thou 🙂
It doesn’t work that way, Joel. None of the hens lays an egg each and every day. There are a lot of factors involved, and very few constants. All of them take a “day off” now and again, quite unpredictably.
As the days get shorter and the light is less, they will all tend to lay less often or, at some point, stop altogether. This is not all bad, of course, since it gives their bodies a chance to rest and store up resources for the next laying season. You can artificially prolong that season with extra light, but it’s possibly not worth it considering your situation.
But, also, as they get older they will tend to lay less and less often anyway. At some point you will decide that they are no longer worth their feed and they will become stew. But that’s likely to come for all of them that are the same age. Ideally, about 3 – 4 months before you anticipate that necessity, you will buy new young poults and start over.
I understand all that, ML. But say you’ve just got a chronic underachiever who’s worth more as dinner, but you don’t know which one it is? How do you sort it out?
look for the one wearing the ‘i’m one of the 47%’ badges?…
To sort out if you’ve got a non-productive hen, you’ve got to separate them, usually one at a time. But I think you’ll find, like LM says, that they’re alternating & it works out to each hen laying about every 1/5-2 days. There’s no slacker in your bunch. As the light decreases, they will molt, & again laying drops off. And as the light increases in the spring, the production rate will pick up again.
An heirloom variety like a Rhode Island will be most productive the first couple laying years & after that begin to taper off, laying fewer each year. Rather than eat ’em, tho’, you can sometimes find folks who want hens that don’t lay quite so many eggs & sell ’em. Or you can eat ’em.
Individual cages would be the only way I can think of to truly know what the production of any specific hen might be. Thing is that it you can’t expect any hen to lay an egg every single day, no matter what the conditions are. 🙂
Hah! I’ll try this. Then I’ll pull up a chair and sharpen my axe outside the chicken yard. See how fast those badges disappear?
Seriously, thanks for the information, guys. I have things to learn about chickens.