Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (48 page)

The Leghorn normally begins laying between the ages of 18 and 22 weeks and averages between 250 and 280 white-shelled eggs during the first year. A commercial hybrid brown-egg layer lays somewhat fewer eggs. The brown-egg hybrids called Red Sex Links average 250 to 260 eggs per year; trade names for this hybrid include Cinnamon Queen, Golden Comet, Gold Star, and Red Star. The brown-egg hybrid called a Black Sex Link, or Black Star, averages about 240 eggs per year, but her eggs are larger than those of the Red Sex Link. The Black Sex Link is gentler than the Red and quicker to mature, beginning to lay at about 16 weeks of age. Although she eats a little more than the Red, at the end of her productive life she weighs 5 pounds (2.3 kg) — a good ¾ pound (0.3 kg) more than the Red — making the Black something of a meat bird as well as a layer.

A laying breed that puts more energy into growing muscle than the commercial strains is considered
dual purpose,
meaning it is suitable for someone who keeps chickens for meat as well as for eggs (although, because these chickens neither lay as well as layer breeds nor grow as well as broiler breeds, some people consider them to be unsuitable for either purpose). These hens generally start laying at the age of 24 to 26 weeks. You won’t get as many eggs from the best dual-purpose breed as from a commercial strain, and you’ll get fewer eggs still from a dual-purpose strain bred for show than from a strain of the same breed bred for egg production.

All pullets lay small eggs when they first start out, and they lay only one egg every 3 or 4 days. But by the time they are 30 weeks old, their eggs will reach normal size, and they will average two eggs every 3 days; during the spring peak good layers should average five or six eggs a week per hen. At about 18 months, they’ll take a break to molt. After the molt they’ll lay bigger eggs than before, but not quite as many. As hens age the pattern continues, and each year they lay fewer eggs than the year before.

Aside from the hen’s breed and age, her rate of lay is affected by external factors, including temperature and light. Hens lay best when the temperature is between 45 and 80°F (7 and 27°C). When the weather gets much colder or much warmer than that, production slows down.

Most hens stop laying in winter, not because the weather turns cold, but because daylight hours are shorter in winter than in summer. When the number of daylight hours falls below 14, hens may stop laying until spring.

A healthy hen should lay for a good 10 to 12 years. Occasionally, you’ll hear of a biddy laying to the ripe old age of 20, by which time she’d be doing well to pump out an egg a week. Most layers don’t manage to live that long. Instead, by the tender age of 3 they have succumbed to the firing squad or falling ax, to be replaced by fresh, young, more efficient pullets.

The size of a hen’s eggs depends on her breed and age. As a hen gets older, her eggs typically get bigger. The United States Department of Agriculture publishes standards for eggs in six sizes, according to minimum weight per dozen eggs, to account for slight variations from one egg to the next.

On a per-egg basis, the smallest size is peewee, which weighs about 1.25 ounces (35 g), and the largest is jumbo, which weighs about 2.5 ounces (70 g). Periodically, some poultry keeper will report finding a chicken egg weighing 6 ounces or more (170 g). The heaviest chicken egg on record weighed one pound (0.5 kg).

Egg size is influenced by a hen’s weight. A pullet’s eggs are usually quite small, but the size continues to increase until the bird is about 12 months old. Pullets that start laying during summer usually lay smaller eggs than pullets that start laying during the cooler months of fall or winter. Pullets that are underweight when they start laying will continue to lay smaller eggs than birds that mature properly.

EGG SIZES

Hens of any age and weight may temporarily lay small eggs if they’re suffering from stress induced by heat, crowding, or poor nutrition, including inadequate protein or salt. Among same-age hens of a given breed or strain, the majority of eggs should be of one size, with only an occasional egg ranging just above or below the majority.

Out of the 25 hours most hens need to lay an egg from start to finish, encasing each egg within a shell takes about 20 hours. Colored shells are the result of pigments added during shell formation.

Brown-egg layers produce eggs of varying shades ranging from barely tinted to nearly black, thanks to more than a dozen different genes that influence shell color. Most of the pigment of a brown-shell egg is deposited in the
bloom
, the last layer added to the outside of an egg just before it is laid. When you break open a brown-shell egg, the inside of the shell will be paler than the outside or nearly white. Bloom dissolves when wet, and easily rubs off when dry, which explains why cleaning a brown-shell egg removes some of the color.

By contrast the pigment of a blue-shell egg is deposited throughout the shell, which is therefore just as blue on the inside as on the outside. Green eggs result from crossing a blue-egg layer with a brown-egg layer, giving you blue-shell eggs with a brown coating. The many different shades laid by so-called Easter egg chickens result from blue shells coated with different shades of brown bloom.

All Asiatics and most Americans (except Holland) lay brown eggs. All Mediterraneans lay white eggs. Other classes are a mixed bag as to white, brown, tinted (pale brown to the point of pinkish), or blue.

As a general rule, hens with white earlobes lay white eggs, and hens with red earlobes lay brown eggs. Exceptions are Crevecoeur, Dorking, Redcap, and Sumatra, which have red earlobes but lay white-shell eggs; Araucana and Ameraucana, which have red earlobes but lay blue eggs; and Pendesenca, which have white earlobes but lay the darkest brown egg of any breed.

Although variations in hue exist within each breed or strain, an individual hen typically lays eggs of a specific color. The use of certain drugs, especially coccidiostats, causes paler or even white-shell eggs. Viral diseases that infect the reproductive system also cause hens to lay pale eggs.

Stress can make brown-shell hens lay eggs that are a lighter than usual color. Overcrowded nests, rough handling, loud noises, and anything that makes a hen nervous or fearful can cause her to either lay her egg prematurely, before the brown-bloom coating is completed, or retain the egg long enough to add an
extra layer of shell on top of the bloom. An inexplicable lightening of brown-shell eggs is a good indication something is bothering your hens.

SHELL COLOR

As a brown-egg layer ages, her eggs naturally get paler. No one knows exactly why, although one possibility is that as a hen ages and her eggs get larger, the brown-pigmented bloom is spread over a larger surface area. But this explanation does not account for why the tapered end of the egg gets lighter than the rounded end.

The nutritional needs of laying hens continue to change from the time they hatch as chicks. How you feed your pullets will affect their future egg production. And
once they mature into laying hens, their dietary needs continue changing with their level of production and the season.

The protein required for egg production nearly all comes from a flock’s rations. Pullets that are not in good flesh when they start laying cannot obtain enough dietary protein to continue growing to maturity and to lay eggs. As a result they lose weight and produce small eggs, as well as too few of them. On the other hand, pullets that grow too rapidly and are fat when they start to lay also tend to lay fewer, smaller eggs and are more likely to have trouble laying them.

Therefore, start chicks with enough protein to give them a good beginning, then back off a bit to give them time to grow without getting fat before they start laying. Restricted feeding is one method of reducing protein intake, but because the pullets spend less time eating, they have more time to get bored and nervous and may pick on one another, and otherwise make each other miserable.

A better way to reduce protein is to continue feeding their ration free choice, but use the Pearson’s square method described in
chapter 4
to gradually add oats to the ration. Start changing the protein when the pullets are 8 weeks of age until you achieve a level of between 14 and 16 percent.

As your pullets reach the age when they will start laying, their need for protein goes up. Leghorn-type breeds start laying at about 20 weeks, other breeds at 22 to 24 weeks. So when your Leghorn-type pullets reach about 18 weeks (20 weeks for other breeds), gradually reduce the oats until the protein level is between 16 and 18 percent. Do not feed a layer ration to pullets before they reach the age of lay, the higher calcium content may interfere with bone formation and result in weak legs, kidney damage, and possibly death.

To ensure that your pullets get the nutrients their bodies need as they come into production, completely switch to a layer ration by the time they start to lay. Also by then, discontinue any medicated feed you may have used to avoid problems such as abnormal eggs and drug residues in eggs.

Each lightweight pullet of a commercial layer strain will eat about 15 pounds (6.75 kg) of feed before she starts laying at about 20 weeks of age. Breeds that take a few weeks longer to reach laying age may eat double that amount. The age at which pullets lay their first eggs, and the amount of feed needed to bring them to that point, will vary with the specific breed and strain you choose.

Each lightweight layer eats about 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of ration for every dozen eggs she lays, which works out to between 4 and 4½ ounces (124 and 140 g) of feed
per hen per day, or just under 2 pounds (0.9 kg) per hen per week. Dual-purpose hens eat a bit more (about N pound or 150 g per day), bantams a bit less. Feed your hens free choice, and they’ll eat as much as they need.

Since chickens eat to meet their energy needs, expect your layers to eat less in summer than in winter, when they need extra energy to stay warm. If their summer ration contains the same amount of protein as their winter ration, they’ll get less total protein in summer and therefore won’t lay as well. In warm climates, in addition to regular 16 percent lay ration, some feed stores offer a ration containing 18 percent or more protein for use when high temperatures cause hens to eat too little.

In winter, when the weather is colder and the days are shorter, hens may not get enough to eat to both maintain body heat and continue laying well. One solution is to light their housing to increase daylight hours and give them more time to eat. Another solution is to supplement rations with milk and/or scratch grains. If your hens are losing weight, the better option is to let them take a rest
from laying; they will naturally resume egg production in the spring.