As thrilling as it’s to get new chicks in spring, much more thrilling is discovering their first eggs within the fall. As your pullets develop, you’ll naturally surprise when to be expecting your chickens to beginning laying eggs. The solution will depend on their state of well being, their vitamin, their breed, and their age.
Well being
A rooster has sufficient power to both lay eggs or protect itself in opposition to illness, however no longer each. Subsequently, a chicken that’s coping with well being problems will have to battle to put eggs. Two of the commonest well being problems with younger chickens are coccidiosis and worms. Happily, each issues are simple to steer clear of with excellent control. For more information see:
Coccidiosis — the Scourge of Chicks and Poults
Do Your Chickens Want Deworming?
Nutrition
Dietary wishes trade as egg laying breeds develop from chicks into hens. So what you feed your pullets (feminine chicks) impacts their long run egg manufacturing. And after they mature into laying hens, their nutritional wishes proceed to modify with their stage of manufacturing and with the season. For more information see:
Feed Choices — What Do Chickens Consume?
Breed and Age
Hen breeds which can be identified for top egg manufacturing would possibly get started laying quickly when they succeed in 4 months of age. However maximum yard breeds get started laying on the age of about 5 months. Gradual maturing breeds, then again, won’t lay till the age of 8 months, and even later. Be told extra right here:
At What Age Do Hens Get started Laying Eggs?
The way to Inform Eggs Are Coming Quickly
A chicken that’s about to start out laying eggs might be just about complete dimension for her breed. Her plumage might be easy and glossy. Her comb will develop from small and red to very large and crimson. She would possibly turn out to be extra talkative.
The chicken will peer into darkish corners in search of attainable nesting websites. She will also spend time in a nest, as though to learn the way it feels.
As a result of she needs her eggs to be fertile, so they may be able to hatch into chicks, when a chicken approaches she’ll squat to be mated. She will also squat for different hens or for her human keeper.
When she in any case lays her first egg, it’s prone to be somewhat small and would possibly comprise no yolk. Or it’ll have an extraordinary form or a comfortable, rubbery shell. Those oddities simply imply the chicken’s reproductive machine isn’t but absolutely evolved.
Don’t concern. Inside a few weeks she will have to be steadily laying eggs of ordinary dimension, form, and colour for her breed.
And that’s nowadays’s information from the Cackle Coop.
Gail Damerow is the writer of Storey’s Information to Elevating Chickens.