Merry Christmas: A gift of eggs

We got a nice Christmas gift today from our two youngest hens. They both started laying! They started at a good time, as the rest of the older hens stopped laying during The Molt. We were running out of stored eggs.

Going Natural

We don’t put supplimental light in our coop during winter. Some friends of our do supplimental light and they do still get some eggs during winter, though not at springtime rates. Even with the lights, though, nothing changes The Molt. If you’re new to chicken-keeping, in the fall, chickens lose their feathers and start to grow new ones. Growing new feathers requires a lot of protien, so hens’ bodies stop laying eggs until their newly feathered out. We give our hens a break for the winter. Many of the older hens will resume laying, maybe an egg a week during the winter, even without supplimental light.

Timing the New Chicks

As a way to mitigate the egg drought of winter, I try to have baby chicks hatch in late May or early June. The young hens usually start laying around 5 to 6 months old. If all goes welll, the new hens begin to lay just as the older hens dry up. This spring, I tried to coax my broody hen to lay sooner than she usually did (see related post). I was almost too successful. Instead of one broody hen (all I really need), I got three.

The newest hens started laying, despite it being the shortest days of the year and rather cold and wet out. A new hen’s first eggs are usually smaller than normal. It takes a little while for their internal ‘plumbing’ to get stretched out. The photo below shows a regular adult egg and the new little one.

The Christmas Gift

This morning, there was a little egg in one of the nest boxes. In the afternoon, I heard a hen cackling the ‘egg song’ so I went to check. Sure enough, a second egg. This one is a bit larger. It’s either the young hen #1 that laid a couple eggs earlier this week, and she’s stretching out to adult sized eggs, or one of the older hens has resumed laying after The Molt. Either way, it was a nice gift on Christmas. We an resume having eggs for breakfast!

Merry Christmas!

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