Verify Egg Layers

[Tram]

Started in Dec 2020 and been adding to my flock. I have 27 hens and currently getting around 5 to 6 eggs an evening. There is only about 7 girls that are obviously molting. I was pulling in 20 eggs a day beginning of 2021. Girls are free ranged on 2.5 acres and fed Naturewise Feather fixer.

My question to those with a flock longer than 2020. At what time of year should I start to isolate the hens to verify if they are still laying? Majority are Welsummer (dual purpose) which I know are not gonna be as high as some others.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Do a body check if eggs are that important. Middlenof summer would be best, since they shouldn't be molting and will have all the sunlight they need

 

[I Love Feather Babies]

Started in Dec 2020 and been adding to my flock. I have 27 hens and currently getting around 5 to 6 eggs an evening. There is only about 7 girls that are obviously molting. I was pulling in 20 eggs a day beginning of 2021. Girls are free ranged on 2.5 acres and fed Naturewise Feather fixer.

My question to those with a flock longer than 2020. At what time of year should I start to isolate the hens to verify if they are still laying? Majority are Welsummer (dual purpose) which I know are not gonna be as high as some others.

My girls usually take a 2 month vacation, November/December and then after first of year I start getting eggs again. I’m get around 10 a day now because I’ve got some young hens that have started laying last month. The older girls are already on vacation. I know I have 2 that are in retirement for sure. A couple of others are probably getting close to it.

 

[NatJ]

At what time of year should I start to isolate the hens to verify if they are still laying? Majority are Welsummer (dual purpose) which I know are not gonna be as high as some others.

You can check their vents & pubic bones to get a good idea of who is laying:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/who-is-laying-and-who-is-not-butt-check.73309/

That is much faster than isolating each hen for several days (although of course you can isolate hens to confirm the results. Sometimes it is obvious who lays and who doesn't, and sometimes you find a bunch of maybes.)

If you aren't sure what time of year, maybe put a colored legband on each bird to mark whether she is probably laying or definitely not, then check again at a later time. If you check every few months, they might end up with a bunch of legbands each, but you will have a pretty good idea of which ones lay sometimes and which ones never lay at all.

Majority are Welsummer

For yellow-skinned chickens like Welsummers, you can also look at their legs to get an idea of how much they have been laying in the past few months. The good layers will have pale legs, while the poor layers have bright yellow legs. That's because their body only makes so much yellow, and when it goes into egg yolks it isn't going into the skin. (This doesn't work on chickens with naturally white skin.)

 

[Tram]

Bless you NatJ, for that great information

 

[Ridgerunner]

One of the problems in determining which are your best layers is that you are looking for which lay the most eggs throughout the year, not at one instantaneous time. If you do that check in the fall when most are molting you can get some really bad results. A hen may lay like gangbusters throughout the year, molt in the fall and quit laying until the molt is over, then go back to laying great. You need to keep records throughout the year.

The pubic bone spread and vent checks will tell you which hens are laying at that time. They do not tell you how many eggs they are laying a week. It is good information to have, it may be the best information you can get, but it doesn't tell you whether she is laying 3 eggs a week or 6.

Before a pullet starts to lay or while a hen is molting and not laying she replenishes the yellow pigment in her skin, legs, vents, and other places if she is a yellow skinned chicken. As she lays that yellow pigment is used up. So in general the paler legs show which are laying more eggs. This does not work if their skin is white, black, slate, anything other than yellow. Some hens start molting earlier or later than others so the yellow will return at different times. It's not perfect, few things are, but I'd consider it pretty good when making my decisions. Since all of yours are the same yellow-legged breed it is probably a fair comparison.