Chicken Rotation

[minus10gmt]

I have 12 one year old hens, 2 one year old roosters, and one unsexed 5 week old chick. My flock is mixed - I have Barnevelders, Salmon Faverolles, Welsummers and Cuckoo Marans (and one of the roos is a Crevecoeur). I want to do two things:

1. Switch to all one breed eventually (leaning toward Black Australorp, American Bresse or Bielefelder - all available to me locally)
2. Rotate in the new chicks at a good time so I don't end up with a gap when mine stop laying, but get as much time out my current flock as reasonably possible without a serious drop-off in laying.

Can any of you pros offer advice on how to best manage this rotation? We don't expect to keep the current flock on into retirement as pets. I can fit about 20 birds in my coop/run at any given time.

 

[aart]

Adult birds will always stop laying to molt.
Adding supplemental lighting in Dec, after the molts are complete, will get production back up more quickly
Hatching chicks as early in the year(mar/apr) as possible will ensure they will start laying about the same time the older birds molt in the fall.
Every year I hatch replacement layers, slaughter all cockerels and the oldest birds to get numbers down for winter quarters.

 

[Mrs. K]

Kind of sort of, 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3... best laid plans... Don't fill the coop the first year. If you have, not to worry. Chickens really are not a perfect plan, sometimes you wind up in a do over, but the best flock, is a couple older birds, most of the flock between 1 year and 2 years, and add chicks.

I have found you can really cheat in the summer with numbers for your set up. Add chicks, every year. But come the fall, the number of birds needs to fit in to the coop with extra space. And if you add, then you need to subtract.

Ridgerunner, who provides all of their own chicken meat, and eggs, does it with a winter flock of less than a dozen, I think 7-8. They do use an incubator and hatches quite a bit.

Good luck, I tried a lot of different breeds, thought for a long time I would pick a breed, but truthfully like a mixed flock.

Mrs K

 

[Ridgerunner]

In Hawaii. No real seasons, just nice weather and nicer weather. Longest nights probably around 13 hours, so not much difference in length of days depending on time of year. Not really sure how a lot of my experience will translate. A lot of the triggers won't be there.

Typically chickens molt when the days get shorter in the fall. Their feathers wear out so they nee to be replaced. So they quit laying eggs and use the nutrients that used to go into laying eggs to replace those feathers. They do that in the fall because winter is usually not a good time to raise chicks. So they start laying again in the spring when food is more available. Chickens usually live in a natural rhythm with nature. Often pullets skip the molt their first fall/winter and just keep laying until the next fall. I'm not sure how chickens manage all that in Hawaii.

Commercial operations keep their chickens under lights so they don't have the "fall" molt. That doesn't mean their hens lay forever. After a certain amount of time in the laying cycle number of eggs and quality of eggs starts to drop. That's typically after 13 to 15 months of continual laying. At that point they have to either let them molt and recharge their body or replace them. Typically the first year they lay a lot of eggs but they may be little small. After that first adult molt they again lay a lot of eggs and they are a bit bigger. After a second adult molt the eggs come back pretty big but they lay fewer. How many fewer? Hard to say. Instead of 6 a week they may lay 5, or only 3. So typically you count on two really good laying cycles for your hens.

You want a flock of about 20 hens, all the same breed, with no big gaps in laying. You do not say if you want to hatch your own chicks or buy them, and whether they will be baby chicks or older when you get them. Your current hens are one year old. You can handle a maximum of 20 hens at one time unless you increase your facilities.

I know I'm rambling. Part of that is to get my thoughts together and let you know what I'm basing my comments on. Some of it is to let you know I'm not sure how this will work in your climate. If you were in Ohio I'd be more sure of that part.

A lot will depend on how your hens handle the laying cycle. Are they molting this fall? At one year they should be old enough if they are going to. If they do molt in the it's a different laying cycle than if they don't molt by the season.

My suggestion is to try to figure out your flock's laying cycle, it will be simpler if that is tied to the length of daylight. Then once a laying cycle, bring in 7 pullets to replace half the older hens. It will take a bit to get it set up but try to have 7 old hens in their last laying cycle, 7 hens in their first laying cycle, and 7 pullets ready to take over. If you get the timing right you should always get some eggs, even when some are molting.

To get to one breed, just bring in that breed.

 

[minus10gmt]

My suggestion is to try to figure out your flock's laying cycle, it will be simpler if that is tied to the length of daylight. Then once a laying cycle, bring in 7 pullets to replace half the older hens. It will take a bit to get it set up but try to have 7 old hens in their last laying cycle, 7 hens in their first laying cycle, and 7 pullets ready to take over. If you get the timing right you should always get some eggs, even when some are molting.

To get to one breed, just bring in that breed.

This makes a lot of sense to me. My birds are molting now. It’s been about 4 weeks or so, so I’ve increased protein. Still getting eggs but about half the normal. My best guess will be to get those new pullets of the desired breed in February or March of 2021 and I should be ready to replace some of the current flock at or around their 2 year mark. I’ll do the same again once those birds have been integrated into the current flock (reducing the number as needed to accommodate. Then I can keep that cycle going.

Thank you!