Culling older birds?

[MROO]

Do you take out older birds from your flock and if so, at what age? We have very limited space in our coop plus feed costs are double of what they were, so I can’t justify keeping birds that aren’t laying well. At the same time I have a hard time justifying culling them too. Our oldest birds are 3 years, so they’re not old old, but they are laying less frequently and one of them hasn’t laid in a year. We lost a couple of birds in the last year so I’ve gotten eggs to hatch but I am still struggling with deciding who to cull and whether to cull at all. Our rooster is also 3 years and as far as I’ve understood he is less useful for fertilizing eggs by now.

A three year old hen with no eggs for a year? Before you start weeding out low-producers, you may want to do a parasite check. What breed is she? Even the production mixes, like the stars or comets, will continue laying past the 18 month commercial culling point. They just slow down some. Mites and many other nuisances, can cut production significantly. Good luck!

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

I used to hatch and slaughter every year,
so as to have fresh layers in the winters.
I slaughtered the hatched cockerels at about 14 weeks of age,
the older hens before winter set in due to limited winter housing.
I had 3 age sets I rotated every year.

What are you doing now aart? just letting them retire?

 

[aart]

What are you doing now aart? just letting them retire?

Pretty much, yeah.
Haven't gotten any new chicks for a few years.
At least for now there are 13 hens left to live out their lives.

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

Pretty much, yeah.
Haven't gotten any new chicks for a few years.
At least for now there are 13 hens left to live out their lives.

My last girl with a retirement plan just died a couple weeks ago at 7.5 years, she was one of the first batch I got. Every year about this time I say I need to reduce the numbers and I actually followed through today and cut the feed bill in half. I am on the meyers site right now working on/editing my order. I want to get a boy this time and breed some auto sexing chicks. I am looking at cream legbars and trying to figure out what other breeds will work for auto sexing.

I have been away from the forum awhile it feels good to be back