A call out for all of those poultry types who might keep chooks in their backyards or wherever.
I purchased six chickens from a ‘free range’ farm last December who were meant to be at ‘end of lay’, IOW, they had come to the end of their commercial productive life and were being flogged off cheap to backyarders like myself.
My ladies were a very motley crew, scrawny, missing many feathers and looking much like something the cat dragged in, so to speak.
However they continued to lay on average 4 eggs a day so I wasn’t too perturbed, and they seemed happy etc.
Now that we are coming into the southern Winter, they have gone off the lay with an average of 1.5 eggs per day. Yet they have grown a much more lustrous plumage, and are looking like wonderful specimens of their breed (ISA for those in the know). I’m curious as to why they don’t seem to be moulting at all (rather the opposite is occuring) whilst they are still reduced in their laying rate.
Any clues folks?
PS, they are still very jovial little chookies who take delight in scratching up my herb garden and waiting for me to turn over a log to see what sluggie delicacies lay underneath.
You are probably overfeeding them, or more particularly providing have them too many calories (wheat) and insufficient protein.
Add some meat & bone meal to the diet. You can actually just leave a small tub of the M&B in the run under shelter and allow them to free select. An alternative is soak some dry dog biscuits and make them available.
First, a point of clarification. True “moulting” occurs *before *the production of new plumage. Usually when referring to poultry moulting refers to the complete cycle of feather loss and growth. So if your birds have new plumage they either already have moulted or are moulting and it’s confusing to say that they are doing the opposite of moulting. I assume what you mean is that rather than shedding feathers they are producing new plumage. But feather loss in free range chickens really isn’t very dramatic. A few feathers lost each day, most of which are taken away by the wind. So you won’t actually see it.
The growth of new feathers is a very protein intensive process and it’s normal for hens to stop laying during that time. High protein feed can help reduce the duration they are off the lay, but even on the best diets most birds are physically incapable of eating enough to sustain both feather growth and laying. Since these are older birds it would be astounding if they weren’t off the lay during feather growth.
The other point to realise is that the whole process is day length dependent. In natural light some birds will keep trying to lay down resources right through midwinter and that will reduce their laying capacity (Though it makes them better eating :D). If these were birds reared under artificial lights they are probably going to be screwy for the first 1 2mointsh anyway.
I wouldn’t worry at all about it. It all seems perfectly normal. If they haven’t started laying again after the solstice at the end of June then you can worry. Otherwise everything is going exactly as you’d expect. They’ve shed the old feathers and are putting resources into growing new ones. Once that process is complete and the day length they should cycle back. You certainly could up the protein level of the diet, it won’t do any harm but it probably won’t have much effect if they were laying fine before moulting.
Thanks for that info PenThule and Blake. The reason I was confused about the moult/laying connection is because the chooks were so bedraggled and featherless when I got them last December (and didn’t grow any more in the interim), I didn’t really notice that they might have been losing more feathers in recent weeks.
But anyway, a corner seems to have been turned because today we got THREE eggs.
My mom got some chickens this past autumn (northern autumn, that is, around October), and she kept them laying full speed through the winter by putting artificial lights on timers in their coop. It worked fine.
One of the advantages of being a chook-mum is not having to worry too much about the lay-rate of my girls, so I wouldn’t ever consider installing artificial lights in their coop (not that they’re in it for many hours anyway). If they’re off the lay, I buy eggs at the supermarket and wait for them to get down and dirty in the hay at THEIR leisure!
Here in Perth my chooks go off laying at the height of summer - heat stress, I guess - then resume, then go off a bit when moulting, and resume when they’ve finished their moult. They lay throughtout the winter.
Like yours, my chooks are ex-commercial layers, and they were pretty scraggy when they arrived. Because of this the start of their first moult - i.e. the shedding phase - was imperceptible, so it’s only the egg drop-off that signals that they are moulting. As long as they’re still taking an interest in life I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
