what is the "laying cycle"

have heard eggs change colour throughout the laying cycle; getting a little paler as it goes.
my question: i just bought some Marans hens who (i was told) laid a 7 on the scale at the beginning of their laying cycle. I only have two of the 11 laying right now, but the eggs are pretty pale really when you consider they should be pretty dark.
So, those of you with Marans:
What of the colour
And those of you with chickens: what is the laying cycle? Is it the whole period of time from the moult on to the next moult?

In my hen house the laying cycle begins and ends when the hens feel like it should. Each girl is on her own schedule.

I believe there is a natural rhythm to a hen's laying cycle based on weather and length of daylight. Of course if you add light to your hen house, you tinker with the cycle.

I wish I could tell you I have noticed a set pattern of when they start and stop laying, but I never have. Some molt and quit laying. Some get an attitude and quit laying. Some seem to lay forever, sporadically.

However since none of mine lay the intense, brown eggs that yours do, I cannot say I notice much change in shell colour. But as the hens get older and go through their random and arbitrary cycles, the eggs usually get bigger. I get the most double yolkers from my older hens.

Thanks Uno
i just read that most hens have two laying cycles and then will stop laying.  I am thinking...and hoping that they are referring to production birds and not heritage birds...again..me stupid...
am i supposed to be ditching my older hens for young hens every year?....do you have a ratio that you replace them at...or a percentage?
What overall plan do you follow?
Do you test each bird for how many eggs she is still laying?  Do you sell them when two?
Do you let them hang with you till they die?

Can't answer about the laying cycle. But I do know from research, that a hen that has come out of a time of molting, or brooding, or not laying will lay an egg with more pigment, and as she lays more and more, that pigment lessens. Guess the paint machine gets a little washed out . Maybe someone else can explain more. I think that is one of the complaints some people have about dark egg layers, is that the longer the hen lays, the lighter the eggs sometimes will get. I am sure it is not true with all hens, but this is what I have understood. Maybe someone will help you understand more and others too. Have an awesome night, with a wonderful day tomorrow, CynthiaM.

Sorry ladies, you are wrong. This is a laying cycle!

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Big Rock, as to replacing 'spent' layers, this is a complex topic.

TO start, I do not keep production layer type birds. I keep mutts. Since mine never have the mass output that heavy layers have, they do not 'burn out' quite the same. I also do not add extra winter light, aside from a low hanging red bulb. This means they get the winters off, if they want. I think allowing them their natural rhythm prolongs their productive life.

A hen that is not laying regularly is not paying her way. But none of the other critters around here pay their way and if we were going to point fingers at animals that cost more than their fair share, the horses would be the first to go! I have admitted that I keep birds for pleasure and given up any hope that I will break even on this venture. So I allow my old birds to hang around until something (not me) eats them. I have such ongoing predator problems that no bird makes it much past 3 years without being unexpected lunch for some toothed animal.

However, if you are doing this with an eye on the bottom line, you do have to know who is laying, when they've quit, how long they quit before hey come back in cycle, how many fewer eggs they are laying than first time around...ach, too much work for me! Then there is what to do with old layers. Some people advert them in the paper and someone always will take stewing hens. But since I do not know how well the birds will die in someone else's hands, I have never taken this option.
Some people skilled with canners and pressure cookers kill and can the birds. I don't do this.

Keep in mind too if you buy new chicks every year, you have 5 - 6 months of housing and feeding them until they lay eggs. IT comes down to how BIG you want your flock if you do this for profit or just for your own eggs and a few sales to friends and rellies. If you will only tolerate birds that are in peak performance at all times, or if you are comfortable being a retirement home for hens, like many of us are. It's all about finding your chicken keeping philosophy and goals.

Absolutely no; they do not stop laying after two cycles! They go on for years, with fewer, and larger eggs. I've had hens lay for eight years or more. As hens get older, they lay fewer eggs. I have hens that are 7 years old who still lay.

Hens, like people, are individuals, and are highly variable. There is no absolute about how many cycles a hen will lay.

It's pretty well demonstrated that shell colour lightens through a hen's cycle.

My Maran's are only 2, but he second year eggs are almost as dark as the first. The first 3 eggs of the year were the very darkest, but the later in year eggs were only slightly lighter and maybe only by a value of one. My Welsummer eggs haven't really changed colour and didn't seem to change through the year. And some of my Welsummer hens are 3 now....and area still laying VERY well and still have beautiful dark brown spotted eggs. At 3 they are laying every other day very large eggs. The only thing that I have noticed is that as the eggs get bigger, they are a little lighter - the smallest eggs are the darkest - they have less surface area to cover in the paint booth maybe?

I too give my hens a natural winter break - it seems to time in well with the molt, and I figure they have enough to worry about with the winter cold and wet.

winter break? island gal and cynthia:

so, i have a heat lamp in my coops, they go all night long until the weather gets better, then i shut them off. i just took the grower mash out of the house..they were provided access to both layer and grower when it was super cold. what sort of winter break do you mean..both you and cynthia?
i am not getting many eggs from my older gals who are perhaps a 1.5 yrs old, mostly pullet eggs of all colours ()

Schipperkesue wrote:Sorry ladies, you are wrong.  This is a laying cycle!

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sue..you are hilarious i have no idea where you guys find all these great pictures

With marans then, how are you to pick your best and darkest egg layers (for breeding)if as they age the egg is lighter...perhaps this question is best posed to the marans club... or ...?island gal

Ah the age old question, what is the winter break. Generally, after the first year of life, or so, give or take whatever time, chickens will molt. This usually occurs in the fall, it can be summer spring, whatever and very late in the fall when you think that the birds might freeze to death. Stupid time to molt, but many birds actually do this in like November. I have rarely experienced severe molts, like pictures I have seen when birds are almost bald. (but back on the coast I had a white bird, no clue, but laid brown eggs, who lost almost all her feathers and that would be in a period of like 3 days and then grow them back). When the birds molt here, they do it pretty fast, and it is not really overly noticeable, like baldness, but they do lose a whack of feathers. Looks like a pillow fight (I always take a lot of time to clean up those feathers all over the map, cause they look awful, smiling). That is one of the shutdowns. When birds molt, they take a good long time to ever begin laying again, takes alot out of a bird to grow new feathers, and laying eggs is the last thing on their mind. Also during winter, many birds just don't lay eggs, many do still lay. These are the types of shutdowns that are being spoken to here. Does this make sense? I am going to retrieve a picture of my ugly white hen and put it in this thread, just for fun, so watch fro it in a few mintues. Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

Just for giggles, Bigrock, this is Isabelle....my white chicken that layed brown eggs, was a good mamma too.  Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

Isabelle in all her glory looking at the honeybees. This was back on the coast, some years ago.  I know, totally off topic, but hey, ya never know  

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Yes, she surely did have a good time molting

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And these were the sex sal links that loved to molt too, smiling

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Ugly as ugly can be, smiling again

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Oh and just a funny picture of a chicken enjoying a dust bath in a bag of peat that I was spreading.  Nice to see some weather, other than winter, so these pictures I bring   

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So, then you both say that you allow your girls to rest in the winter...but i know that you provide heat lamps when it is cold.
So..how would you "let" them rest...or alternatively not let them rest?

HI bigrock.  A lot of the "letting them rest" in the winter is about not supplying large amounts of artificial light.  A red heat lamp to take the chill off does not add huge amounts of artificial light.   Uno mentions that she does not add artificial light...so that would be  considered "giving the hens a rest", as in nature, when the winter days are short, hens do not lay eggs.  They start in the spring when the days are longer and they are preparing to go broody.

I myself do not give my hens a rest in the winter.  I have dim lighting provided via a timer for 16 hours a day.  This ensures that my hens lay all winter long and I still have eggs for our household and some left over to sell.  The hens lay less eggs but bigger eggs each year, and my goal is to indeed cull the oldest and raise replacement pullets each year.  The percentage will depend on your goals and situation.  For example, I keep any hens that go broody, because I want to promote that in my flock, as in my opinion, heritage chickens should be able to reproduce naturally.   I know...it may sound a little contradictory to be talking about "natural" brooding...when I introduce artificial light all winter long...but that is what works for me in my situation.   

I agree farmerbob.  only natural light or white light will stimulate laying.  the red light does not do this.
you can use white heat lamp bulbs on a timer for 15 hours and use your red bulbs whenever you need heat.
I have used the white  floodlight bulbs but am just using regular 100 watt lightbulbs right now fixed higher up on ceiling.
so unless you ate supplementing natural daylight with white light. then you are already giving your hens a break.

i have kept heritage birds for several years. I give them the 'winter off' which usually means Nov-January, and then start with a little supplemental lighting, slowly increasing, in Feb, like, an extra 2 hrs of light in the morn for a couple weeks, then increase by about an hr/week until they are at 14 hrs daylight. I have found my hens will lay for YEARS, though their first 2 years are by far the best, but the eggs tend to get bigger as the frequency decreases. They need the extra protein and calcium for the eggs, though, don't forget about that. I usually give them extra sunflower seeds to get them going until the natural daylight hours surpass 12 and there are bugs in the yard for them to gobble. But really, it depends on each individual bird!   

i have kept heritage birds for several years. I give them the 'winter off' which usually means Nov-January, and then start with a little supplemental lighting, slowly increasing, in Feb, like, an extra 2 hrs of light in the morn for a couple weeks, then increase by about an hr/week until they are at 14 hrs daylight. I have found my hens will lay for YEARS, though their first 2 years are by far the best, but the eggs tend to get bigger as the frequency decreases. They need the extra protein and calcium for the eggs, though, don't forget about that. I usually give them extra sunflower seeds to get them going until the natural daylight hours surpass 12 and there are bugs in the yard for them to gobble. But really, it depends on each individual bird!   

Farmer Bob wrote: I know...it may sound a little contradictory to be talking about "natural" brooding...when I introduce artificial light all winter long...but that is what works for me in my situation.   

Aren't the majority of birds we keep originally from around the equator? So, a natural day/night cycle would be 12 hours of daylight.

I do as many others do. I let the days get naturally shorter and see the birds through their moult, then supplement with light and 18% feed to help them back into lay. Once days naturally meet the daylight I'm providing I stop.

I never use heat lamps for my birds, other than chicks.

I wonder if there is some confusion between HEAT bulbs and incandescent or halogen or whatever light bulbs. I do not supply one bit of heat to my coops, not one bit, they have to be able to survive without any extra heat of any kind, makes for birds that can tough it out I think. Others might must use HEAT bulbs for whatever their reason, but I don't. The HEAT bulbs put off a lot of heat, red or white light, and are HOT! Bigrock, I still wonder if your coops are too warm, but that is really a never mind, your climate is pretty much identical to mine, you are maybe a bit colder, I am a bit moisture being in the valley and close to the river. Just thoughts here. I got the impression that you were using the heat bulbs ONLY to dry out the coop because it had become too moist. Another subject I guess, back to the laying cycle.

I provide a 40 watt light bulb that is mounted on the wall, about 6 feet in height, it does not shed an awful lot of light, but it does create a very nice ambience. About end of September I turn it on, it is on a time and it goes from 3:00 AM to 6:00 PMish. I will turn it off at the end of February. I do this every year. I really have no clue if it helps to keep birds laying or not. I don't care to find out. period. I just do it, if it does help, good, if it does not help, oh well.

That said. I am not even sure if it really does any good or not. I have 4 Coopers hybrid, lay a beautiful dark brown egg, the birds are blue, they stopped laying about 2 weeks after they started to come into lay at the end of September, and then began laying again (only 2 of them) a few weeks ago. They were too young to be going through a molt, so just were not happy with being moved from one coop to another and displayed that with bad behaviour of not laying "I'll show you" you bad human, smiling....Some of the orpingtons molted, some didn't, age dependent. Some orpingtons layed each day, have always had eggs this winter, not many for about a month, but enough to keep us supplied, the cochins stopped laying. Some cochins a mild molt, some too young to molt, but did not lay one single egg from October to January. Cochins are lazy winter layers. So, what I am trying to say is that even with artificial light, I don't think it has made a merry hoot, nor hollar. and I will never know, cause I don't care, and I am not going to not provide that extra light anyways to ever take a chance. We need winter eggs, I absolutely will not buy store bought eggs. Well, that is my thought anyways. Just could never justify that thing. So, anyways, I don't want to give my girls a winter break. I have healthy flocks, robust, lots of good food, nutrients, care, and I think that if a bird wants to lay they will, if they don't want to, for whatever the reason, oh well, too. I think that the birds are just doin' their things. They know when it is good to lay, and I don't think that artificial light really has anything to do with anything at all. Just my thoughts. If artificial light stimulated laying, then I would suggest that all my birds were laying, and they were not. They are just getting hard back into the swing of things in the past couple of weeks. Who knows. Have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

CynthiaM wrote:  I got the impression that you were using the heat bulbs ONLY to dry out the coop because it had become too moist.  Another subject I guess, back to the laying cycle.

our heat lamps are to prevent our eggs from freezing. it usually maintains a temperature just above freezing....and then when we added a second light, it solved the moisture issue. We are planning on adding many more vents, then hopefully will go down to just one heat lamp next year.

you know i don't know what it is about me lately...i am typing away, and usually i am pretty accurate, and i find, my letters are now backwards, and i am hitting the wrong keys.....lots of extra work editing..

Frozen eggs, fr surely get that....typos, ya, annoying. I wonder how heated nest boxes could be made    have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

i had thought about putting little heated pads in the nesting boxes...but outrageously expensive