We need a steady supply of eggs from our backyard coop. Doing it successfully takes planning and requires tough decisions.

 

Each spring we buy five or six baby female chicks from a nearby farm store. The tiny birds had been hatched just a few days earlier at Hoover’s Hatchery and quickly delivered to the store. Soon our tiny peepers are happily housed in our brooder.

 

Why six new chicks?

 

We like to have about 12 laying chickens to lay enough eggs for us, and we like to give many to friends and neighbors. To keep the flock fresh, we replace about half of our adult chickens when they are about 18 months old, although in some years we stretch it and replace half the flock when they are about 30 months old.

 

Young pullets start laying when they are about five months old. They’ll lay plenty of eggs for the next 12 to 15 months. Then they’ll take a break, shed their old feathers and grow a new wardrobe. By mid to late fall they’ll start laying again, but not quite as many eggs as in their first lay cycle.

 

By the time hens are two to three years old their egg production starts dropping and they never lay while molting and growing new feathers. That means fewer eggs in the fall and early winter when we want plenty for fresh eating and baking.

So, we keep our flock fresh. Every spring we buy new replacement chicks that will start laying about when our older birds begin molting and their laying slows. It keeps plenty of eggs coming into our house, but creates a problem.

 

Our coop is big enough for about a dozen hens. Town ordinances often allow residents to keep only six hens. Adding new layers into an existing flock either makes the coop too crowded or violates the ordnance. What do you do?

 

We refresh our flock by rehoming about half of our older hens each fall, just before we add our new birds into the flock. Previous blogs and films detail how we do this, but to make it simple we post an ad on Craigs List and Facebook Marketplace offering older layers for a tiny price. Buyers seem to appear immediately and take our old birds to add to their flock.

 

It’s sad. Every year we need to say goodbye to some of our faithful layers, but we try to make sure they go to the coop of another person who will enjoy and appreciate them.

 

Soon after the older hens leave our new pullets begin laying, so we have plenty of fall and winter eggs.