Poultry Keepers Podcast

Where Are My Eggs?-Part 1

• Rip Stalvey, John Gunterman, and Mandelyn Royal • Season 2 • Episode 74

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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, Mandelyn, John, and Rip discuss various factors that affect egg production in hens. 

They explore the role of breed, daylight hours, weather stress, and artificial lighting in influencing the number of eggs laid. The hosts provide insights into managing and optimizing egg production, including the impact of early sexual maturity on lifespan egg yield and bird health. 

They also touch upon the importance of selecting the right breeds based on egg-laying goals and delve into specific considerations for both production-focused and dual-purpose breeds.

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Alex:

Welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In this episode Mandelyn, John, and Rip will help you understand why you don't always get the number of eggs you were expecting from your flock. So, lets get started.

Rip Stalvey:

Today, we're going to be shedding light on Where are my eggs? So stay tuned and we'll explain it all coming right up. So Mandelyn, let's start off. First year layers commonly lay through their first winter, depending on their breed and productivity. What's your thoughts on that?

Mandelyn Royal:

It does boil down to what they were bred to withstand and to be productive through things such as reduced daylight hours. So as soon as we start losing those summertime hours and we get into those winter light phases, a seasonal laying bird is gonna stop laying. That's her body's response to the light saying, it's winter, you're not hatching babies, that means you're not laying. So if you look at all of our wild species out there, they're gonna start laying when those daylight hours start picking up. That's when you hear the bird song and the mating dances and everything, so that by April, or so, depending on your zone. Those birds have already built a nest and they're already starting to lay. But for chickens, we want to see eggs year round. And so that's where we go into our production breeding, and parts of that are going to be light driven. Definitely.

Johon Gunterman:

And also for hatching, a lot of people like to do hatching in the fall for spring replacements, and especially for spring point of lay pullet sales. To have an 18 week old Pullet, ready for sale, 1st of April. You're perfectly positioned in the market around here. And to do that, we need to backtrack. So that means, we're setting and hatching in late fall, early winter to hit that date, which is not when our chickens are naturally going to be cooperating with that process without a little extra incentives.

Rip Stalvey:

Exactly right. In show poultry We try to time hatches to meet certain particular shows we want to go to for that year. And that means, when's the show date? We gotta backtrack however many months it takes a female to get mature. And that's when we need to hatch. And that, that can give us some pretty weird hatching dates sometimes. And there's really no way to overcome it without artificial lighting. And that's a big key what we're going to be talking about tonight.

Johon Gunterman:

That's right.

Rip Stalvey:

Or today, sometime. What about, and y'all probably have to deal with this more than I do. What about weather stress? Cold weather, severe storms. Can that cause a pause in egg production?

Johon Gunterman:

Oh, days or weeks.

Mandelyn Royal:

Man, yeah.

Johon Gunterman:

Yeah. John, what happens when you get a

Mandelyn Royal:

big blizzard? Do they turn off for a moment?

Johon Gunterman:

They'll go, I say, go dry for a couple of days at a time. They seem to know like my arthritic knee and now ankle knows a day or two in advance, and they'll start to not lay. That's, it's pretty interesting. I think they're very sensitive to barometric pressure changes Us older folks are

Rip Stalvey:

no comment on the older folks. Okay.

Johon Gunterman:

It's if I go out and there's no eggs or there's just one or two, I've got two rock stars. They just lay no matter what. And those are the chickens that I'm going to be collecting from to set for replacements. The other ones are breakfast eggs. Correct. But that's a good harbinger of weather. There's a lot of old folklore. Surrounding this, or we call it indigenous knowledge, or fairy tales, whatever you want to call it but there's a lot of truth to these things animals, cows will dry up, chickens will stop laying, harbingers of misfortune or bad weather.

Mandelyn Royal:

Anytime I go out to my barn, if I don't see any eggs, my mind immediately goes to what happened.

Johon Gunterman:

It's either a predator at three o'clock at night, sniffing around.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yup. There's, they're so sensitive to so many different things. And if you don't have them on camera, you can find yourself going through little rabbit holes, trying to figure out why you didn't see as many eggs as what you were anticipating. And if it only lasts a day or three, okay, fine. If it starts dragging into multiple weeks, that's where. I'm really trying to dig in and find out what happened. Where did my eggs go?

Johon Gunterman:

Yeah, it can be something as simple as a mouse is finding its way in and, upsetting the chickens in the middle of the night. If they don't feel it's safe to lay, they're not going to.

Rip Stalvey:

I don't think a lot of folks realize just how little it takes to stress our chickens. They're a lot more sensitive than so many folks realize. It doesn't take much to throw them off their laying game. Now, before we went, before we started recording this, I was talking with you guys about the weather differences. And, Mandelyn's got snow, John's not quite got snow, but it's coming. And I'm sitting down here in sunny Florida. It was 45 degrees this morning, so I don't have quite the weather impacts that you guys do, but I have the other impacts, the predators, bad weather, whatever, but just not the cold weather, so I'm much more fortunate than you guys are.

Johon Gunterman:

Luckily, the primary driving factor is day length, hours. So as long as we have the right number of hours in the right spectrum of light, everything's fine, and we can very easily control or manipulate that to our heart's content we've, talked about that plenty in the past, I think, it's now it's time to really dig down in there and fine tune it.

Rip Stalvey:

Mandelyn, when you start adding supplemental light onto your birds, what do you shoot for? How many hours? What do you think it takes for your flock?

Mandelyn Royal:

In between 14 and 16 hours, going past 16 hours is way too much. Dipping under 14 hours, it varies. So within that two hour window and when we start really losing daylight, I start backing it up closer to 14 rather than the 16 because I want them to have a natural bedtime and have the lights come on in the morning because that's just another instance of when stress can be caused and you won't get any eggs. If those lights are doing an automatic on automatic off with no dim, it'll shock the birds just in that little action. They're really more sensitive to a lot of different factors than I think people want to give them credit for.

Johon Gunterman:

Especially plunging them into darkness in the evening. That's Yeah, when they're in the middle of eating. That's not cool at all. Yeah.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because their night vision the natural sunset

Johon Gunterman:

is really important, and that kind of signals them to finish up their eating and get on the roost before the sun goes down. And if your lights just plunge them into total darkness out in the yard at 545 in the evening, it can cause them to panic, and they could pile, they could stress, they Chickens sometimes aren't so smart. They could just like freak out and freeze up out there and need extra motivation, which requires you to put on your snowshoes and galoshes and motivate them back into the coop.

Rip Stalvey:

John, I think you've probably done more research into this than us, other folks here, but what about light spectrum? What matters there?

Johon Gunterman:

There's a couple of different spectrums of light. that trigger different things in the chicken. The easiest thing to remember is if you just get, and it doesn't need to be strong a full spectrum light, and I would actually, so what I've used with great success are very low power it's about, it's a 110 watt equivalent, it's equivalent to the old T5 fluorescent tubes I used to use these bulbs for micro green production, so it's a very, it's like a 5 watt LED strip light. But it's full spectrum for greenhouse use, which the plants need, and the chickens just love it, and there is inherently no flicker, and that is more important than anything else, when it comes to lighting, I believe, is that there's no flicker in your light source, cause that will absolutely drive your birds insane.

Rip Stalvey:

It will, make them nuts.

Mandelyn Royal:

It's like making them live in a strobe light, to their vision, like you might, you won't see it with your naked eye, chances are. But they'll see it as if it's a sterbilite.

Johon Gunterman:

Huh. And if you lived your life in a constant rage party, I could see where it could cause some disturbances. Our job as poultry keepers is to give our chickens the best life possible. Every day of it, and then one bad day at the end. So I try to keep everything as chill as possible I keep my lights right now I'm looking for those hens that are just still productive at a 14 hour threshold. So when the fall comes, I do dial my lights back to 14 hours. So they are popping on at about 3 o'clock in the morning right now. But really just 3 of my hens are laying and it's exactly the 3 hens that I want. Those are the ones that are going to continue to lay at the lower day length. And that's what I'm selecting for and have been selecting for.

Rip Stalvey:

John, you were talking about flicker rate and one easy way to check this, just take your cell phone and shoot a video on slow motion and then play it back. You can actually see the flicker. And those bulbs,

Johon Gunterman:

And not just your primary lighting source. I have a bunch of low voltage Hardy string lights that are all weather and they're outdoors on my porch. And I ran some around inside the Garage in the barn just as a kind of low light source And I when I was recording the my lights to see if they were good and they were I Happened to notice in that video that the party lights were strobing and I went oh That's not good. And I went over and I flicked them off and it was interesting because it was almost instantaneous soon as I flicked off those lights. This is back when I had quail last month. They just seem to calm down. Quail are wonderful. Meters of things. They're very, yeah. What's the word I'm looking for?

Mandelyn Royal:

Sensitive.

Johon Gunterman:

Sensitive. They respond very well. And you guys saw the video difference between a red light and a blue light in the quail brooder.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Johon Gunterman:

Same thing going on. Super sensitive, so now those lights are just out. They have no business in my barn anymore. It's not a place to, for ambient party mood. It's business.

Rip Stalvey:

We talked on it, just a little bit touched on it there, but it doesn't take much light. No. The recommendation is roughly a 60 watt bulb for every 200 square feet of space you're trying to light your chickens. Yeah, that's not a whole bunch of light. And. The color of the light, that obviously plays a role white lights can be the most stressful, so if you're going to use a white light, I would go for a warm white. That's not quite as bad as a bright white. Down in the cooler spectrum. Yes. Red lights it has a very calming effect and it helps prevent feather picking. Mostly we see red lights being used in brooders for baby chicks because that's, that has that calming effect and it has that sort of a deterrent to feather picking. But, surprisingly, blue light, blue colored light helps promote body development. Yes. And they have seen Studies where birds have responded when they were chicks raised on blue lights and those birds that were under blue lights were significantly larger than the birds that had been under reds or whites.

Johon Gunterman:

Jeff had told us a story years ago now, and I've seen it in practice a few times and I went, ah, yeah, I remember when Jeff told us about that. So around here, a lot of people have clear span structures and they alternate their panels. with different colors. Cause it doesn't cost any extra when you're ordering it. And it's about a 85 percent light transmission cloth. But when they're alternating panels of white and blue or white and green, the Chickens will naturally congregate under the blue or green panels and avoid being directly underneath the panels of the filtered light coming through the roofs. That's where they want to be. Yeah, they choose to be there.

Rip Stalvey:

I can't help but wonder, John and Mandelyn, I want to get your thoughts, but do you suspect that there might be an advantage to using red light and blue lights for birds?

Johon Gunterman:

As long as you're full spectrum, I don't think you need to have a dedicated red light and a dedicated blue light.

Mandelyn Royal:

It sounds like you could almost put them on separate ends and figure out which ones the birds like better.

Rip Stalvey:

Good point.

Mandelyn Royal:

I

Rip Stalvey:

mean, for science, for sure. I just want to say that'd be a good little experiment.

Mandelyn Royal:

Put food and water on both sides under both colors and see what their preference is.

Johon Gunterman:

Or if we really want to get fancy, in the horticultural world, there's something called an Emerson effect that we chase, which is a gradual phasing in the morning from blue into the yellow spectrum, and then into the white, and then in the evening gradually phasing into the ultra white spectrum. Or the deeper red spectrums.

Mandelyn Royal:

Would that have anything to do with mimicking what the sun does naturally?

Johon Gunterman:

That's precisely what we're doing in the horticultural world. Yeah, it's called the Emerson effect. And a lot of plants actually trigger off of that. Because there's things like the Krebs cycle there's photosynthetic plants. Dependent cycles and there's non photosynthetic dependent cycles, but we're getting off track. Do

Rip Stalvey:

you know why they call it the Emerson effect? When they're raising baby chicks, they go through and they say, Emerson, nice chicks. Sorry, folks. It's beautiful. And

Mandelyn Royal:

with me being up here in Ohio, that's why I've not heard that.

Rip Stalvey:

I

Mandelyn Royal:

have to go see my family in Tennessee before I hear stuff like that.

Rip Stalvey:

You're deprived. What about. The number of eggs a hen will lay, a lot of folks don't realize that pullets are born with all the microscopic eggs that they will lay in their lifetime. What about

Johon Gunterman:

So do chickens on the equator run out of eggs? Before chickens appear on the 45th parallel, because

Rip Stalvey:

I don't know. Good. Very well be.

Mandelyn Royal:

Or are they more seasonal layers like junglefowl are? Cause if they're a seasonal layer and they're really active for six months or less out of a year, those are the birds that are going to lay much longer into their life versus highly productive bred birds. Like when you look up a leghorn, what is it annually for that first year? 53,

Rip Stalvey:

320 to 350.

Mandelyn Royal:

That's almost an egg a day for an entire full four season year. And that's definitely productive and not just a seasonal layer. Like I know from my heritage turkeys, they're going to be a seasonal layer. And at most I'm looking for 90 eggs out of a whole calendar year because they're going to do it seasonally. All the other chicken types, they're going to fall within that either being productive bred or being a little more seasonal based with some flex. Like an average dual purpose kind of bird, they might only do 175, 220. They're not probably going to push it fast past 250 eggs a year. And how they're grown even will impact how many eggs you could expect from them. And when they do have those layer at egg output numbers, it's going to be more based in the spring and you might be hard pressed to get eggs from them in October.

Johon Gunterman:

And that's how it's easier for me to collect from those, the hens that I want to breed from, they're, they were my five to six egg a week hens, and now they've dropped back to three or four a week, but they're the only ones still laying.

Mandelyn Royal:

Yeah, that's definitely what you want to hatch from if you want to have that year round kind of production.

Johon Gunterman:

Yeah, and if we're looking at it's November 22nd, I need chicks available, point of lay pullets at 18 weeks on the 1st of April. Time to start thinking about these things and getting that nutrition.

Rip Stalvey:

One thing I wanted to talk about here, and this is a good spot to bring it up, is early laying, early sexual maturity. I know a lot of folks try to push as much early sexual maturity as they possibly can out of their birds.

Johon Gunterman:

I deliberately try to delay it.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Johon Gunterman:

The nice thing about winter hatching is if I could get them on the ground, On a regulated light cycle, then I can put them on a natural light transition. So just as they're coming into their production age, the natural light cycle is triggering that for light stimulation. And I'm perfectly fine keeping them in the dark for a week or two longer for better maturation, better carcass and frame development.

Rip Stalvey:

Yes.

Johon Gunterman:

I've got big hands, so processing birds, I need those pin bones as widely spaced as possible. I'm starting to think selfishly now. But for my own ease and use, that's becoming more and more important. And of course, it's beneficial for the hens. Mandy is always talking about that pin bone spacing for production.

Mandelyn Royal:

You only have to have those bones dig into your wrist a couple of times before you start figuring out why and how to fix it. Now I can get my hands so far up into a cockerel, I can scoop the lungs by hand.

Johon Gunterman:

Yeah, and those nitrile gloves are expensive. I calculated them out, they're four and a half cents a piece, even when I buy them by the case.

Mandelyn Royal:

And you don't want to go through a pair of bird.

Rip Stalvey:

Nope. Part of the problem with this early sexual maturity, early laying, Is that once a pullet starts laying, she's pretty much going to stop growing because she's channeling all those nutrients and energy into producing eggs and not to producing body mass. You also only get smaller egg size from those early maturing females, and it will take them longer to get up to a hatchable size. And sometimes they don't, I just started saying sometimes they don't do that. You have an increased danger of prolapse in those early laying birds. That's where the egg gets hung up in the cloaca and the birds keep pushing and pushing trying to get the egg out and they actually have part of the cloaca hanging outside of their body. And once that happens it's never a good thing. Sometimes you can treat it, but sometimes it just doesn't work. And those early laying birds, they found that Lifetime egg production can be reduced with commercial flocks. They don't worry about it because they bring birds in, they let them lay for a year, and then they're out the door to the processing plant and they bring another bunch of birds in. But for us, longevity is important. Long laying times are important. Something to think about it's, and I get really frustrated on some groups because it's like they seem to have a competition. My bird started laying at five months. Oh mine started laying at four months and I'm sitting there pulling what little hair I've got. Ooh, I got my first egg at

Mandelyn Royal:

12 weeks. I'm like, Oh no, that's not good. That's not something to brag about.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. I'm going to get down off my high horse now.

Johon Gunterman:

Oh, heck no. Enough said. This is so important because you're. Literally selecting and breeding for in the wrong direction. And with what we know about epigenetic development, you keep doing this for a generation or two, and you are severely locking yourself in. And you might as well start raising bantams eventually.

Mandelyn Royal:

Because my breed can be prone to that early. maturing, if they start laying before 18 weeks, I already know they're a cull. I already know I don't need that bird anywhere near a breeding pen. 18 weeks is the absolute soonest. And it depends on her weight and her bone spacing on if she gets to continue doing that or not, because if they get started early, okay. but do they check out on everything else? Because depending on their development, it might be early for what they're built for, and some of them did need another month to grow and finish up, so it's a lot to look at if they get started before 24 weeks. You need to make sure everything else checks out with them.

Johon Gunterman:

Mandelyn,

Rip Stalvey:

what about selecting breeds for Your egg laying goals for your flock. What's your thoughts on that?

Mandelyn Royal:

It really depends on what you're trying to do with them. And if you're trying to have a little side hustle for selling breakfast eggs, then you're going to want to have predictable production. And that means you're going to want those leghorns and other high producing birds, or even sex links that have that built in. Gender identification at hatch and the higher production levels. If you need it to be a business model, then you want to skip the slower producing birds because you won't be able to predict your eggs. Now, if you want just your own basket and you're okay, whether you get three or 10 eggs a day, then you can start looking at other attributes in the breeds that you want to have. But you have to make that choice between production and I'm not that worried about it.

Rip Stalvey:

I lost my train of thought here. Imagine that. What about dual purpose breeds? Give us your honest evaluation on dual purpose breeds as egg layers. I got my thoughts, but I want to know what y'all's are.

Mandelyn Royal:

They better

Johon Gunterman:

perform. Otherwise they're out of here. They

Mandelyn Royal:

have to perform. Yeah. I think it's easier to squeeze an egg out rather than a meaty carcass. The meaty carcass seems to be more elusive and trickier to get in there because of how much breeding work was done towards those eggs, especially over the last 60, 70 years, everything's more reliable at laying than doing the meat part. So I preserve the rate of lay. They don't, they. What I'm fooling with didn't need much work on the egg laying part, so I was able to focus more on the meat and just making sure the eggs stayed exactly how they were coming.

Rip Stalvey:

How many, on average, how many eggs do you get from a female, Mandelyn?

Mandelyn Royal:

I need them to do a minimum of five a week, but six is better.

Rip Stalvey:

John, what about you? What are you shooting for? Five a

Johon Gunterman:

week, six would be better. Last year I had a hen, she laid non stop. Never took a pause. So I set every one of her eggs I could get. She was also my rogue hen, so I set every one of her eggs I could find.

Rip Stalvey:

Makes a difference.

Mandelyn Royal:

And I've had a couple of dual purpose breeds before Brahma's come to mind, where I didn't get a first egg until they were eight, nine months old, and after they were in active lay, it was only three eggs a week. And then once they saw a grouping of three eggs, boom, now they're broody.

Alex:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast. We hope you found it helpful. Be sure to join us next Tuesday for another podcast episode.

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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