Are you wondering when your new hens are going to start laying their first eggs?
I'll give you some quick and easy ways to tell if your first eggs are coming soon.
I'm Beth from Garden City Chickens.
A blog and YouTube channel about keeping free ranging chickens in my small garden.
First have a look at their weight, and their mass, and their size.
Are they starting to get close to the mass of the hens in your older flock, if you have
them.
They're going to start looking fuller, and putting on more weight quicker.
Have a look at their wattles and their combs.
Are these getting larger and a dark deep red?
Where before they would have been pale and quite small.
And they're getting more jiggly, when they move their heads around they start wobbling!
Then see if your hens are starting to hang around the nest box.
Are they curious with the nest holes, are they sitting in there, moving the bedding
around.
Maybe sitting in there for a few seconds, walking around, peeking their heads in at
the older hens, if you have any.
That means they're probably getting ready to lay their first eggs.
Are they squatting for you?
Do you know what I mean by that?
When you reach your hand out to touch them and pet their back,
and then they get really low and squat, they put their wings out, they put their head forwards.
That's something they would do for a rooster when they're being mated.
So that means they're mature enough to start laying eggs.
You don't need a rooster to get eggs.
Hens are going to lay hens regularly, they'll just be unfertilised if you don't have a rooster.
And they would be fertilised if you do have a rooster.
And both are okay to eat.
Also are your hens starting to make cackling noises, and calling noises?
So their vocals are starting to sound like a mature adult hen.
And then you're really close when you start finding soft shells eggs that are maybe laid
in a random place, where ever they happened to be when they let it pass.
Like in the morning under the roosting bar you might just find a small pale, soft egg,
that's broken underneath them.
So that's normal, that's natural.
And their first eggs are going to be like that.
So you don't eat those.
But soon you'll check in the nest box and hopefully you'll find your first hard shell
egg in the nest box.
It might be a bit smaller or a bit misshapen, but again, those are still okay to eat.
So give them a little bit of time, and their eggs are going to start getting larger, and
they'll get a regular colour and a regular shape.
And you might be able to tell, if you don't have too many hens, which egg belongs to which
hen.
One might be more speckledy, or a bit darker, or lighter.
So congratulations if you're very close to your first egg, it's very exciting!
Thank you for watching, bye!
I'm going to show you some images of soft shelled eggs that I've got from our new hens
this year.
And our hens are hanging around the nesting box, starting to get comfortable.
And she'll be squatting later, I'll show you what that looks like if not familiar.
And also a hidden nest of eggs in our garden, where our hens started laying a few years
ago.
And we had to disrupt that nest and get them back laying again into their normal lovely
nest box!
So as long as your hens are healthy, and have access to good food, and more then 12 hours
of daylight, they will be laying their eggs regularly on
a cycle.
In the UK, in Wales where I live, we get less than 12 hours of sunlight from end of September
until about mid March.
Our egg production will slow down and stop for a couple months.
In the deepest part of winter, we only get 8 hours of sunlight.
So I don't know how that compares to where you're at, but it can get quite dark.
But then we get very long summer hours which is lovely.
So I hope that helps you give you an idea of when your hens
may be starting to lay!
Thank you for watching!
Bye!