I like eggs and use them year round. That means my chickens need to lay winter eggs even though they normally wouldn’t.
Chickens are what is called a long day bird. This means they naturally lay eggs when the days are growing longer or are long as in spring and summer, then stop in the fall. Since chickens lay eggs to raise chicks, this puts hatching at the best time of the year.
Domestic chickens don’t usually raise their own chicks. Some breeds don’t get broody and try to set. Other breeds are a disaster breaking the eggs they try to set.
Instead, domestic chickens are supposed to have one mission in life: laying eggs. That leaves the tie to daylength a problem for people like me who want winter eggs.
Using Lights
I have two ways to encourage winter production. One is using lights. This developed thanks to my goats.
Over the winter I milked after dark so the barn lights were on until long after the sun had set. Now I milk before dark, but walk out to turn the barn lights out later on. (This is one of the adjustments to getting older.)
Not All Lights Work
When the first energy saver lights came out, I put them up in my barn. Changing light bulbs out there is a nuisance and these were supposed to work for years.
Egg production almost ceased that fall. It didn’t start up again until mid-January with longer days.
I went back to incandescent bulbs and had eggs the next winter.
My next experiment was with Daylight LED bulbs. A friend assured me these do work. They didn’t for me, although I suspect I needed more wattage.
Raising Pullets
My second method is to raise pullets each spring. If the chicks are hatched in April, the pullets should start laying about October into November and continue laying over the winter.
There may be other approaches that work. These two work for me and result in plenty of winter eggs.
