What Do You Do While Your Chickens Molt?

Our hens are molting so the egg production is down even more than usual. What do you do while your chickens molt? I hate to buy eggs from the grocery store. No only are our fresh eggs better but the eggs from the grocery store have become very expensive. A dozen extra large eggs were priced well over two dollars a dozen.

Just wondering if you do with out eggs or buy them from a store.

You could buy them from some one local. Localharvest.org has a list. Mine have just quite laying. They are getting older and my younger ones are not the right age to lay yet. I buy them from the store to cook in stuff and from someone down the road for eating for breakfast and such.

We have also fed them meat (freezerburned) to help them get over molting faster. It seems to help if I up thier protein. Cooked Beans and such work too.

I have stopped giving away most of my extra eggs when I have them. I break my extras into baggies, squish the bag to mix the white & yolk together and pop them into the freezer for molting time. I'd rather have my own frozen eggs than store bought ones. Only thing you can't do is make hard boiled eggs from them. I crack only 2 or 3 eggs into each baggie and label the bags, most recipes call for 2 or 3 eggs and I wash and reuse the baggies several times. I usually thaw them in the refrigerator overnight in a covered dish. I pop the frozen eggs out of the baggies before refrigerating to make it easier to get all the eggs out of the bag.

Thanks for the ideas. Amy I will check to see if there are any locals who sell eggs.

We aren't getting many eggs. I don't know about our hens. We have nine older ones and we only get a two up to four eggs a day. We have different breeds so we can tell that different hens are/were laying but they take turns. Can't get them all to lay every day. LOL

Amy I checked out the link you mentioned but couldn't find anyone within 25 miles of us. Maybe that can be me if and when we get our hens laying. LOL

Definitely try increasing thier protein to see if they won't resume laying at a better pace. When mine weren't getting enough I mixed part layer mash and started feed because it had more protein in it.

Thank you Patrice. I will tell William when he picks up feed again to get some layer (which we already feed them) and some starter to mixed with the layer. I will let you know when I have eggs running out my ears. LOL If all the hens started laying at one time we would have an over abundance of eggs. We have over 30 hens. Some aren't old enough to start laying yet.

Thanks again.

We are getting about a dozen eggs a day now. Our younger hens have started laying. William did try the layer/starter mix but he said it was too expensive. So he went back to layer/corn chops. We still aren't getting as many as we should but at least we aren't having to buy store eggs.

While you're getting extra eggs, try to freeze the excess so when they go into molt you'll still have some. Ours lay year round, without much of a slow down. What breeds do you have? I think there are some that are more prone to slowing down during molt or winter.

Sonshine, we have Auracanas and Buttercups. The Buttercups are almost three years old. We're probably going to get some different ones to replace them.

Did I read that you have Buff Orphs? I've had one Buff Orph but I don't remember how well she laid. It's been several years since we bought her and she became dinner for a dog or dogs.

We started out with Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons. The buffs layed well up until we butchered them at 3 yrs old, so when we replaced them we got all buffs. Our new flock, less than a year old, have already hatched out two baby chicks and we have two hens that are setting now, so we'll probably have a few more in another week or two. The Buffs lay year round. We never noticed a slow down during molt, just a little bit of a slow down during the winter and I'm talking very little.