[darkbrowneggs]

Someone on another forum had just bought birds from here
http://www.blakespoultryfarm.co.uk/


They said all the birds were healthy and it was a good place to deal with.  Just thought I would post the info in case anyone in the Launceston area was in need of layers.


For novice poultry keepers, birds which are coming into lay at this time of the year will normally lay on through the dark winter days  for you when everyone else is short of eggs.

[Bodger]

I've seen the pictures of these birds on  the  'other' forum and they look to be extremely good value for money.

[darkbrowneggs]

 

[MikeM]

we got our 1st lot from them. All were cracking the 1st year, but two just upped and died one night (not the same night, it was something like 6 months apart), no idea from what. But I guess at 5 quid a pop, we got a lot of eggs for not a lot of outlay.

[darkbrowneggs]

Most modern hybrid are bred to lay lots and lots of eggs in the first 18 mths of life, and then they often lay themselves out which is why the commercial units clear them all out and start again.


If you are buying "spent" hens at £1 or £2,  then get twice as many as you think you need and the tough ones will survive come back into lay and give a good account of themselves though they may be prone to problems in the "laying department"  and you will lose more as they get older.   

[Clansman]

Most modern hybrid are bred to lay lots and lots of eggs in the first 18 mths of life, and then they often lay themselves out which is why the commercial units clear them all out and start again.

The birds don't lay themselves out as such, they just come to the end of their laying cycle as do other chickens.

These birds if kept will moult and start laying again just the same.

The reason the commercial farms clear them out at the end of the laying period is that its more economical to replace them with new point of lay birds than it is to feed them through the moulting period (getting no eggs) then bring them back in for a second years egg production.

If the birds are kept through this moult the next years production will be at a lower level than year one however the eggs will be larger.

This lower production level combined with the added cost of feeding through the moult can still turn a profit but it will be significantly lower than replacing the birds with a new flock.

It does happen commercially however only rarely.

But yes, if you can get year old hens for a couple of quid each they will soon pay their way.

[darkbrowneggs]

Sorry - I was trying to make it less technical   


What I should have said is that as the calcium demand is so high in these type of layers owing to the number of eggs they produce in their first laying cycle, and the fact that calcium for the shells is drawn from the bones and then needs to be replaced through the diet, that often, after the first year's lay they do not have the physical resources to successfully complete a moult and come back into lay to produce properly shelled eggs (phew that was a long sentence)   When the next laying cycle starts the eggs will be larger than the first years, and this coupled with the thinner shells that these second season birds often produce can lead to a lot of problems with peritonitis etc, so although you can be lucky and get a long lived hybrid one should not expect thsi, and losses in the second and subsequent years are quite usual.


So in a nutshell - they lay themselves out 

[JulieWall]

We only ever had one decent lot of 'used' birds which came from a deep litter system and not battery.
Any other e-commercials we have had either came with horrendous behaviour problems; feather pulling, vent pecking, egg eating etc, or had a high mortality rate. I won't have them now, it's not worth the hassle. When you have to neck egg eaters because they even get a liking for a mustard egg with chilli powder added it's time to admit defeat. One of them stood looking as if it was going to die for three days after eating a whole eggs worth of mustard and chill and once recovered, went straight back to egg eating.
I came to the conclusion that the deep litter birds were probably kept better then the caged birds so when I was offered ex-free range commercials by one of these rehoming charities a few years back I thought, why not, and gave a generous donation. Maybe they weren't free range as claimed, but they were weak and all died fairly quickly.
It does seem a bit hit and miss and makes me wary of what else I might be bringing onto the plot with these birds so I won't touch them now.
There's definitely a case to be made for seeing where they've come from before you buy at any rate.

[twizzel]

We have a friend who is a chicken farmer    and get 'spent' hens from him at £1 a head... they came last January and desperately needed to moult but since then they have laid like machines and thrived. We had 15 from him... Still laying now although obviously slowed down for winter. We'll have some more in Jan next year when he changes his hens over, they are 12mths old when we get them... otherwise I would have had a few of these pol hens...

[Clansman]

Hmmm i'm disagreeing slightly again darkbrowneggs! Its not a hobby of mine honest!

They shouldn't need to use the calcium from their bones, thats just their emergency reserve tank.

As long as the diet is sufficient in calcium and phosphorus then the reserves of calcium stored in the bones shouldn't really be getting consumed.

Which is actually another good argument for using a commercially milled feed when keeping hybrid layers (i missed that one on the other thread!)

their calcium and phosphorus requirements are pretty critical and under or even overfeeding these can cause them problems such as what you described.

[JulieWall]

I used to wonder if ours ate the eggs for the calcium in the shells? The oyster shell grit went untouched - they had a little hopper mounted on the hen house wall, but they were fed on layers pellets full time.

Re-calcium leech from the bones, there is a complex interaction between the hormones and endocrine system which maintains the balance of all sorts of bodily substances. If the brain is getting erroneous messages because of age related malfunctions then there could be a problem. I wonder how much faster these intensive layers age physically compared with a domestic flock?

[darkbrowneggs]

I think generally bird eat their eggs because they realise the shell would not bear being sat on for incubation purposes.  Someone who completed a study on laying behaviour said that after a hen laid an egg she sat for a short while to get over the effort then got up and inspected the egg by giving is a small tap.  (Sometimes you will see evidence of this in a beak hole) then if the egg does not break she goes off


If the shell is so weak that it breaks the natural behaviour should be to eat the egg so as to clean the nest,( and not waste the food value) unfortunately this can develop into a habit, but it normally starts when egg shells are a bit weak at the beginning or end of the laying cycle, or if, as you say there is some imbalance


Apparently the calcium available from the shell of an egg is very slight, but it does contain a lot of protein and vitamins which I would guess would re-set any imbalance.  Years ago I would offer fresh milk if I had a lot of egg eating problems and a very old cure was unlimited eggs or bakers shells which would have had a lot of egg left in them.






I think I must be getting chicken withdrawal symptoms juding by the amount of "chicken" related posts I am making just lately.  Do you think I ought to write a book and get it all out of my system? 

[ellied]

Yes DBE I do think you should write a book while you remember it all and are in that sharing state - ideal job for touring with a camper and laptop too, lots of wee ideas that will come up each day you spend at a different holding you can write down or record in speech files and there may be more than one book there 

Oh and if you want an assistant with the typing up of your notes.. 

[darkbrowneggs]

Thanks Ellied perhaps I shall just do that.  I have got my new laptop now and getting into the feel of the new keyboard 


I am about the last of the generation whose parents assumed the height of ambition any girl should want was to be a secretary before settling down as a housewife so I was packed of the secretarial college where I was goaded into touch typing


They covered all the keys with sticking plaster then we all had to type in time with a 78 rpm recording of the William Tell overture which could be speeded up as your typing improved. 


Being a rebel even then, I just pressed any key in time with the music and confidently zipped the carriage back with its accompanying bell at precisely the right second, but just made sure I removed the gobbledygook I had typed before the dragon of a tutor (Miss Griffin    ) could see over my shoulder


I thought it all a total waste of time, but it is surprising how such odd skills suddenly come in useful

[JulieWall]

Yep, definitely write a book, you've an encyclopaedic knowledge of poultry so why not put it to good use.