Assess the laying performance of the chickens

instagram viewer

As a chicken farmer, if you are wondering whether your hens are optimally cared for and healthy, you can closely monitor and control the herd. If you cannot find any abnormalities, the laying performance of the animals can provide information about their condition. But this is also a valuable tool for checking the success of breeding or determining the breeding value of individual animals. The laying performance also indicates the number of eggs to be expected in hens of a breed. Determining the laying performance is not that difficult.

To determine the laying performance, the eggs laid must be counted daily.
To determine the laying performance, the eggs laid must be counted daily.

What you need:

  • Table form on paper or Excel on the PC
  • possibly. a calculator

Important facts about laying performance

  • Since a chicken egg takes about 24 hours to develop in a chicken, a chicken can lay at most one egg per day. The highest possible laying output is therefore 1.
  • The laying performance of chickens indicates the number of eggs laid per chicken per day. Since chickens do not lay eggs all year round, the output is always a fraction of 1, which is on average a little less than one egg per day.
  • The German laying hen farms currently achieve a laying performance of around 0.8. Thanks to successful breeding and better management in the farms, this number has risen continuously over the last few decades.

How to determine the performance of your chickens

  1. From the time the young hens start to lay, the eggs are collected and counted daily.
  2. The data are noted in an Excel table or in writing on paper. Now the performance per hen and day can be determined. To do this, do the following: the number of eggs laid divided by the number of chickens. You can enter the result for each day in the last column of your table.
    3. Buy laying hens

    More and more people want to buy laying hens and keep them in the garden to make their own organic eggs.

  3. As soon as the hens have been in action for 365 days, a balance can be calculated for the entire year. To do this, all individual results are added up and divided by 365. That is the average laying performance per year. Attention: Days on which the chickens do not lay, for example because they are moulting, are also considered laying days in the balance sheet.
  4. If you want to calculate the laying performance in percent, it works like this: Laying performance in% = eggs laid / number of hens x 100.

Success control and annual balance for laying hen farmers

The laying performance is meaningful for monitoring success when changing feeding or the like over the course of days. Looking at the year, the laying output can be used to display the total output of the herd. Differences between individual cross breeds and races or the effectiveness of a new feed can also be mapped in this way.

How helpful do you find this article?

click fraud protection