Duds Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 Planning on building a laying pen at the end of the season for 25/30 birds it's going to be on a unused part of a paddock next to woodland. What would be the best size What would be best to put in pen as in cover If all goes to plan how any eggs could I expect Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoot and be safe Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 We did this at the end of last season. The pen was 20'×20' with a pallet sat on a few logs as cover. We also put some top hamper in to give a bit more cover. The birds looked happy with this and laid under the pallet We got our first eggs in early April and collected over 800 from 12 hens and 3 cocks. We returned over 80% hatch from the fertile eggs (1 hen was throwing out infertile eggs), collecting 11 eggs a day on average. The last of our home grown poults went to wood 2 weeks ago and are looking great. Good luck if you go for it and remember the rearing takes up a lot of your time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmerkev09 Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 800 eggs off 12 hen what you feeding them on great return we have 7 laying pens best return we had was a few year ago with a average of 48 per bird Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul223 Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 It was 13 hens, layers pellets, thats about 60 eggs a piece and the last batch of eggs were not that good Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shoot and be safe Posted September 7, 2014 Report Share Posted September 7, 2014 As Paul says we had 13 hens at the end. We caught a extra hen half way through. We never had a full 13 eggs a day, some days we would only get 8 eggs and the next we would get 12. One day we did manage 15 but the previous days eggs were collected earlier in the day and the next days were collected late in the day. On average we were collecting 11 eggs a day for 11 weeks. One of the hens went a bit broody in the last 2 weeks and was sitting on the laid eggs for a few hours till I collected them when I came home from work. I tried her on a nest of eggs but she wouldn't sit on them all day so nothing happened with them eggs and she was released. The feed in the early stages was just the left over wheat from the shoot and when they started laying then the pellets were introduced. The hole process was very interesting and I enjoyed doing it, except the night when we had a turkey egg explode in the incubator(a very late night after cleaning everything including all the eggs(pheasant, duck, turkey and chicken)). I had lots of help when required with the rearing and Paul checked on the young chicks during the day when I was at work. I don't know it is was cost effective as Paul bought all the feed and medications that we required. But if you were to want a wage for doing it then it would not be. I have just looked at the records and we put 785 in the incubator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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