Extension Notebook: Evaluating your hens for egg laying

I am often asked, “How do I evaluate one of my laying hens that I have to see if she is laying eggs, or not”. Let’s say that you have a small flock of 25 White Leghorn 25 laying hens. The age of the hens are around 7 months. Typically, they would begin laying eggs at around 4 1/2 months of age, or around 18 weeks of age. At 7 months of age, they should be laying at around a 95% production rate. Therefore, you should be collecting around 22-24 eggs per day.

If you are not getting that many eggs each day, then one or more of your hens are not laying very well or not laying any eggs at all. You know that you are feeding the hens a balanced correct laying hen diet, giving then fresh clean water, providing a day length of around 16 hours per day, and exposed to a comfortable temperature. You are certain that they are healthy and have an adequate shelter and a comfortable nest box area to lay eggs. If you are not collecting the number of eggs you think they should be laying at this peak egg production stage, then a closer examination of the hens should be done. The answer is relatively easy to determine which hens or hens are not laying. First, you should look at the hens from a distance and determine which hen(s) have a bright red comb and wattles and which do not. If you notice that one or several hens do not look like this, you need to pick them up and examine them further.

The next thing you would want to do would be to examine the color of their vent, eye ring, ear lobe, beak, shanks and bottom of their feet. A hen that is laying well will show these areas to be bleached to a white color. During the growing period, a pullet will have a yellow color in the above areas, and as she starts into egg production these areas will bleach and turn white. When a hen starts into production, the pigment she receives from her diet will be deposited into the yolk of the eggs she lays and the pigment in the above areas will dissipate and turn white. So, a hen that is laying eggs at a high rate will show the above areas to be white in color.

The next thing you would want to do to determine if the hen or hens in question would be to examine her for abdominal capacity. Abdominal capacity refers to the size of the laying hen’s abdominal area. The larger the abdominal capacity, the better the current level of production. The abdominal spread is a term used to refer to the measurement associated with the width and depth of the abdomen. Abdominal capacity is usually measured by comparing the number of fingers you can get 1) between the pubic bones and 2) between the pubic bones and the tip of the keel. The first number in the spread refers to the width between the pubic bones and the second number refers to the depth of the abdomen. A hen that is laying well will have a large abdominal capacity versus one that has a small abdominal capacity.

The next thing to do would be to determine the abdominal fat condition of the hen in question. A hen uses the energy in the feed she eats to produce eggs. If she is not laying eggs, she does not require as much dietary energy and much of the energy from the feed she eats is deposited as fat. The amount of fat in the abdomen, therefore, is a good indicator of the hen’s level of production. So, if you are concerned that the hen in question is not laying eggs, she will have a fat abdominal area and is referred to as the abdominal fat pad.

The final thing you should look for would be any molting of her primary wing feathers. Molt is the loss of primary feathers that occurs when a hen stops producing eggs. Molt is evaluated by counting the number of primary wing feathers. In a non-molted hen, there are 10 primary feathers that are separated from the secondary feathers by a single, smaller feather known as the axial feather. If there are primary feathers missing, or if new primary feathers are growing in to replace lost feathers, that indicates that the hen is in a molt.

If you know that you are not collecting the number of eggs mentioned earlier, you need to evaluate suspected non-laying hens in your flock. Hopefully, the above guidance will help you determine which hens in your flock are laying at a high rate and which ones are not.

Ken Koelkebeck, Ph.D., is an Extension poultry specialist, Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois