It’s not tough to figure out when your chickens will start laying eggs. Chicks gotten in the spring usually start to lay eggs in the fall. It takes a few months and chicken owners come to expect this.
But what if you got a chick in the middle of the winter (like Charlie)? Thankfully there is an almost fool-proof way of figuring out when your chickens will start laying.
Their wattle and combs start turning from a pale pink bubblegum color to a vibrant red. This is a picture I took of Charlie yesterday (right after I took the photo of her toes), notice all that red. That just wasn’t there a few weeks ago. (She was born in January.)
It’s a sign that soon we will have a chocolate colored egg (and you better believe a photo will be going up of that one!)
Now here’s the next question. When will my chickens stop laying?
It’s the reverse. When chickens stop laying, their wattles and combs start fading back to the bubblegum pink. Youth, along with color, has been spent – it’s time to pass the gauntlet to the youngsters of the flock while the older hens take to the back porch, drink some cooled white wine and compare stories with each other about the good old days.
