How to Easily Cull Your Chickens (by Joshua Duvauchelle)

Index: poultryOne.com / Chicken Articles / General Chicken Articles / Culling Your Chicken Flock /

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Rich, on our online poultry community, recently asked "what is culling I read about?"

In a nutshell, poultryOne member RonL replied, "Culling is another word for "harvesting" or "weeding out", "getting rid of the inferior, unwanted, or over-populated"".

As you raise your chickens, you will notice differences among them. You will notice that some hens don't lay as much as others, or don't even lay at all! Or, if you're raising meat birds, some won't grow nearly as fast as their coop companions. When you feed hens that aren't producing a single egg, or meat chickens that aren't growing, you find yourself paying a lot for nothing. Here's a few other reasons why you should "cull" (definition: culling is the process of removing inferior, sick, or injured chickens from the flock whenever you spot them)...

More info on how to cull chickens below this ad:

1. Culling removes the risk of your other chickens catching a disease from the sick or injured one.
2. It increases food and water space for the productive chickens.
3. Culling increases the flock's overall egg-per-hen ratio or growth rate.
4. Finally, culling inferior chickens increases the living space for the producing chickens.

Community contributor Dave-n-Julie shared this story:

We culled roosters on Saturday. Out of our straight run of Buff Orpingtons, we had around 12 roosters. We chose to wait until they were big enough to count as "Cornish Game Hens." We kept 2 roosters from the group and the White Leghorn rooster that roped us into the chicken raising project in the first place. "Fly Boy" has a Presidential Pardon Things in the coop are much calmer now that there aren't so many boys fighting to rule the roost. We may yet cull one more rooster, it depends on their impact on the quality of life around here. Dave

Things to look for in a non-producing hen when culling your chicken flock:

  Feathers. The feathers of a laying hen should be dirty, worn, and ragged looking, since they are concentrating their energy on producing eggs and not on preening and replacing their dirty feathers.
  Combs and wattles. A non-producing hen will have scaly, pale, and shriveled combs and wattles, while a good layer will have waxy, full, bright red ones.
  Pubic bones. Pubic bones should be flexible and you should be able to fit two or three fingers between them. A non-layer will have tight pubic bones that are quite rigid.
  Vent. Pull back the hen's tail feathers and inspect the vent. It should be large, oval, and moist if she's laying well. A non-layer's vent will be dry, tight, and round.
  Carriage. A good layer will be alert to her surroundings and not be listless and lazy. Her eyes should be bright and she should be relatively active (such as scratching in the litter, running around with her companions, etc.).
  Skin. Depending on when you check, a hen's skin should be bleached, while non-layers will have dark-pigmented skin.

   Of all the indicators of good and non-layers, the pubic bones and the vent are the most reliable. Other indicators are the rate of molting and the bleaching sequence, but this is supposed to be a "Quick Tip" with the emphasis on "quick". Perhaps I will go into further detail in a future article.