Purdue University Agricultural Extension Service Poultry Science Department Lafayette, Indiana
Mimeo P-67 January 1959
How About Buying Pullets Readv-to-Lay? By J. W. Sicer
Some egg producers would heartily welcome an opportunity of buying pullets ready-to-lay instead of raising them. It may be the wise thing for you to do, but then again. . .
Every poultryman will agree that success with a laying flock is based on a well grown, healthy flock of well bred pullets. But if there is any one phase of the egg production business that is most often neglected or short changed, pullet raising is it.
In my visits with poultrymen,
I find hundreds who do not have adequate facilities for doing a really good job of raising pullets. Many brood chicks and raise pullets in one end of the house where laying birds are kept. Others range pullets out of permanent houses over land that is contaminated from repeated use of the same land year after year.
Still others have good conditions for raising pullets but the press of other farm work on their time is so demanding that the growing pullets are not given the attention that they should have.
And then some people just naturally love to work with laying hens, a lift from their cackling and singing, like to see those egg baskets fill up, but just don't give a hang about taking care of chicks or growing pullets.
If you fit in to any of these
categories, you may be better off if you can find a good source of ready-to-lay pullets. But before you sell your brooder stoves, consider some of the problems you may get in to when you have the other fellow raise your pullets.
Pullet raiser must be specialist...
When you buy pullets, you turn over the basic foundation for the success of your laying flock to someone else. If he does a good job, everything is fine. If he has been careless, or is more interested in trying to make a quick dollar than in doing a skillful job, you may be buying far more trouble than you ever got into raising your own.
If I were going to buy pullets, I would want to buy from some one who makes a specialty of raising pullets to sell. He should be recognized as being able to consistently raise healthy pullets that give a good account of themselves in the nests.
I would want my pullet raiser to have no adult birds on his farm unless he were large enough that he had the two operations well separated. I would insist that he have only birds of one age in the same building and, if he raises pullets the year around, that there be frequent depopulation breaks between broods .
If this pullet raiser is close to home, so much the better, because I would like to be able to drop in occasionally and see how the pullets are coining along and a short haul of the ready-to-lay birds is advantageous.