Yep, and as soon as that magic hour in February hits, they start again. You can hear the raucous in the barn as soon as it starts. The old ones still lay, but they quit around August, as soon as the days get shorter. I think the big operations are shutting down, which is good, I hate factory farming where it ends up just 3 or four outfits are selling to the supermarket chains. I grew up in Queens, NYC, back in the day, there were farms on Long Island, New jersey, Yonkers and north to Connecticut.They were big farms but not mega producers, like now. No one gets rich farming chickens, so a bad case if avian flu can wipe a farmer out. The big egg producers contract with "farmers", who do care and feed and house the birds, they are given an amount of money to do the caretaking, but the birds do not belong to them. Chickens are very cool animals, they are smart, and there is no restaurant anywhere that can match the taste of a home raised chicken, for meat or eggs.

Yep, and as soon as that magic hour in February hits, they start again. You can hear the raucous in the barn as soon as it starts. The old ones still lay, but they quit around August, as soon as the days get shorter. I think the big operations are shutting down, which is good, I hate factory farming where it ends up just 3 or four outfits are selling to the supermarket chains. I grew up in Queens, NYC, back in the day, there were farms on Long Island, New jersey, Yonkers and north to Connecticut.They were big farms but not mega producers, like now. No one gets rich farming chickens, so a bad case if avian flu can wipe a farmer out.