April Hatch: Why Spring Chicks Outperform Fall Chicks
By Bertie Holcombe, Poultry Editor — Published 1 April 2026 · Last reviewed 1 April 2026
The difference between 80 eggs in your first December and 8 eggs in your first December is entirely predictable and almost entirely a function of when your chicks hatched.
A spring chick hatched in late March or April reaches point-of-lay (the technical term for the age when a pullet begins laying eggs) at 18-24 weeks, which lands in August or September. August and September in the northern hemisphere still carry 13-14 hours of daylight. The hen enters production in long days, builds the physiological habit of laying, and accumulates several months of production before the photoperiod drops below 14 hours in November.
An October-hatched chick reaches point-of-lay in February or March — after the winter solstice, when days are beginning to lengthen again. This sounds like a positive: she begins laying as days lengthen, and production should ramp up through spring. In practice, it is a neutral outcome at best. The pullet misses the summer peak, the fall molt pause comes only a few months into her career, and she begins her first winter without the physiological buffer of stored condition from a summer's worth of production.
The compounding effect: a spring-hatched hen produces 60-80 eggs before her first November molt slowdown. An October-hatched hen produces 10-20 eggs before the same November. The difference in first-year production between the two can be 40-60 percent on identical breeds and identical management.
For keepers ordering from hatcheries: order for late March or April delivery in zones 5 and colder. In zones 8 and warmer, the photoperiod constraint is less severe and fall hatches perform adequately. In zone 3 and colder, order for late April — brooding chicks in a Minnesota barn in February requires heating infrastructure most backyard keepers do not want to maintain.