The pullet year
A pullet is a female chicken under a year old — the word is used from the day a chick is sexed as female right through to her first season of laying. The pullet year has distinct chapters: the brooder weeks under heat, the awkward grower stage when feathers replace fluff, and then the approach to laying, signalled by a reddening, enlarging comb, squatting behaviour when you reach toward her, and growing interest in the nest boxes. Most pullets start laying somewhere in their first five to seven months, depending on breed and the season's light, though heavy breeds take longer. Until that first egg, however hen-like she looks, she is still a pullet.
Point of lay and becoming a hen
'Point of lay' is the stage sellers describe when a pullet is within a few weeks of her first egg — comb bright, and the pelvic bones you can feel beneath her vent beginning to spread to pass an egg. Once she is laying regularly she is called a hen, and by convention the label settles for good at a year old. A hen is a known quantity in a way a pullet is not: her laying rate, egg size, temperament, and broodiness are all on display. Hens also settle into a flock hierarchy and a daily rhythm that pullets, still growing and lower in the order, have yet to establish.
Feeding splits by stage
Getting the feed wrong is the classic pullet mistake. Growing birds eat chick starter, then a grower ration, formulated for building frame and feather. Layer feed contains the extra calcium a shell-making hen needs every day — but fed to a pullet weeks before she lays, that calcium can damage her kidneys, because her body has no shell production to use it on. So the switch to layer feed waits until the first eggs appear, with a dish of oyster shell on the side for any hen who needs a top-up. A mixed-age flock is usually fed grower feed for everyone, with oyster shell free-choice, until the youngest birds come into lay.
Buying: the chick, pullet, and hen trade-off
Chicks are cheapest and let you raise birds tame to your own routine, but you feed them for months before the first egg, and a proportion of supposedly sexed chicks still turn out to be cockerels. Point-of-lay pullets cost more per bird yet start paying you back within weeks and skip the brooder entirely — the usual choice for a new backyard keeper. Rescued ex-commercial hens are cheapest of all and appeal to rescue-minded keepers; they arrive with laying life partly used but often settle into devoted, characterful layers. Whichever you buy, age and laying status are the two facts that set fair value.
Keep the record with the bird
Because a pullet's whole value story is timing — how old she is, whether she is laying yet, and how well she lays — her details matter more than they look. Note her hatch timing and first-egg date when you can, and if she is sold or rehomed, pass them on in writing rather than as a guess at the gate. Through KinsLe, a hen's Transferrable Profiles record holds exactly that history and travels with her to the next keeper, who then knows whether they are buying a bird about to lay or one already in her prime.