It is not a "natural" time for them to be hatched, so with small scale producers they tend not to arrive. It is always easier to keep adults through a winter. When they begin to lay there are many eggs available from older birds, and so bigger eggs. Small eggs are difficult to offload. Commercial scale egg producers want young birds coming into lay now when all the smallscale ones are ceasing production. Enough?

Conversely.......... People like you who are prepared to give it a go, and look after your new arrivals can probably buy them cheaper than in the Spring when most people are looking to buy. As long as they are fed and watered they should be fine. Their hatching date looks good to me. Decreasing daylight until 15 weeks, and then a slow build up to egg laying. Whatever you do, do not let them have any more than natural daylight. If you do, you will force them into lay too quickly. Light up in a year's time when natural daylength falls to 14 hours, and they will stay in production for a lot longer than Spring hatched birds. Old McDonald.

Old Hazza, brings up a question, been so long since i;ve had chickens--mine were hatched may 16, no eggs yet, think i should supplement light?they're really big, but they're here for the long run, so i dont want to push them.

They are only four months. Light now will bring them into lay very quickly. If you are not bothered about income, do not light this winter. Your hens will produce and live much longer, and you will just have to wait for eggs. Depends on the breed, and strain within the breed, but you might well get some eggs in a few weeks anyway. If you want eggs for sale, then wait until they are 22 weeks old and begin adding daylength in the mornings. You need to be sure about your timings, and increase total daylength by 30 mins a week until they are on 14 hours, 15 is probably OK, and hold them at that until natural daylength increases and takes over. Make a mistake on timing and it is not a disaster, but you will knock their "biological rhythm" and it will probably pay you to go back to natural lighting until things settle down. Old McDonald.