No More Eggs

The chickens have stopped laying. I'm not sure why ... there's no sign of them moulting, so perhaps they have started laying out in the hedge rather than in the nesting boxes. Or maybe they are still in shock after three of them were taken by a dog last week. Plan of action is on hand though ... first I cleaned out the coup from top to bottom and used a blowtorch to scorch along the perches and nest boxes. This zaps any red spider mites that may be lingering in cracks, emerging at night to suck the blood of the poor chickens. Sincere apologies to any innocent spiders shrivelled in the process! Before putting in new nesting material I sprinkled in some diatomous earth, which will dry out and kill any lingering mites.

The next step involved treating every bird with a natural organically certified louse powder. How I wish I had some photos of that whole rigmarole!  I only spotted one louse, but its worth trying. I haven't found any Irish stockists for these treatments, so I ordered some from P&T Poultry in the UK (if your sneeking a look at work, don't go to P&T Poultry or the nifty sound effects will give you away!!).

Finally I fetched the last two eggs from the fridge, and put them back in the nesting box in the hope that it would illicit a response such as 'oooh look at that, an egg, hey, thats a good idea, I think I'll lay one in there too'!!!!

A week later and the chickens still aren't laying, and had started to push their luck a little by testing a few boundaries ...

Fingers crossed they come into lay again soon, because if I don't get to make some pickled eggs this year I'll be sorely disappointed!

Comments

[farmingfriends]

Love the picture of your hen in the house. Sorry they have stopped laying. You have treated their house well. Useful information - thanks. Sara from farmingfriends

[melanie]

My desire to have a little farm on my own can be dated back to almost 10-years ago now when I went to stay with a friend's family in Victoria, B.C. for a month while working on a TV show. They had chickens and 2 roosters so one rooster would come and hangout in the house and it was the funniest thing ever! I love that picture of the chicken in your home - I hope they start laying for you soon.

[melanie]

My desire to have a little farm on my own can be dated back to almost 10-years ago now when I went to stay with a friend's family in Victoria, B.C. for a month while working on a TV show. They had chickens and 2 roosters so one rooster would come and hangout in the house and it was the funniest thing ever! I love that picture of the chicken in your home - I hope they start laying for you soon.

[Podchef]

Sorry to hear about the dog attack. I am very fortunate to have dogs who would defend their chickens to the death if need be--even against another dog.

Eggs take something like 7 days to form inside the hen, however, the process overall, I think, can take two weeks to begin, for the yolks to be moving out towards getting the shell on, etc.

I suppose if they got a really huge fright and disruption due to the dogs they would stop laying for some time--enough for a new batch of yolks to start down the channel.

One other thought is that the hens which died were the ones doing the bulk of the laying and the ones left are skating. . . .

The other thing too, which happens about this time is that the days are cooler and are getting shorter. Egg laying is light dependent, meaning more eggs with more light. You might try putting a light on in the evening for two hours around 7pm. I've always done this since finding our first batch of hens outside the coop after dark on several occasions. The light gives them a reason to go in rather than roost outside.

Now, I am not an advocate of 24 hour light--except for incubator hatched chicks--like in the egg factories. But I do use a timer to give the hens 12 hours of light most of the year. In heavy breed chickens like our Buff Orpingtons this works great as they spend a lot of time being broody anyway. And far from forcing them to lay continuously, this seems to help them be more consistent. I have 4 and 5 year old hens who still lay plenty under this method.

As a final resort, you can always get a Rooster from someone. Chickens don't need a rooster to lay eggs, but there's something about the presence of a man about the coop which makes the ladies go all egg crazy. The other benefit of the rooster is he will usually defend his girls to the death against a dog, thereby buying you a little time to get the gun. . . .

Hope the hen fruits start coming soon.
Neal

[Misslionheart]

Cute pic, we only get spiders in our kitchen!

Have a great week

[Not A Proper Farmer]

We haven't had a hen in the kitchen yet, but once (when I lived in a clapped out flint-built old farm house in Kent) I had a fox come in and run off with a bin bag...deathwatch bettle in beams...and a family of mice that lived in the cooker.

I couldn't survive without my fresh eggs.

[Amanda]

How sad about their loss but how wonderfully lucky they are to have a mummy like you who goes to all lengths to help them settle down again! I've never had pickled eggs before so hope you get some eggs and maybe you'll share the whole pickling process?? *hint hint* hehe

[snapdragonjane]

We have exactly the same problem - no eggs and chickens in the house. I wonder if ours are laying in the field and if the pig is then eating the eggs.
J
x

[French Knots]

Poor hens but at least their coop has been spring cleaned....or should i say autumn cleaned?!
Hope they are feeling better soon

[Rebecca (feltmaker living sustainably in rural Ireland)]

Thanks for all your suggestions and support. I feel I should should eggs anonymous!

The three that were killed by the dog were all young bantom roosters being fattened for the pot, so the layers and ruling rooster are still all present and accounted for.

Theres something else that I've double checked, and thats the ration size I've been feeding them which ought to be roughly 120/130g per bird. I got out the kitchen scales and measured out per bird, as a result I've increased the ration slightly.

I think we will be putting a light in there for the extra couple of hours light, but its a job to get the electrics over to the field.

All we can do now is wait and see. The egg shelf in the fridge looks so forlorn all empty!

[hedgewizard]

Don't panic - egg-laying drops off coming up to the moult, which should be fairly soon. The chook in your pic is showing good posture and a nice red comb, so I don't think you have anything to worry about; no need for a light right now, although of course you'll get more eggs in winter if you provide one!

[Maddy]

You really gave them the star treatment, clean coop, a spruce up and then letting them in the house, I think their a bit spoilt, lol. I do hope they start laying soon though, and sad about the dog attack, that must have been very upsetting.

[carolyn]

Our's being ex battery are always a little erratic layers but we are still getting a few. I remember when I was a child finding one of those cina eggs in a coup and thinking the hen had laid, I'd forgotten all about them. Of course as the daylight hours decrease they stop laying so hopefully your girls will get the message soon. Always sad to lose a hen especially to dogs, our very first chicken went that way many years ago and for us the worst thing was that it was our own dogs and that they actually tunelled into the run!

[Henriette]

Maybe it is a combination of lots of things ?

I´ve got 4 old black and white striped wyandottes ( they ought to go to to soup pt but...... )
and they lay pretty ok even without light
- however I do turn on a energy bulb every morning from 5 to (7)8 from mid September.

I´ve got 6 new red ready to lay pullets
I hope they´ll soon get the message even without a roster :-D

I have noticed two other things that makes hen stop laying.

1) is lack of salt
( if you don´t feed with commercial feeds that already contains some)
I feed with whole wheat,oyster shells, kitchen scraps, and they go wild in garden every afternoon / early evening
In winter they get some seeds as well- flax, qunioa and sunflower are a hit.

2) 1 day without water is enough to stress them !
A few times we have had hen"babysitters" who hasn´t been carefully enough to make sure they had water enough- sure enough they stopped laying a few days... and then came back.

Hope they get the mesaage soon it is soo annoying when you have to BUY eggs

[debra]

Sorry for your loss. I lost 11 hens in a week to foxes this Spring..... and then the 2 roosters to dogs. Has it been hot? Mine stop laying when the temperature soars.

[Péitseoga]

good luck with the eggs!
our ducks are still laying strongly, one each, almost every day, and some days we find 3!
but then they are a lot less tricky to look after than hens.

[Péitseoga]

good luck with the eggs!
(have you considered campbell ducks?)

[Péitseoga]

good luck with the eggs!
(have you considered campbell ducks?)

[Péitseoga]

sorry, i had some problems here with the page loading, i accidentally commented 3 times!

[SheerLuxe]

Love the image of a chicken strutting round a country kitchen! You should turn it into a postcard! Loving your blog by the way :)

[katie]

mine stopped laying when we had a rat problem once - just a thought

[Melissa]

I'm sorry to hear about your chickens. :( That's one thing I'm really worried about when I get my little farm one day. Where we'll be living, there are fox, coyotes, wild dogs, even bear, so I'm sure we'll face our fair share of threats to our animals. :-/

I hope your other chickens start laying again soon! I'm really interested in the pickled egg recipe, too! :)

[Ellen]

Hope your egg production starts up again. Poor hens. BTW, I awarded you an award - come see.

[Candice Gardner]

have you tried increasing the energy/protein in their laying mash? Also by giving them more light it helps to encourage laying.