Hens Still Not Laying

LittleSweetChee

Hatching
Oct 21, 2016
2
0
7
We have raised chickens for about four years now. We've raised a variety of breeds and our whole family enjoys it. In February '16 we bought 18 Sussex chicks. At the time most of our other hens were getting older and not laying as much.

We maintain 2 separate coops and runs to decrease competition for food and water. When the chicks got old enough that we didn't have a concern about introducing them to the flocks (about 5 birds in each coop), we split them 9 and 9 and put them in. We had one chick get attacked by something and one turned out to be a rooster, but we still have 16 hens.

Fast forward to October. One coop gives an okay amount of eggs, (I've picked up 11 Mon-Thurs this week) and the other coop gives pretty much nothing (2 eggs in the same time period).

Our roosters live and work outside the runs and coops. They have their own little happy places and show very little desire to get to the hens.
Each coop maintains 2 12lb feeders and 2 3.5gal waterers as their primary sources. For the summer months we added smaller single gallon waterers that we had available and we supplement with additional healthy vegetation, etc. No one shows any sign of disease or injury. No signs of stress. All the birds seem happy, social. None look like they are being bullied (we've had that before).

Shouldn't they all be laying by now? All of our other breeds pretty much started laying at around the 6 month mark which would have sometime in August.
 
No. The coops are side by side facing the same direction and everything. We don't shut the coop at night, (we know it's a risk, but so far no major problems), so it's not like one group gets put away longer than the other. As far as we can tell, we maintain the two groups identically. They get the same amounts of free-range time on the property (though separately because when we let them all out together they wander further).
 
So each coop has 8 sussex pullets (less than a year old) and how many older hens??
And each coop is free ranging separately...on alternating days or at different times of every day??

Even tho the pullets all came together, I assume from a hatchery, that doesn't mean that they had the same parentage.
That could be a difference.....or even if they did have the same parentage, there's just no telling with live animals.

Is there a chance that one coop has/had a pests/predator harassing them....
........maybe rodents/mites/lice or something similarly nonfatal but annoying none the less??
 

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