entire flock stopped laying except 2...

[tjb]

What reason could there be that all my hens have stopped at the same time.
Southeast Texas after the last flood event - we didn't flood but got all the rain. it has been a couple of months now. 2 out of my 25 laying hens are the only one producing and that is only every few days. Ages from 1-3 years... Please help! I miss my eggs.

 

[Alaskan]

The 2 and 3 year olds, it is probably simply due to the short days.

Less daylight means chickens slow down or stop laying.

Young pullets usually lay through the fall.....as long as they started laying this summer. If they didn't start up laying this summer....then they also tend to not lay until spring when longer days start up.

Other possibilities are parasites. . Often there is a heavy parasite load come fall.... I would check them over carefully, do a deep coop clean, treat for parasites, then repeat in 10days.

 

[Folly's place]

Also having a small light in the coop 4am to 8am every day, to have 14 to 16 hours of light/ day, which is what hens need to come back into lay.
Any stressful event can stop laying too, for weeks sometimes.
Mary

 

[Kiki]

I'd blame it on the weather.
My girls are molting right not/not laying.

 

[Folly's place]

I also have some molting hens, and it's hard to understand why in winter?! They do what they are gonna do...
Mary

 

[GodofPecking]

Everyone else where I live complains that theirs stop laying in winter, mine don't. They sometimes reduce the number of eggs a bit, but they keep some eggs on my table year round. I always believe it's because the environment where mine live is better and MOST IMPORTANT IS THE FOOD. I don't feed mine PELLETS which ARE EQUIVALENT TO BREAD AND WATER FOR A PRISONER. I feed mine as wide a variety of food as I can. Ask your neighbors and local businesses for scraps for your chickens. Look for all sorts of things to improve their diet. If you have seeds, see if you can sprout some of them.

Chooks and birds in general will lay when conditions favor raising young. That means lots of food and safety.

 

[GodofPecking]

I even experimented with roadkill, the chooks go insane for the maggots. One neighbor thought they couldn't eat the eggs like that because of the thought of the maggots. Lol. But I gave up on it because of the smell really. If I made some system that allowed it all but without the smell, Id do it again.

 

[Acre4Me]

PELLETS which ARE EQUIVALENT TO BREAD AND WATER FOR A PRISONER.

ummm....yeah, disagree with that statement.

you’ll have to provide better concrete evidence to support that statement beyond “shouting” your message using all CAPS. It is also a disservice to other chicken keepers bc all scraps will not provide the needed chicken/egg producing nutrients. However, feed is formulated for chickens and to support egg laying. However, many people do feed their chickens scraps and do not have a problem, others have reduced egg laying or laying that stops altogether bc the scraps are not providing the needed nutrients.

 

[GodofPecking]

I'm not trying to shout, I'm just tagging my message for easier scanning for key words. It does look like shouting though doesn't it ? though that's not the intention as you can see.

Well the day you can pick out one single food and just eat that and nothing else is the day I might agree, even if it was a variety of foods combined say into a burger meal that the seller also claims is formulated to be balanced and blah blah blah, that is still going to make you sick and BORED !! (that time I was shouting).

Feed is formulated to use up whatever the mill that makes it can find.In the case of pet food, it can contain euthanased pets and dead chickens. This is called 'rendered meat'.

Actually just do a search for pet food scandal

it's too easy and it's FDA approved.

If you don't pick up roadkill, you can be fairly sure that your chicken pellets will contain roadkill as well as dead cows, animals with tumors, anything that is defined as a food animal by the FDA which defines a food animal as "any meat source within an animal that is not fit for human consumption" goes into it. It's not actually a secret how industrial pellets are made and what goes into them, it's defined and while its not in the glossy advertising it's not a secret, it's just business. I feed my chooks maggots, so it's not like your average chicken owner would really care.

There is no benevolent arm of government which makes sure that layer pellets are different to free range pellets any more than they have to make sure window cleaner, floor cleaner, and benchtop cleaner aren't just the same thing in three different bottles at three times the price of vinegar.

If there was such a department, they'd have a name and they'd not keep their existence secret from the internet, it's a department that a person could actually name, thing is, it doesn't exist.

Food scraps are fine for chooks and with enough scraps to sort through, chickens have helped their owners with delicious eggs for thousands of years.

You are quite right about this :
" However, many people do feed their chickens scraps and do not have a problem, others have reduced egg laying or laying that stops altogether bc the scraps are not providing the needed nutrients."
there is a thread on the board right now where someone's hen is cracking and eating eggs because of eating pellets alone without shell-grit. There is no end to the faulty products on the shelves and in the market and pellets are just the same.

Pellets can be every bit as bad as food scraps by not having enough calcium for example, and having more dead cancerous cow and surgical waste from the vet's than comes out of our kitchens. I'd rather eat eggs from food scraps from my and my friends and the local food shop's kitchens because at least I know it doesn't contain the chemicals that are used to euthanase animals which the FDA speculated got into the pet food because it was in the dead pets added to the mix recently. Or melamine ! oh god there is no end to the scandals.

 

[Mandrogora]

I even experimented with roadkill, the chooks go insane for the maggots. One neighbor thought they couldn't eat the eggs like that because of the thought of the maggots. Lol. But I gave up on it because of the smell really. If I made some system that allowed it all but without the smell, Id do it again.

Chickens can contract botulism by allowing them to feed on decomposing meat and maggots.