10 Golden Comets, 2 eggs?

[aart]

I’m in SC. They are all definitely laying. All started same week, 10 a day. Then after 5-6 weeks, they’ve done this

Might want to lock them in the coop for a week.
Check the nests for pests and 'wet messes'.
Might you have an eggs eating predator.
You said cams 24/7 but do you watch all those hours of footage daily?

 

[urbanfarmersCNA]

I set up motion alerts with automatic recording for several of the days this week and I reviewed all of the footage. It was chickens just mulling around doing their normal thing.

Up to this point, they’ve laid all of their 10 daily eggs in the nesting box exclusively with one or two exceptions where we found an egg in the coop by the coop door. And never in the run.

I have a cam in the nest box as well, and we would see them go into the box and sit for maybe 20-30 mins, then leave. We’d run out and check. No egg. We also noticed the eggs we are getting are a bit smaller than normal.

Someone in another post suggested that SOMETHING must have changed. We realized that we changed their bedding from straw to pine shavings almost at the exact same time as the egg production dropped down... just a day or two prior.

 

[aart]

Someone in another post suggested that SOMETHING must have changed. We realized that we changed their bedding from straw to pine shavings almost at the exact same time as the egg production dropped down... just a day or two prior.

I saw that.
Nest bedding or floor bedding or both?
I've had floor bedding changes create a 'hot coals' effect (they wouldn't walk on it for hours),
but it never slowed laying to any extent.
Plus even tho they are high production birds, some just slow down with shorter days.
Hopefully they get back with the program soon for ya.
But like @Blooie sez..."they're not pez dispensers"

 

[urbanfarmersCNA]

I saw that.
Nest bedding or floor bedding or both?
I've had floor bedding changes create a 'hot coals' effect (they wouldn't walk on it for hours),
but it never slowed laying to any extent.
Plus even tho they are high production birds, some just slow down with shorter days.
Hopefully they get back with the program soon for ya.
But like @Blooie sez..."they're not pez dispensers"

I want to thank you for your help on this.

Over a period of about two more weeks, they slowly went back to 10 eggs/day. It was something like, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (daily). I'm posting this in case anyone else runs into this same issue.

We live in South Carolina, and the days are shorter, but pretty much all through Dec/Jan so far, they are 1 egg per day (Golden Comets) like clockwork. So if anyone else comes on here wondering if it's normal for 7-8 month old golden comets (in or around SC area) to lower egg production in the winter, I would say "no", at least for our small example it appears.

After seeing your post and thinking back, we found that two things had occurred that week which could have contributed to the drop in egg laying... (1) we changed their bedding from straw to pine shavings and (2) we had two large trees taken down in the back yard, and there was a crew out there all day with chain saws and large equipment, with massive tree trunks hitting/shaking the ground. The power company also had to drive a lift up over the coop area to drop the power line for one of our trees to come down. The chickens were all in the coop (run completely empty) because of the noise.

I have a feeling it was the latter because I could see it being pretty traumatic...and at a later date, I had some work being done at the back of my property near their run, and I preemptively guided them into their coop and shut the door/windows so they wouldn't get too stressed out, and that seemed to do the trick.

My main concern coming onto the forums when I noticed that our hens stopped laying - and it was pretty drastic going from 10/day to 2-3/day - was that something was wrong, they might be sick, or maybe we were seeing warning signs that we needed to heed.

Several people just said "oh they're not machines, let them have a break, etc.", and I want to tell any new chicken owners that you are not wrong for being concerned. And you don't know what you don't know so it's OK to be concerned and worried. Keep doing your research and then some day when a young owner comes on here asking for help, be patient and help troubleshoot just like @aart did. Thank you!