3 Eggs laid today - new low! How can I make my girls happier? please!

[Peachesbabychick]

Try giving them things like wheat, yogurt, oats etc. The yogurt gives them more calcium and the wheat &oats will keep them warmer since they have something moving through their tummies. Are you feeding them melon of any sort? If you are, STOP! They may like it, but it also rapidly slows egg production. Make sure they also have plenty of fresh water! They won't drink dirty (at least mine don't). If they are stressed, this is another thing that slows production!
Hope that helped!

Good Luck! p.s. what breeds? Some are better layers then others.

 

[kevinhannan]

Thank you, ***all*** for your wonderful replies. (Too many names to list, sorry)

You really do lift my heart. I try to give the girls a good life after their horrible past.

I'm going to wait until the end of this bag of feed (this bag is three days in and lasts
14 days) to decide what to do. Since I have already paid for this feed, there's no
sense in wasting it and the girls aren't in distress.

At this time, if this situation carries on, I will process the girls, ooops, sorry hens -
I am going to have to detach myself now! Take down the coop and remodel the
garden so that my DW has what she wants and I get what I want and all will be
well. Then, come spring, I shall start over and do even better - and that's all thanks
(genuinely) to the great peeps on here that share their experience.

Ridgerunner - thanks for your post - I've saved it for future ref. I appreciate your time.

chickangel - yeah, I get that. I thought about a solar powered light on a timer...

cap'nroo - that's my plan for coop #2!

Thanks again, guys. You're the best there is! ;-)


e2a:

Peaches - our posts crossed!

No melon, but thanks for the suggestion of oats, etc. I will give them porridge for
supper and breakfast from *now* and see what happens. They are ex-battery hens
so I don't know what breed they are but they are the same. They have clean and dirty
water - guess which they prefer... Thanks for your post!

 

[donrae]

I hate to state the obvious, but this is why the "battery" or production hen houses get rid of them. They're not cost effective.

 

[kevinhannan]

Yes, Donrae, thanks! lol! I would normally accept that but when I have gone
from 7/8/9 eggs per day straight down to 3, that's kinda odd and I thought
I'd check in with you guys. Had I got the ex-bats and it was a straight 3-ish
eggs per day from the start then I wouldn't question it ;-)

 

[Ridgerunner]

When you are running a few different commercial laying houses with 5,000 hens in each, the drop you get after a second adult molt is real noticeable. In a large flock, that drop is going to be around 15%. It is more cost effective to raise a new batch of layers and get the increased laying rate than to pay to feed them through a molt. But for most of us, a drop from 7 eggs in 8 days to 6 eggs in 8 days per hen, or something like that, is not tremendously noticeable with a flock of 7 or 8 hens. What's not feasible on a large scale is very possible on a small scale, especially when you are not depending on it to support your family.