6 month olds to the day and no eggs yet. :(

[hilaryhake]

I have 8 Rhode Island Red hens and 2 Rhode Island Red Roosters. They are exactly 6 months old today and they have not laid a single egg. They get a quality layer feed, they free range from 4pm-8pm and the weather has been beautiful. Their combs are a nice bright red also. The roosters have begun crowing and trying to mount the hens. I have placed fake eggs in the nesting boxes even. Still no eggs. When oh when will these stubborn hens start laying their eggs? I have never had hens take this long to start laying before! It is frustrating me lol.

 

[Veer67]

You probably have to wait chickens start laying from about 22-25 weeks and longer.

 

[hilaryhake]

Well they are 24 weeks old today so that hopefully means anytime now lol.

 

[Mac14]

Also make sure to look around in any hidden places they may be laying, or if can't find anything, you might need to wait a couple more weeks. The waiting is so hard!

 

[hilaryhake]

I am outside with them when they are free ranging so I don't think they are laying anywhere outside of the coop. The things are like dogs and follow me everywhere I go lol. I only let at the most 5 minutes go by without knowing where all of them are. Then I clap my hands and yell "Babies!" and here they come. The only reason I stay out with them is because the abandoned house next door has a litter of foxes living under it and I don't want them to become fox food. I have tried to keep them in their run all day so that they will lay in their nesting boxes but they fly out if I don't let them out at 4pm lol. They will stay in their run all day long without a problem but come 4pm they had better be let out or they will get out on their own. I am working on putting a higher fence up around their run though so they can't do that anymore.

 

[Mehjr10]

They should be giving eggs here soon.. You can get some deer netting and put over the top of your run to keep them from flying out and any birds of prey from flying in..

 

[hilaryhake]

We definitely need to put netting up. We had some but took it down to put on the guinea's run. We had 30 guinea keets at one time but once they started flying we lost about half of them. There are no adult guineas to "teach them the ropes" of living outside of the coop so we are trying to keep them in their run until they are the same size as the chickens.

 

[Mehjr10]

The Guineas will do that, I lost a couple of my first batch to the same problem.. The deer netting solved that one..

 

[hilaryhake]

We ended up clipping their wings as well.

 

[bradleyscott]

I gor a 50 x 50 fly pen net from amazon.com for $60. I'm happy with it.