Lights! Exercise! and Food!
To get the birds to lay in winter whether pullets or post-molt hens I do this:
I put a low watt light bulb in the coop( I use a fluorescent 60 w because I had one) and a cheap household electric timer set to go on at about half hour before they normally go to roost and that stays on until around 8:30 PM (target 14 hours light). This is a tried and true method of getting winter eggs. Give it about two weeks or so to photo sensitize the layers and the egg box will start to fill up. Remember if you put the lights on them they will want to be scratching for feed in the coop until around the time of lights out. This is a good way to see which ones are your better producers, since these they tend to be the last to roost. Some of your better birds may be off the roost when lights go off the first week, so I usually go out after the lights go off and put these on the roost. Soon they get used to it and go to roost before lights out.
Other things that seem to help stimulate winter laying includes giving them lots of exercise since this stimulates laying. To keep them active in winter, I let them on pasture and I add scratch into deep litter twice a day and rake it in a little so they have to work for it. They love this. I don't use dropping boards in my coops and when I feed them this way I never have manure piles under the roosts. This ties into litter/manure management. I start in the fall with about 5 inches of litter, leaves, straw, wood shavings what ever I have and add more each week. They love the morning when I add more litter. I usually add it about a bushel or two a week. (My winter layer coop is 10 x 16 for scale). I leave it in there to accumulate and for them to play in and scratch in. If it gets too moist looking, its time to add more. My floor is wood with asphalt painted on it and then a thin layer of gypsum dusted onto that.
My hens have a good sized day range pasture of short grass to roam over, and big areas of hardwood leaf piles to scratch in and find worms even in winter. I pile up all my leaves in the fall over the spot where I will plant potatoes in spring. The birds are just naturally attracted to the leaf piles when the rest of the ground is wet or frozen. They add some manure to the soil before I plant the potato patch. We have green grass for pasture all winter here and that helps them keep in shape. Other things I do to help jump start winter laying is a warm wet mash in the AM until they start up. I don't bother making them warm breakfast after that but it is just encouragement to get started.
I live in Western Oregon and we get rain and snow, and lots of dark days though rarely temps below 25 F. My Barnevelders lay well all winter under this regimen of extra light, exercise and feeding.
So if you haven't tried some of these give it a whirl, it should help.
If some of your birds don't respond to this treatment, you know which ones to select and which not to select for better winter production, which was historically a part of the breed and something I like to see in my layers.
Andy
