Can a 7 month old hen be barren?

[Dragonfly Ranch]

We track the eggs from our ten hens each day. We get 9 eggs quite often but we never get two green eggs from our two Amerucanas who are 7 months old. Could it be that one is barren? Is there a way to tell.

Sandee

 

[debilorrah]

Honestly, EE's can take a while to start laying. Mine took about 9 months.

 

[chookchick]

Are they true Ameraucanas or EEs? If they came from a hatchery they are probably EEs and one of them is probably laying a brown egg. You could try the old food coloring on the vent trick....

 

[Cindy in PA]

I had a buff orpington that never layed at all. I figured last year she would die, as she acted like she was egg bound, but then she rebounded and lived another year, never laying an egg that I know of. Her comb was always dry & light pink. Last Friday I noticed here comb was suddenly almost all red, by Saturday she was standing around & by Saturday night she was gone. The other BO layed until February, almost an egg a day, but they were always thin shelled & rough. More protein or more calcium nothing worked. She is still running around and the other week I had a yolk laying in the nest box that I think was from her. Her comb is always red, but I never see any eggs. Don't know if she will fade away too. Never had this problem in 16 years.

 

[DianeB]

Quote:
I just lost a RIR two weeks ago that never layed. The other hens started to lay at 20 weeks. She did at about 23 weeks. Her comb was large and red, but her abdomen was sunken in. She also slowly faded away sleeping for hours a day, eating less than the others, stopped growing, lost weight and her feathers became ragged. I had her necropsied and found out she had large ovarian tumors. I wished I brought her into the vet earlier on and had her put down to spare her pain. (The last two days she had horrible seizures and was in terrible pain.) It sounds like you might have the same problem. You might want to have her checked out.

DB

 

[speckledhen]

Though probably quite rare, it's possible the girl was hatched without her allotment of eggs. Hens come into the world with all the potential eggs she'll ever lay already inside her. Could be that on rare occasions, a hen comes with no eggs, sort of a birth defect.

 

[Dragonfly Ranch]

Quote:
I did order these from McMurray and the picture in the catalog showed them as black and white birds. But mine are brown. One has the fluffy cheek feathers and the other is smooth. How do you do the food color trick?

Sandee