Chicken's Not Laying

[LaurenEL]

• Hi, New poster here.

We quite recently bought 3 chickens, 2 months or so ago. They were around 24 weeks old when we got them. We are novice chicken owners.

Since then the chickens have laid around 6 eggs between them. They have a chicken coop and a homemade large run that has been attached to their coop. They have pellets, corn, oyster shells, chicken grit and boredom busters. They have grass and plants etc to nibble on and have treats like crackers etc.

Is there anything more we can do to encourage them to lay? The eggs they have done so far have been small but fine and intact.

They are from the same herd and get on well, have shelter from the weather, have a nesting box full of straw.

I would appreciate and take on board any advice offered.

Thank you!

 

[azygous]

You can do both more and less to get more eggs.

If you live in the northern hemisphere where our days are getting too short to produce enough light to trigger egg laying hormones, you can put a low wattage light on a timer in your coop to add two hours to the daylight.

And you can do less by decreasing the amount of empty calories you are feeding, such as corn and crackers. Increase nutrition by supplementing with probiotics and vitamins or fermenting your feed.