Does a Rooster upset laying Hens ?

[jbjabiru]

Hello all, new to this, brought a new house 3 months ago and inherited a bonzer chicken run complete with 11 hens. All good except none were laying, i guess through poor management as the residence had been vacant for 2-3 months. after 4-6 weeks and a lot of careful nurturing we had them up to 8-10 eggs a day !!! the kids decided around then that this was cool and wanted to explore the chemistry side of how it all happens as in a natural expansion of flock...I let this ride for 4 or so weeks but after much pestering i relented and we brought a nice young New Hampshire cock, a beautiful bird...settled in well, a few early brawls but all has settled down. Bad news is...egg production dropped over a few days to a average of 2-3 eggs per day...not good. It is now been 5 weeks of rooster included and production has risen to 4-5 eggs per day(good and fertile). Will this pick up to pre rooster interference of 8-10 / day or should we rid ourselves of the rooster now ?

 

[BeulahBreezes]

Are your hens in molt? This will drop egg production for a few weeks.....

 

[Den in Penn]

Welcome to BYC.
If the rooster has settled in and doesn't overly pester the hens, the number if eggs should return to normal. Any change can cause them stress, and introducing a new member to the flock is one example. Stressed hens tend to slow down and even stop laying till they get used to the new stress.

 

[jbjabiru]

Thanks Guys,
6 eggs yesterday... things are looking up!!
We are in Aussie, it is summer here now so i have ruled out the moult issue. I am tipping stress as well, any feedback or experiance very helpful.
Cheers.

 

[Druantai]

Hi, myself and my lover keep hen homes/coops. He has a flock of 8, mixed breeds and 2 roosters (1 fully matured and the other not old enough to crow yet) and mix breeds of females. The older hens (2) were layers, but the stress of the move just stunted laying.

My question to you is, did you raise them or purchase them later in their life? If they were older, you need to reduce stress for the flock to produce the calmest setting. Another answer would be you laying box isn't ideal for your ladies. Perhaps you could just seperating or housing the rooster somewhere else, see how that effects it.

From my experience when you seperate the flock, they will be stressed for a few days but go back to normal.