Egg count way down!

[AppleHen]

I have 24 hens - many of them are just turning 1 year old this month. Right now I am only getting 1 - 2 eggs a day from them!

Back in March we were getting a couple dozen eggs a day. A couple of months ago, we lost 5 hens (a predator) and since then production has steady gone down... to almost nothing.

Another thing I noticed was some of the chickens have lice. I treated some of them, but have yet to do all of them. I have been looking at them and haven't found anymore lice on them. Could that cause them to stop laying??

I have noticed a broken egg shell in the box, but I doubt they are eating a bunch of eggs. A snake also steals some... but even with that, we should be getting more. Could it be the heat?
Thanks for your help!!

 

[Big C]

Not sure what your problem is. Could be a combination of all you mentioned.

We do everything in a basic set routine. Cleaning the coops, letting them out in the runs, locking up each night, watering and feeding, treats, dusting with de and spraying with apple cider vinegar, and traps set. All done on certain days and hours so the flocks know what to expect.

Even with our 100+ degree heat our production for this month on our layers and just started laying pullets started at 57% and up to 61% today.
We are soon going to do some major moving of flocks into new areas and coops so we will loose this percentage, but will still do the "routine" so the decrease in production should be minimal since the flocks will have new homes, but the routine will be the same.

 

[AppleHen]

Do you spray the chickens with apple cider vinegar? What does it do?