We're raising our first crop of chickens this year. We live in NE Indiana and have about 35 layers of various breeds and 2 roosters - a RIR and a Frizzy. All of the chickens are approx. 6 to 9 months old. We bought and raised about 1/2 of them from chicks, bought 5 which were the same age from one lady and the rest are approx 9 months old. Everyone gets along just fine. They are in a coop all day long (it's a large coop with plenty of room & nests for approx 24 chickens. We have bad critter problems so they aren't able to roam free. Only one door at this point ~ no windows yet. (we have the windows, dh just has to find the time to install them.) We started getting eggs in August and were up to about 8 eggs a day (at that time we were feeding laying mash, ground corn and veggies from our garden and 2 large waterers always full). My in-laws were supposed to be opening the door in the a.m. stopped as well (dh didn't tell me this until later). That went on for about a week (light for about 2-3 hours in the evening). Shortly there after egg production abruptly stopped. This was approx 6-7 weeks ago. When I found out about it I started driving out to the farm each a.m. to open the door. We went to all laying mash thinking they might be eating too much of the ground corn, not enough mash. Our garden had died out so they don't get any more veggies either. I don't believe they are molting because their chicken suits are all still intact. In the mean time, the temps have taken a nose dive - for the past week it's been in the upper 30's, low 40's as highs. We are now getting 1 eggs every other day. I'm assuming from 1 chicken. What do we do to get them back to laying eggs? I know all of them hadn't even started laying when things went haywire. I think about 1/2 - 3/4 of them have never even laid an egg. I'm sorry if this has been asked before and that it is so long but I've searched through posts, read the chicken 101 and looked on various other sites as well and can't seem to find an answer. I hope someone can help or at least offer a suggestion on something new to try.
I'm thinking that prolonged darkness in the coop stopped them laying. I would put a light in the coop to come on for 2 to 3 hours before dawn every morning. Are they getting oyster shell?
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that ~ they have been getting the oyster shells right along. Thanks, we'll give that a try! Hopefully it will do the trick.