Egg production down

[tbone3636]

First off I'm new to the site so hello to all, my wife and I are new to raising chickens and have some questions for everyone. We bought 11 laying hens(2 black sexlinks, 4 red sexlinks, 1 domenecker, 1 leghorn, 2 black australops, 1 wellsummer) they were all together previously with a bunch of other chickens. They were free ranging at the other location. When we first got them we were getting about 4-6 eggs a day. We have been keeping them in the coop 100% right now bc the recent rains have been bad and tore down part of my fence but we plan on letting them range out in our 2 1/2 acres. The coop has a 10' x 5' fenced off section plus a 6' x 5' coop. We now are only getting 1-2 eggs a day, the weather has been bad and raining almost everyday also the man we bought them from said the hens were about a year old but most of his were just starting to molt. I'm feeding a mixture of layer crumble and wild bird crumble. Any suggestions on what we are doing wrong and should change, one the fence is repaired they will be free ranging again but we let them out and lost a black australop the 2nd day we let them out so we decided to keep them cooped up until fence is repaired. Also we bought 3 production red pullets roughly 5 1/2 months old and added them to the flock.


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[aart]

Welcome!

The coop is kind of tight quarters for 11 birds...so overcrowding stress could be a reason for lack of eggs.
Plus bringing birds into a new environment causes some stress too.
Adding more birds also causes stress.
How long have you had the birds and when did you add the 3 more?

What is the brand and protein level of the 'wild bird crumble' you are feeding?

 

[tbone3636]

Thanks for the welcome, we have had the 11 for about 5 weeks and we added the younger 3 about two weeks ago. All of our feed comes from a local feed mill that is hormone and pesticide free, they are called cowtown feed, the layer crumble is 20% and the wild bird is 28%, I feed it to them half and half


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[RhodeIslandGuy]

High there . As a person who raises chickens for a living I have quite the experience. My chicken usually lay about 5/7 times a week. But my customers sometimes come back to me and complain that the chickens have stopped laying as many eggs after a while. My chickens are free rangers and are trained to go in at night. I found out after a while that all my customers chickens continued to lay normally (5/7) after about three months (on average). See what happens is that the chickens get stressed from their new surrounding and their diet changes. Because of that it takes awhile for their bodies to process the new food and establish a "new laying" mechanism (it's really just the body's way of fitting itself to change). So don't worry about it, you'll be getting eggs normally soon.

 

[aart]

Thanks for the welcome, we have had the 11 for about 5 weeks and we added the younger 3 about two weeks ago. All of our feed comes from a local feed mill that is hormone and pesticide free, they are called cowtown feed, the layer crumble is 20% and the wild bird is 28%, I feed it to them half and half


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Do you feed them anything else to dilute all that protein....that's alot of protein.

 

[tbone3636]

We give them chicken scratch in the evenings and table scraps.


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[Folly's place]

Your coop is very crowded, and the birds are also stressed by the move, food change, and new birds. Enlarge everything, and give them time. Hens don't produce many eggs while molting (if any). Mary

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Your coop is very crowded, and the birds are also stressed by the move, food change, and new birds. Enlarge everything, and give them time. Hens don't produce many eggs while molting (if any). Mary

X 2 on all counts