Egglaying improving

[Mid Wales chicken keeper]

Hi, I posted a while ago about my 3 girls poor egg laying, Brunhilde (Calder ranger) hasn't laid since Decemer, she's 2 years old this month, then Rocky (black rock) started tailing off as well, Ginger (warren) is still consistent. We only have the 3 girls. They are in a coop and enclosed run as we have too many plants in the garden that are poisonous for them
Our next door neighbour has 4 girls, they have free range in his garden, he did enclose them in a run for around 3 months, as they were wandering around the neighbourhood digging up people's gardens. He told us when he enclosed them, the stopped laying, but since he modified his garden fencing (so they can't go elsewhere) and let them free range again, they have an egg bounty every day.
Now, we live next door to a farmers field, so we asked the farmer for permission to create a small gap in the fence so our girls could free range there, he was happy to help. This was a week ago, guess what? 2 eggs today, Rocky is back laying, we're hoping Brunhilde will follow suit, and plan on getting 2 more ladies now they have a lot more space to scratch around in

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Wonderful!
Incidentally, there are plenty of toxic plants where my chickens free range as well, including a plethora of lilies. The chickens do not bother them at all. In fact, they love to lie in the shade under the lilies, and scratch around them for bugs. The lilies love the cultivating and fertilizing! It's my observation that chickens won't eat toxic plants because if they did, they would have gone extinct long ago. Non-vegetative items, though, all bets are off. Keep your property clean of rusty bolts and screws, and don't give your chickens the opportunity to snack on styrofoam, bc they love it.

 

[Mid Wales chicken keeper]

Thanks, we do plan to remove most of the toxic plants, I live in a house that used to be a visitor centre in a show garden, it's full of everything chickens shouldn't eat, from azaleas to rhododendron and everything in between, simply too risky right now. Beautiful plants but deadly

 

[rosemarythyme]

They really will leave things like azaleas and rhodies alone, provided there's other greenery for them to mess with. No reason to strip your garden of plants you like.