Still no eggs today.
Aoxa, this makes no sense to me either. I could explain away a gradual decrease or if I had only a few eggs each day, but this whole situation is quite a mystery. Abundant eggs every day and then going to zero eggs in one night.
I do not think egg eating is my flock's problem. This past Friday, I put some store-bought decoy eggs in the nest to see if it might prompt laying. So far it has not. Those eggs have not been touched, so I do not think egg eating is the problem. Plus, after fifteen days, I think there would have been at least some visible evidence of egg-eating. There is absolutely ZERO chance of a hidden nest. There is simply no possible place for one to be unless they are digging a hole, laying the eggs, and covering them all back up (lol).
I do not know if this is good, bad, or indifferent, but I confined them to the hen house today. I shut them all up inside the house around lunch today. I am going to leave them in the house a day or two and see what affect that has. I cannot let them out of the pen to forage for fear I may not get them all back. I let one out about a month ago and she would not go back in the pen that night. As the others were beginning to roost, I left the gate open and gave her space. She did not get in and instead went into the edge of the woods. At dark, I closed the gate, and I have not seen her again. I assume she ended up in the belly of a predator.
The hen house has no windows and only has light that leaks in around the rafters and through cracks between the boards. I checked on them about two hours before dark today, and most of them were on the perches where they normally roost. Four or five of them were scurrying about on the ground in the house. (The house is very well-ventilated.)
My hope is that after a couple of days in the hen house, they may see a return to the yard area as a change of pace back to foraging. This may be the exactly wrong thing to do, but I am tired of their strike, and I am ready to break the strike!