Few eggs

[ktdeluxe]

Hi all! I contacted you in April ago because my 11 chickens had been having such a low production of eggs. They were, many of them, also having diarhea. On the advice of many, I dosed them properly with Valbazen Wormer and they upped the production to 8 a day after a few weeks and seemed healthier in general. We then took a vacation for a month, leaving them with good caretakers. However, the egg production fell again while we were gone and I got only 2 yesterday! These darlings are almost 2 years old now and there were many months until this spring when we got 9-11 eggs per day. They get high grade organic food, with the other proper things they need like oyster shells and they free range in our organic backyard. I am at a loss as to why the production is so low. We change the water almost daily and I am stumped. Their appetites seem fine and I use a bit of cracked corn and mealyworms to get them into their pen every evening, so they have all they seem to need nutritionally. We also have a light on at night. Anyone have any advice for me?

 

[1muttsfan]

One of the problems with housing birds continuously in the same area is that if they get worms, then some of the parasite life cycle is in the environment (ground or bedding), and so survives the deworming. Then the birds get re-infested by scratching around and eating off the ground.

The best time to deworm is in the late fall when you have had several hard freezes to kill the environmental parasites. Ideally when you deworm you would move your birds to a clean area, but few of us have the luxury of multiple pens and coops.

You could deworm now, but it would likely be a good idea to repeat it late in the year.

 

[1muttsfan]