Help!!! Can't find eggs!

[newchck]

Hi all, we have 18 hens (15 of which are young, but should be laying at this point, hatched first week of April. Barred Rocks, Buff Orpington, and Easter Eggers) For a while we were getting 4 eggs from the young ones laid in a hay loft where most of our chickens were laying, a few laying in the coop. Our chickens free range on quite a bit of land and now we are getting 2 eggs a day. There are no signs of egg eating. We have a few acres of overgrown pasture (anyone know affordable cows for sale in Indiana? lol!) and the grass and weeds are quite tall. Our goats have been eating paths through it and the chickens do forage in there as well. Is it possible they are laying in the tall grass? Anyone know of other common spots we may be overlooking? We have looked quite a few times and I am going to keep looking, but that pasture is practically impossible to check! We are having a hard time justifying paying to feed all of our girls and getting no eggs.We are thinking of building a few big chicken tractors, but my husband is ready to cull! Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[3KillerBs]

Can you confine them to the coop and run for a week or two in order to train them to lay where you want them to lay?

 

[newchck]

Can you confine them to the coop and run for a week or two in order to train them to lay where you want them to lay?

We don't have a run, and while we could do a coop a lot of the birds don't even go into a coop at night, they hang out with the sheep in the loft of their shelter.

 

[ForTheChimkins]

It could be they haven't all started to lay yet. Though training them to lay where you want would help as well.

 

[3KillerBs]

We don't have a run, and while we could do a coop a lot of the birds don't even go into a coop at night, they hang out with the sheep in the loft of their shelter.

We are having a hard time justifying paying to feed all of our girls and getting no eggs.

You probably either have to figure out a way to confine them to the area where you want them to lay or cull the birds who don't lay in the nests, build a run to use at least during the training period (and periodic retraining periods), and get new birds who will not know that they *could* lay anywhere else.

 

[newchck]

Thanks all! we just found 7 eggs actually In the tall grass of course

 

[newchck]

You probably either have to figure out a way to confine them to the area where you want them to lay or cull the birds who don't lay in the nests, build a run to use at least during the training period (and periodic retraining periods), and get new birds who will not know that they *could* lay anywhere else.

Yeah, this is kind of what we were thinking of doing. Maybe just starting a new flock with tractors instead of free range

 

[3KillerBs]

Yeah, this is kind of what we were thinking of doing. Maybe just starting a new flock with tractors instead of free range

Look into electric poultry netting.

Most people who are happy with tractors seem to be raising meat birds in good weather. But I've seen a number of setups for pastured layers that involve a coop with nestboxes built onto an old trailer and surrounded by electric poultry netting.

They range in an area for a while then you move the entire setup to the next area.