Help! Don't know is she is or isnt!

[farmergirl99]

Okay... Here I'm gonna post pics in a sec.

 

[pollitaroja]

My chicken is 26 weeks old and We don't think she's laying but every day she gets out of her pen in into the yard so we don't know if she's laying out in the yard...

Just learned something about changing the way a hen likes to lay her eggs. If you change her environment , new chicks, new food, Anything. She will stop laying for a while.She will resume later. Remember before coops they used to lay in the wild, so got to go find them eggs or chicks somewhere out there

 

[farmergirl99]

Theres my pen! it looks small but it is really bigger in real life. Ask any questions! I litterally ttook these 5 minutes ago

 

[farmergirl99]

Just learned something about changing the way a hen likes to lay her eggs. If you change her environment , new chicks,  new food, Anything. She will stop laying for a while.She will resume later. Remember before coops  they used  to lay in the wild, so got to go find them eggs or chicks somewhere out there

so If I put her in a smaller pen in the bigger pen she will stop laying!?

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

If she's getting out daily, I'll bet she's got a nest somewhere. Find some little kids and offer them a dollar to search your yard, like an Easter egg hunt.

That's an awesome idea!

When hens put their mind to it, they can find some ingenious places to lay their eggs. My family has a large dairy farm (350+ cows) and his hens make him so mad! They lay in the commodity shed. They lay waaaaay at the top of the hay mow on top of the big stacks of round bales. They lay in the bull calf pen. They've even gotten onto the beams in the equipment shed where they poop onto the tractors. That's like 20 feet up. I'm supposed to help him catch them all and clip their wings one of these weeks. Hopefully that will keep them out of some of the more out of the way places. Right now he has hens, but never has any eggs because he can't know how long they've been in a particular nest. Dairy farmers don't have time for daily egg hunts, lol.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

so If I put her in a smaller pen in the bigger pen she will stop laying!?

Not necessarily. I change hens' locations all the time. Move some that are being over-bred by the rooster to the pullet hut. Move one that looks sick to the isolation pen. I've never had one stop laying from doing that. I have had two START laying, though--silly things. I'd put them on Craigslist for free because they were 20 months old and had never laid an egg. I grabbed them the night before and put them in a travel pen so that they'd be easy to get to when the woman came to get them. That morning, there were two eggs in that travel pen for three birds. I was really annoyed at them, but I gave them away anyway because I didn't want those genetics in the flock.

As for your pen, I am sure she's just hopping over. Even my rooster can hop over a 3' fence, and he weighs something like 15 pounds and both his wings are clipped.

 

[farmergirl99]

Okay. I put her in today and she's kinds getting mad. Should I put a second one in?

 

[DianaMallory]

It looks like she is basically free range. So if you clip her wings how would she be able to get away from predators? My girls have a good size pin but because I live in the woods with a very good chance of predators they are completely enclosed! With hardware cloth! I have been through 2 flocks being slaughtered I never want to see that again. I was sitting outside a couple weeks ago and a hawk came and landed in the shade tree right above my run. he looked down and seen no way in so he flew off. If I didn't have my run covered he would have swooped right down and taken one of my girls!

 

[farmergirl99]

SHe can still fly but just not high

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

It looks like she is basically free range. So if you clip her wings how would she be able to get away from predators?

Every one of our flock is clipped, and we do get predators. Hawks, coyotes, owls, dogs, fox, raccoon, you name it. Not once, not ever have they *flown* away from predators, even when they were pullets and hadn't had their wings clipped yet. They run and hide, but don't fly. I don't think flight would help them evade predators any better.

Also, every time we've had a really terrible predator attack, it's been at night when they were roosting. The predators just picked them off the perches one by one.

I really don't believe that clipping wings gives them a survival advantage to predator attacks.