HELP! My 13 hens have quit laying

[queen620]

I need help getting my hens back on track. Here is the important info.
13 hens- 6 are 2years old Red Sexlinks & 7 are 1 year old half redsexling & misc other breed. We also have 4 roosters- 1 year old.

Over the last 2 months they have been laying fewer and fewer eggs. Over the winter I was getting 4-6 eggs a day. Now I'm down to 1 a day. The chickens normally free range our very large yard. They are getting Purina laying feed crumble. But normally they get whatever layer crumble the feed store has. I get feed from 2 different stores depending on where I'm at in town- neither is particularly close to my house.

We live in central NC. We have had some serious problems w/ coyotes in our backyard, especially at night circled around the chicken coop. During the last month hubs has had to scare the coyotes away several times. We have counted 6+ in the pack. These coyotes are an inbreed w/ wolves. They are upwards of 100lbs. They are definitely larger than my large black lab. The last week I've made it a point to get back to the basics. The hens have been staying in the run/coop until 2 or so. I've made sure they have access to lots of feed & water, but the chickens have ate every last blade of grass in the run. So I hate to keep them up entirely.

Last year we had a snake in the coop stealing eggs, but we haven't seen any snakes lurking around. We have had problems w/ the hens laying eggs wherever they wanted. But this time around we havn't found any hidden nests. That is why I've been keeping them up later in the day trying to encourage them to lay in the hen house.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I had to go buy eggs for the first time in 20months and they weren't any good compared to my chickens eggs.

Thanks

 

[buttonquailtx]

Any stress, such as the coyotes you described, can cause the hens to stop laying. Do you have a fence around the yard? If you do, I suggest putting up an electric dog fence to deter the coyotes. Some people use dogs such as Great Pyrenees to guard their flocks. Myself, I use a hot fence since we have both coyotes and feral hogs, and I don't want my dogs getting hurt.

Other than stress from predators, illness and climate can stop hens from laying. On very hot days, both my hens and quail temporarily stop laying. When I say hot days, I mean days over 100 degrees here which is not uncommon for Texas. You probably don't get many really hot days there, I'm guessing

 

[JNB]

Well first... I noticed that my 2 year olds seemed to have a pretty drastic drop off in egg production .. then they speed back up. They didnt go through a full molt but that was what I chalked it up to.

Like buttonquailtx said stress from the threat of a predator could be a real issue here. We have Coyotes here and at certain time of the year they are much more aggressive about bothering the coops.I use an electric fence around my coops to deter them. It has worked really well. Another possible aid is to put some sort of barrier so the hens do not see the predators. While this does little to keep the predator out. It provides a sort of false sense of security.

For example we had a neighbor dog that was aweful about coming over and pacing the hens run. Now it was fully enclosed, had a hardware apron and the electric fence and the dog learned to stand far enough away to not get zapped. But he got great pleasure out of making the hens run and fly as he ran and barked along the edge of the run. So i added some ground cover cloth around the run. In this instance it worked. The hens couldnt see the dog so they didnt get all upset and flutter and because the hens no longer were jumping around the dog lost inetrest and went home. After a few weeks I took the black cover down and all was well.

A couple ideas about feed. Im not sure if this is true for everyone but I personally usually see a change in egg production when ever I change feed brands. Now I know the average protein for a layer feed is 16 % and if we stay with that amount it should maintain. But for whatever reasons I find that changing brands always leads to less eggs for a period of time.
Also when ever my girls slow in egg production I increase protein. I often will go with a bag of pellet that has a 20% protein. I supplement with BOSS several times a week if not daily in the winter months when there are less kitchen scraps. The boost seems to help. Also I use ACV in the waterers and that helps with stressed birds and eggs production.

I hope it improves for you.