Hen Stopped Laying Eggs- Possible Vitamin Deficiency?

[Arya28]

One of our Easter Egger hens stopped laying her beautiful blue eggs about a month ago. At the time it was cold so we thought maybe she was slowing down due to that. However, all of our other hens are laying- even our other Easter Egger. She’s definitely not egg bound (it’s been way too long for that, and she acts totally fine), and we don’t think she’s laying internally either. Her behavior is totally normal, she eats, drinks, plays, etc. She’s about 7 months old.

We loaded our incubator about 4 weeks ago, and we had gotten two of her eggs to put in it before she stopped laying. We loaded 30 eggs into the incubator (the other eggs in it weren’t hers) and 5 of them hatched. The last 10 that didn’t hatch we did an eggtopsy on and they died in the shell mostly full-term. Her eggs were some of the ones that died almost full-term. We think this might be connected to why our hen stopped laying. You can read more about it here.

We were looking into this being due to a possible vitamin deficiency, such as riboflavin. Is there any way being deficient in a vitamin could have caused the chicks to die, and her to have stopped laying? If so we want to correct it and make sure they get what they need.

Right now all of our hens (of laying age) are on Dumor Organic Layer Pellets. Anyone know what that vitamin might be or what we could do to fix it? It just seems odd all of it together so that’s why we are thinking a vitamin deficiency.

Anyone have any thoughts on this??

 

[Crazy for Chickens!]

Is she molting?

 

[Arya28]

Is she molting?

No

 

[junebuggena]

Easter Eggers tend to be better producers if kept on a higher protein diet than most layer feeds can offer. 18 to 20 percent is ideal for them.

 

[Sublight]

33% hatch rate is incredibly low in my opinion. I normally have about a 60% - 70% success rate in a incubator. 80% with a broody silkie.
I would be wondering about that incubator. The temp may be fluctuating, or the humidity may not be right.
I would guess there is something going wrong with the incubator, before I assume that a large majority of the chickens have a vitamin deficiency. That feed should be balanced so that doesn't happen.

 

[Arya28]

33% hatch rate is incredibly low in my opinion. I normally have about a 60% - 70% success rate in a incubator. 80% with a broody silkie.
I would be wondering about that incubator. The temp may be fluctuating, or the humidity may not be right.
I would guess there is something going wrong with the incubator, before I assume that a large majority of the chickens have a vitamin deficiency. That feed should be balanced so that doesn't happen.

Actually it’s about 17% hatch rate, and it is incredibly low. The incubator has very good reviews online, and the temp and humidity stayed very consistent throughout incubation. Temp and humidity was naturally our first thought, but it was right in the range it should be. Temp was between 37.5 and 38 Celsius and humidity was about 45% before lockdown, 65% during lockdown. We live in a humid environment so we kept humidity to a little lower in the range. The chicks that did hatch seem very healthy, thankfully. As far as we’ve read, these things shouldn’t make for so poor a hatch rate. Since our one hen did stop laying, and those things were consistent, we are looking for other possible causes so as to prevent it in the future.

Plus, we had an oops (which you can read about on that thread) with loading the eggs the wrong way (as per misprint in incubator instructions) which we think contributed to the first couple we lost, but not the full term ones.

 

[Arya28]

Easter Eggers tend to be better producers if kept on a higher protein diet than most layer feeds can offer. 18 to 20 percent is ideal for them.

Interesting! Didn’t know that. Maybe providing quinoa with their food will help?

 

[junebuggena]

Interesting! Didn’t know that. Maybe providing quinoa with their food will help?

No. They would have to eat a lot of quinoa to increase the protein intake, and that would end up costing a lot. It's much cheaper and easier to offer a higher protein feed to the whole flock and just forget about layer feed entirely. There is no magic ingredient in layer feed, it's just got less protein and a whole lot more calcium. All that calcium isn't good for birds that aren't laying, and can eventually be lethal.

 

[Arya28]

No. They would have to eat a lot of quinoa to increase the protein intake, and that would end up costing a lot. It's much cheaper and easier to offer a higher protein feed to the whole flock and just forget about layer feed entirely. There is no magic ingredient in layer feed, it's just got less protein and a whole lot more calcium. All that calcium isn't good for birds that aren't laying, and can eventually be lethal.

We would offer a higher protein game bird grower or something, but nothing like that is offered organic around here.

I know everyone has their own opinions on this, but we won’t feed it to them if it’s not organic- if it’s not you can be guaranteed it’s genetically modified and grown cheaply with pesticides which over time can make the chickens (and you if you eat meat and/or eggs) very sick. Plus, game bird starter has meat protein (which we wouldn’t mind if it was organic) but because it’s not, it most likely has by products of chicken, which we don’t want to feed them.

A university professor on another thread here mentioned the reason proteins are important is because of the amino acids— and quinoa came to mind because it contains all 9 amino acids. We know about the calcium in layer pellets, our roosters don’t get it. Only our laying hens do.

And quinoa is expensive but if we could supplement them with that (or grow it eventually) we thought it could be helpful. And also, we are collecting lots of acorns which are high in protein, so once we leech the tannins our we will give her some of them and see if that helps. Because there’s no other way to get them higher protein and still be giving them organic food.

 

[junebuggena]

We would offer a higher protein game bird grower or something, but nothing like that is offered organic around here.

I know everyone has their own opinions on this, but we won’t feed it to them if it’s not organic- if it’s not you can be guaranteed it’s genetically modified and grown cheaply with pesticides which over time can make the chickens (and you if you eat meat and/or eggs) very sick. Plus, game bird starter has meat protein (which we wouldn’t mind if it was organic) but because it’s not, it most likely has by products of chicken, which we don’t want to feed them.

A university professor on another thread here mentioned the reason proteins are important is because of the amino acids— and quinoa came to mind because it contains all 9 amino acids. We know about the calcium in layer pellets, our roosters don’t get it. Only our laying hens do.

And quinoa is expensive but if we could supplement them with that (or grow it eventually) we thought it could be helpful. And also, we are collecting lots of acorns which are high in protein, so once we leech the tannins our we will give her some of them and see if that helps. Because there’s no other way to get them higher protein and still be giving them organic food.

Use organic chick starter than. Humans need 9 amino acids, chickens require about 13. Quinoa may be great human food, but it is insufficient for chickens.