Hen Suddenly Laying Less

[kittydoc]

@chickengeorgeto I agree wholeheartedly with your remark about their appetites. Part of the reason we suspected our SL Wyandottes had stopped laying was that they suddenly regrew a ton of feathers, looked fabulous, and plumped up nicely. Two are already at Camp Amana (and yes, they were most definitely DONE laying when we examined their reproductive tract), and their same-hatch sisters will join them in another week or two. We have some hens we will keep forever, laying or not, but these girls were the first breed that stopped laying (we have older Australorp and Orpington hens that are still knocking them out!), and we did not like their personalities. They were just pretty.

 

[aart]

It's hard to catch an egg eater. Took us months. We set up a deer cam and that gave us suspicions, but it wasn't confirmed until we installed rollaway nest boxes to stop it, and then we caught the bad hen going over to eat a couple of eggs that other hens had laid on the ground (in protest of the rollaway boxes). She went to Camp Amana, and we have had no more egg eating.

However, our girls have dramatically dropped production, too. It may be perfectly normal. Young hens will often lay well through their first winter, but just as soon as the days shorten the following year, they prepare to go into their first big molt. I think, based on experience, that their reproductive tract slows down before they start molting feathers (both happen during molting). This happened to us same time last year, and just started happening now. We went from 14 eggs a day to 4 a day in a matter of days.

We used artificial light last year starting in early August, and have already started it this year. It takes a couple/three weeks for the egg production to start to get back to near normal, though in fall/winter you may not get as many as in late spring/early summer even with light. We put a fluorescent light on a timer, and it is best to add light in the morning than in the evening. We have ours set to come on at 5:30 am (when it is dark). It's already helping. We had 7 eggs yesterday, and it hasn't even been on a week yet. The optimum is said to be 16 hours of light/day, but even ensuring that they get 14-15 helps. As soon as light drops below 14 hours a day, there goes your egg production.

This is one of the reason people who are most concerned with egg production get replacement chicks every spring, so they will lay through the first fall/winter without additional light. It's the mature hens that need it, if you want to maintain your egg production. There are only two bad aspects to adding artificial light and stopping the molt:

(1) If they look scraggly, they'll stay scraggly. We had to put chicken saddles on some of our low-ranking hens to help keep them warm last winter.

(2) Chickens, like every other animal, have a maximum number of potential eggs. If you keep them laying year round, for multiple years, they will stop laying sooner than if you didn't use artificial light--but you'll get the same amount of eggs out of them. Hens' productivity drops about 20% per year under normal circumstances.

Just some thoughts!

Am curious as to how many years you have been using fluorescent lights for supplementation. I've read that incandescent is the best to use because the flickering of fluorescents can bother the chooks(from same source as below). Maybe you're using compact fluorescent bulbs rather than tubes, maybe the CF's don't flicker?

Will have to disagree about the hens 'running out of potential eggs'.
(paraphrasing this avian vet resource) They are born with 100's of 1000's of ova and will die of old age before running out of them even when laying all of her winters.

 

[kittydoc]

We use 20W cold weather fluorescents, and they don't flicker. They may eventually, and then the tube or ballast or fixture will be replaced. 20W is more than the hens need, but we like to see what we're doing on dark, bitter cold mornings, and a 20W is sufficient. This is our thitd season with these fixtures.

Dr. Petrick's article left out a very important bit of information. True that chickens have hundreds of thousand ova, but only a tiny fraction will ever mature into eggs that are laid. While the occasional hen may lay her whole life, nearly all stop long before that. "Old age" is not a medical condition. My SLWs were 2 years old when their viable egg supply was exhausted. Their reproductive tracts contained no ova with yolk, unlike a productive hen. Instead, their remaining ova were small, gray, and dull. Others have confirmed that this breed is notorious for being an early quitter. I do maintain that any given bird, with its unique genetics and environment, has some maximum number of eggs that it will lay. If you have 8 or 10 year old hens still laying, I would want to select for that trait for sure! People also have hundreds of thousands of ova, but only about 400 on average are ovulated and capable of being fertilized during a woman's lifetime. It's similar for chickens, just with a higher maximum number of potentially laid eggs. Almost all of those hundreds of thousands of ova never have a chance, and they degenerate.

 

[mortie]

What about LED lights, anyone tried them? I don't know if I will supplement light but I was considering using LED lights which I have plenty of.

 

[aart]

We use 20W cold weather fluorescents, and they don't flicker. They may eventually, and then the tube or ballast or fixture will be replaced. 20W is more than the hens need, but we like to see what we're doing on dark, bitter cold mornings, and a 20W is sufficient. This is our thitd season with these fixtures.

Dr. Petrick's article left out a very important bit of information. True that chickens have hundreds of thousand ova, but only a tiny fraction will ever mature into eggs that are laid. While the occasional hen may lay her whole life, nearly all stop long before that. "Old age" is not a medical condition. My SLWs were 2 years old when their viable egg supply was exhausted. Their reproductive tracts contained no ova with yolk, unlike a productive hen. Instead, their remaining ova were small, gray, and dull. Others have confirmed that this breed is notorious for being an early quitter. I do maintain that any given bird, with its unique genetics and environment, has some maximum number of eggs that it will lay. If you have 8 or 10 year old hens still laying, I would want to select for that trait for sure! People also have hundreds of thousands of ova, but only about 400 on average are ovulated and capable of being fertilized during a woman's lifetime. It's similar for chickens, just with a higher maximum number of potentially laid eggs. Almost all of those hundreds of thousands of ova never have a chance, and they degenerate.

Ahhh interesting stuff....I am always open to learn more from folks in the know. .....and I assume you know animal anatomy intimately due to being a DVM.
Did you necropsy your SLW's to examine her repro condition?
20w cold weather tubes? How many in your coop?

 

[lylak]

My 4 hens decreased their laying too. These are the things I did that finally for them back to
Laying : added ice to their water every morning, added ceramic eggs to their nesting box to remind them where to lay, set up a mister during the day to keep them cool, and mixed scratch in their food (realized I accidentally changed the amount of variety in their food), stopped feeding during the day when it is hot. My brown leghorn did not lay over a week and she started again.

 

[kittydoc]

Yès, I examined their internal organs thoroughly and always do when we process a bird.

We have two 20W fixtures, one in the henhouse, currently off because it isn't totally closed now. The other is in the middle of the coop above the feeder and waterer. Once it gets cold and we button up the henhouse more, we'll turn on the second one as their morning wake-up call, then when they come down from the henhouse, they can see well to eat, drink, interact, perch, look outside, etc., until it is light enough to let them into the yard safely. Then the lights go off. Right now, we have no adult roos. They have separate bachelor pads and will be kept in the dark until later so our neighbors don't start making voodoo dolls!

 

[kittydoc]

@mortie LED or CFL or incandescent light all work fine, and you only need 9-13W of the former, or 40-60W of incandescent. The chickens need to be in a coop until natural dawn to reduce predation. That is very important, as is only adding light in the morning.

 

[iwiw60]

My 4 hens decreased their laying too. These are the things I did that finally for them back to
Laying : added ice to their water every morning, added ceramic eggs to their nesting box to remind them where to lay, set up a mister during the day to keep them cool, and mixed scratch in their food (realized I accidentally changed the amount of variety in their food), stopped feeding during the day when it is hot. My brown leghorn did not lay over a week and she started again.

Excellent post...yes, in almost all cases it is the HEAT of summer which causes a sudden decrease in egg production.

 

[earlybird10842]

She could be egg-bound, or she could be molting, or summer heat may be getting to her.