Hi everyone! I am trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of why our chickens are laying few to no eggs.
We have had chickens for several years now and have never seen anything like this. It is normal for our chickens to slow down on the eggs when they are molting once or twice a year, and we go from about 60 eggs per day out of 80 birds to about 20. When they started this again in November we were not alarmed as we thought it was normal.
But it went on for several weeks, which turned into all winter, and a few weeks ago we started to get close to 30 a day and were thinking the molt was finally over, but that only lasted a few days and now we're down to 0-6 eggs per day out of 80 birds.
20 of the birds are about 8 or nine months old. Another 15 are on the older side - about 2.5 years. The rest are a little over one year old. They are mostly brown sex-links, a few are black (red rocks cross) and a few are white rock x white leghorn.
When they first began to molt, we turned the lights off and boarded up the windows for a couple weeks to initiate molt in all of them. Then we took the blkinders of the windows and put the lights back on a timer. Then we started to notice birds dying. Just found dead on the floor, one every day or so. Some of them looked sickly and dumpy and skinny. Some looked like they had runny droppings.
We had MILLIONS of mice in the coop at that time, and they chewed a hole through the wall to the feeder and were living inside the feeder. I thought maybe the mice were spreading some kind of disease to them so we cleaned out the coop and plugged up all the holes where the mice were getting in. Now we have almost no mice, and although we have not noticed any birds dying or looking sick, the eggs have not improved.
A couple weeks after this someone suggested we switch to a grain diet instead of pellets. We bought stuff from the local egg production farm (they sell it by the ton) and were told it was 14% protien. Several friends of ours told us this was all they fed their chickens and they laid eggs like crazy on it. So we tried it. I don't like the way it looks; it looks like budgie seed! The chickens seem to like it but I don't think feed is the problem because we have been feeding layer pellets for years and never had a problem.
Our rooster was getting beat up really bad by the hens so we gave him away and got a meaner rooster, LOL. He is firmer with the hens and doesn't put up with their bullying. But we thought he was being too rough on them so we got rtid of him. Now we don't have a rooster at all.
We have tried everything - new feed, clean nests, getting rid of the mice, putting them in the dark vs keeping the lights on all day and night, lights on a timer, different roosters, no roosters, spraying them with lice spray to get rid of the parasites - and we are stumped. This has never happened before and we don't know what to do. If it doesn't pick up soon we will have to kill them all because we can't afford to feed them if they don't lay. We have 36 chicks comming in in May and are thinking we should just start fresh.
Anyone have any ideas what is wrong with our chickens?
We have had chickens for several years now and have never seen anything like this. It is normal for our chickens to slow down on the eggs when they are molting once or twice a year, and we go from about 60 eggs per day out of 80 birds to about 20. When they started this again in November we were not alarmed as we thought it was normal.
But it went on for several weeks, which turned into all winter, and a few weeks ago we started to get close to 30 a day and were thinking the molt was finally over, but that only lasted a few days and now we're down to 0-6 eggs per day out of 80 birds.
20 of the birds are about 8 or nine months old. Another 15 are on the older side - about 2.5 years. The rest are a little over one year old. They are mostly brown sex-links, a few are black (red rocks cross) and a few are white rock x white leghorn.
When they first began to molt, we turned the lights off and boarded up the windows for a couple weeks to initiate molt in all of them. Then we took the blkinders of the windows and put the lights back on a timer. Then we started to notice birds dying. Just found dead on the floor, one every day or so. Some of them looked sickly and dumpy and skinny. Some looked like they had runny droppings.
We had MILLIONS of mice in the coop at that time, and they chewed a hole through the wall to the feeder and were living inside the feeder. I thought maybe the mice were spreading some kind of disease to them so we cleaned out the coop and plugged up all the holes where the mice were getting in. Now we have almost no mice, and although we have not noticed any birds dying or looking sick, the eggs have not improved.
A couple weeks after this someone suggested we switch to a grain diet instead of pellets. We bought stuff from the local egg production farm (they sell it by the ton) and were told it was 14% protien. Several friends of ours told us this was all they fed their chickens and they laid eggs like crazy on it. So we tried it. I don't like the way it looks; it looks like budgie seed! The chickens seem to like it but I don't think feed is the problem because we have been feeding layer pellets for years and never had a problem.
Our rooster was getting beat up really bad by the hens so we gave him away and got a meaner rooster, LOL. He is firmer with the hens and doesn't put up with their bullying. But we thought he was being too rough on them so we got rtid of him. Now we don't have a rooster at all.
We have tried everything - new feed, clean nests, getting rid of the mice, putting them in the dark vs keeping the lights on all day and night, lights on a timer, different roosters, no roosters, spraying them with lice spray to get rid of the parasites - and we are stumped. This has never happened before and we don't know what to do. If it doesn't pick up soon we will have to kill them all because we can't afford to feed them if they don't lay. We have 36 chicks comming in in May and are thinking we should just start fresh.
Anyone have any ideas what is wrong with our chickens?
