How Long Should I Give Her?

[Beakner]

I picked up two new Golden Comet hens last week, giving me four Gold Comet hens in total, the extent of my brood, and after one week, one of the two new hens has yet to lay a single egg.

The other hen laid an egg two hours after her arrival, and has laid an egg every day since.

The age of both hens is 13 months.

How long should I give her to lay before I need to consider other options for her?

Can anyone hazard a guess why there has been an issue so far--especially since she has tried establishing herself as the dominant hen among the four?

 

[swordgeek]

The poor girl! A week without laying and you're considering "other options"?

She'll need time to settle into her new home. With the stress of moving, it's no wonder she stopped laying. I'm more surprised that the other hen is still laying! Even women's monthly cycles get interrupted by stress. I remember completely missing my period when I moved to my new home years ago - and I was on the pill, for heaven's sake. That's the only time that ever happened.

My girls seem prone to interruptions in their laying routine whenever something new happens in their lives. When I expanded the coop, they didn't know quite what to make of all the extra space, and it took almost a week before they would lay in the nest boxes again, and eggs were intermittent. When I rearranged the coop and built an enclosure for new birds (though the new ones weren't even there yet), their normal laying schedule was messed up. When the new pullets appeared, the existing birds laid inconsistently for several days, and rarely where they were supposed to. It all settled down after awhile.

Meanwhile, when my house chicken was very sick a few months ago (impacted crop, and an infection), she stopped laying altogether for about 3 weeks, even though she was only sick for a week. The vet assured me that the stress of being ill, and having to be force-fed meds, was too much for her to handle - but she'd go back to normal before long. We were so thrilled when she finally started up again! A month later, we moved her back outside... and the cycle got screwy again.

Give her time. A week isn't very long.

 

[Beakner]

Quote:
I had no intentions of doing anything within the next week; my question was simply, "How long?" meaning "How long will enough time have passed before I can say, 'You know, it' may fail to work out with her.'"


Another thing that has affected my view here is this: all my hens, from the day I brought all of them to their new home, have laid without fail. The hen in question is the first that has produced nothing, well, nothing except pecking the feathers off my other hens.

Let me rephrase my question: When should I at least expect her to start laying?

Since she was in a pen with about a hundred or so hens and a rooster when I picked her up, is it possible she was broody?