I just don't know - puzzled about egg production.

[BarneyNCyndi]

We have 5 beautiful girls. 2 buffs, 2 barred rock and one RIR. 1 RIR passed away months ago. Egg production has dropped from 5 to 4 last week to 3 thru the weekend to 1 today.

Here are the changes. On mothers day, i gave each a bath- winter caked butt just isn't fashionable. I used puppy oatmeal shampoo and let them air dry in the sun.

We have been having a problem with rats liking chicken feed and their mealworms treat ball. We are using snap traps and are certain hasn't one gotten in our coop at night. We have a sliding door which closes the girls in. There have been no sign of rat droppings when I clean out the coop which is every week. We have seen them in the run. The girls are free to free-range or eat their crumbles.

Today, I kept them in the run and coop until 1:30pm. Early day at work for me and we got just the one egg. I recently cleaned and changed the nesting boxes too.

We have been pushing the girls (not all) into the coop at night. It has been in the 50s and they love their roost in the run.

Any ideas? I have looked under every bush in the yard and no eggs.

Oh, one more thing my girls will turn 1the first two weeks of July.

 

[silkiecuddles]

Are any of them molting? Despite having rat problems too in my silkie/pigeon coop, I'm getting around 2 eggs from my 4 silkie hens daily (but two silkies have chicks and silkies aren't great layers).
Do you know the cause of death to your RIR?

 

[bigbruce]

Sometimes upsetting them doing things like catching them or other things like giving them a bath will slow production for a while.In 40+years of raising chickens I have never bathed one.Make sure treats are no more than 10% of daily diet.They need a quality layer feed

 

[BarneyNCyndi]

We didn't do an autopsy on our RIR but that was 3 months ago. We sent stool samples to the vet on her and on the others too. All tests came back normal. We cleaned and sanitized the coop weekly. Back then, we had a mold issue in the straw which is my only thought of what might of happened to her. In the past 3 weeks, we have dropped down from 4 to 1.

 

[BarneyNCyndi]

My girls are still on crumbles but prefer the yards treasures. I just got a 5 pound bag of scratch to see it that might be better. We buy a treat ball every other month or so and regularly give them a head of cabbage. I love to see the cabbage art that is the empty core. That is usually 1per week along with some organic collard greens; two bunches. About every other week or so the girls get tofu and yogurt. That's it for my treats. Do you think that is too much? They still go through 3-4 pounds of crumbles a week.

 

[Nupe]

The scratch isn't going to help. If you give them too much it will be worse. Since they prefer foraging, are you supplementing calcium? Keep a separate container of oyster shell on the side and they will take what they need. It sounds like all your extras, could be diluting their nutrition.

 

[BarneyNCyndi]

Yes, we have oyster flakes in a feeder plus we give the fresh clam shells after the clams visit the dinner table.

How do you know they are starting to molt? We haven't seen a lot of feathers and the picture above is from Mother's Day. We pinned them to keep them in the sun to dry.

 

[junebuggena]

The oyster shell should be in a separate feeder and made available all day long.

 

[BarneyNCyndi]

We have a "C" shaped yard. Should I put an oyster feeder at the other end of the yard? We have plenty bought 50# bag figure it will last 100 years.

We will keep them in the run all day tomorrow and let them out when we get home from work.