I think i messed up...

[KCGirl]

I have received so much great advice on here, but I tried something that I think backfired. Brought home new chicks for a broody mama. Kept them in kennel in hen house until too big, moved to Chicken Condo for over 3 months. Then, put them in with big girls with a kennel only they could get into for crumble, big girls still on layer.

Then, started mixing crumble with layer for all. I noticed egg laying went way down and thought it the stress of combined flocks maybe,?

Now, two of my 18 month Olds are behaving egg bound and one is eating the fluffy backside feathers off the other.

Does this just sound like a food issue? I've separated young from old with appropriate foods for each, and added crushed baked eggshells, oyster shells, and hard boiled eggs for the older ones.

The two that were staying close to both me and the ground with their hind quarters almost like consistently trying to push an egg also got sepatare warm soak baths. But I saw this today.

Thank you, wise ones!

Does it just sounds like I messed up with the food? Something more?

 

[FrostRanger]

Several things can cause reduced egg laying. First, they might be going into molt as it is about that time of year for it, could also be the stress of the new birds being added (chickens aren't fans of change). I think in your case it's a combination of the 2

Mixing the 2 feeds is not advised because the resulting feed will have too much calcium and too little protein for the chicks, you can actually just feed everyone chick starter as long as you provide crushed oyster shell on the side. As for the feather picking that might also be due to a lack of protein because feathers are mostly protein and because they're usually molting this time of year they need more protein than usual and layer feed usually has the bare minimum amount of protein. Egg laying probably won't pick back up until spring and because of that the amount of calcium in layer might be too much over the coming months so I would actually advise switching to either chick starter or all flock feed for the time being

As for the 2 egg bound hens give them a calcium citrate with d3 tablet every day for the next week or so in addition to what you're already doing

 

[KCGirl]

Several things can cause reduced egg laying. First, they might be going into molt as it is about that time of year for it, could also be the stress of the new birds being added (chickens aren't fans of change). I think in your case it's a combination of the 2

Mixing the 2 feeds is not advised because the resulting feed will have too much calcium and too little protein for the chicks, you can actually just feed everyone chick starter as long as you provide crushed oyster shell on the side. As for the feather picking that might also be due to a lack of protein because feathers are mostly protein and because they're usually molting this time of year they need more protein than usual and layer feed usually has the bare minimum amount of protein. Egg laying probably won't pick back up until spring and because of that the amount of calcium in layer might be too much over the coming months so I would actually advise switching to either chick starter or all flock feed for the time being

As for the 2 egg bound hens give them a calcium citrate with d3 tablet every day for the next week or so in addition to what you're already doing

Thank you so much, will do.