I'm so depressed

[rancher hicks]

Quote:
Sounds like you've resigned yourself to them not laying. That is not allowed. Keep investigating til you find the reason.

"Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly,, hens gotta lay or she gonna die."

 

[Tamrajh]

I hadn't really resigned myself to that, I just wanted to take some time off from worrying about it and being so frustrated. I'm better now and the girls have enjoyed having some time to run around in the pen instead of in just their run and coop.

The pen is about 100' x 75' so they have plenty of room to investigate. Unfortunately, we also have geese and goats in that area so there's not a whole lot of green stuff growing there for the girls to pick at.
How do I worm them? I thought DE did that? I have a 50lb bag of DE now. Am I going to have DE forever now?

 

[EggSpudition]

I'm not sure of the ramifications. .. but I got advice to give red pepper flakes mixed in with the feed. I tried it and two days later my e.e. was laying again

 

[rancher hicks]

I'm glad your doing better cuz I know the feeling. I've got some bald birds and I bought some "No Pick" stuff for $16 and I have no idea if it's worked or not so I bought some "blue kote". I now have blue chickens running around the yard like savages.
The weather here is yuk and it rained again last night.
I have 4 special dels and one is broody the othe three only laid one egg the last two days. I have made some changes as they are in with some new young pullets so that may be the problem. Or I've got some grower in the feeder as that was the pen for the young ones so I've been giving them a seperated bin of layer.
How do you feed a mixed flock of different aged birds?
Please see my comment as encouragement. I always want the best for my back yard chickens friends. We are a society unto our selves. Lord knows I've wanted to get rid of all my birds many times.
I can't imagine anyone having to buy chicks as I've just gave away chicks of various breeds. And a nice hen my DB left in my garage in a box. I've never heard of a stray chicken but that' s what she was in the heart of Syracuse. I live outside the city.

So remember we are here for you and I really meant the comment as encouragement.

I think I"m learning that pure breeds are what we've got and they don't lay as often as "hybrids". When you figure that a breed may only lay 250 eggs per year that doesn't translate to an egg a day. There are different schools of thought on how much each breed will lay.

Wishing you the best

Rancher

 

[trunkman]

I noticed in one of your posts you mentioned you had some 14 week old pullets, when did you introduce them to the flock and is that when the hens stop laying? I introduced 15 chicks to my flock of 5 hens that were laying 30 eggs a week and now I they lay an average of 1 egg a day. I introduce the chicks 8 weeks ago and for 8 weeks now I'm still waiting for more than one egg a day. So it may be the new pullets that's the problem.. Hope this helps.

 

[Jaguaress]

Quote:
How much red pepper flakes did you add to how much feed?

Some chickens like it spicy!

Edited for spelling errors, though as tired as I am, there are probably more. lol

 

[Siler]

It sounds like you're doing everything you can really. Mine can vary too. Every once in a while I'll change things up outside. I used to collect the eggs every single morning when I let them out and didn't seem to get anymore during the day so I started leaving them in the nest until night. Well one of my Austrolorps ended up going broody and staying on the eggs. She doesn't allow anyone else to sit on the nest so in the morning I take the eggs from her nest and put them on the other side of the nesting box(it's about 24X36 with a divider in the middle). I ended up getting more eggs per day. They never want to have 1 nest each, but if they see someone else found a good spot then they'll lay too.

As for the water bucket I just use a 5 gallon bucket we cut down to about 1/3 and they drink from that. The duck we have likes to swim in it so we put in a tall rock we found outside that keeps him from jumping in.

I hadn't thought about neighbor kids that could be stealing them as well. You could try a padlock or even a game camera. My father-in-law recently bought a used one for about $35 that takes pics with or without the flash. He caught pics of the deer out back with them. He even used it to get a pic of neighbor kids that broke into the house and garage.

Could it possibly be that some of the table scraps are too fatty? I had wondered that myself and so I asked that my sister-in-law stop bringing over old pizza, chicken nuggets, and fries. The girls started laying more eggs. I'm not sure if that was a coincidence or not because just days later I found out that I had Infectious Bronchitis spreading through my flock. I was having all the symptoms like sneezing, bumps on eggs, holes in eggs, eggs without shells, deep ridges on eggs, etc. I had every symptom. I even had one where her comb turned almost white so I brought her inside and nursed her back to health. She didn't lay an egg for a week and a half. All are back to normal now and I get anywhere from 4-8 eggs a day out of 9 hens.

Perhaps try to see who is laying what eggs. There's an instruction here on the forum how to insert dye into the vent and find out who is laying and narrow down your problem hens. Oh and I swear it, but when I talk to my chickens often they tend to lay more eggs. You can add me to the crazy chicken lady thread now.

I call my girls brats from time to time because they can be so fickle.

 

[Tamrajh]

Well letting them out for a few days seems to have brightened things up with them. We went from 1 egg a day to 5 eggs a day! Still not up to par, but it's getting much better and that's what counts. I know it varies from day to day since not everyone lays every day but really felt it was unreasonable for one one hen to lay an egg out of that many hens.
I'm going to start letting them out when I get home from work until bedtime. Perhaps that will continue to provide them with the encouragement to lay more.
Even the man I supplement mine with isn't getting many eggs anymore. I bought him out one time and he says he still hasn't been able to build up a supply since then.
Thanks for seeing me through the dark days. I really appreciate you all rallying around me. Seems silly really now to be so upset over eggs.
I added the pullets to the flock a while ago, so that's not what's caused the disturbance.

 

[felidaet]

Mine have dropped off significantly too. A couple of months ago I was getting an average of 12 eggs a day from 15 (1 year old) layers! That number gradually dropped down to an average of about 6 a day a couple of weeks ago. The last few days I got 8 - 9. Today I got 10. I am blaming it at least partly on the weather. May was one of the wettest in history for us. And we have already broken for the most rain ever in the month of June. We have finally had 3 sunny days in a row and it looks like egg production is going up finally.