Ladies seem to be stopping laying eggs

[States family]

hey everyone! I'm kinda perplexed! We recently had baby chicks about 24 of them. Everything has been pretty smooth with raising them until now it seems my original 27 ladies have gotten slow with their laying eggs? We used to get 12-21 eggs per day, and the past week we have only been getting 9-11 eggs per day. The hens we have are about 3 years old with the exception of 5 of which are only about a year old. A few times we got little tiny eggs (about 3 total) that were honestly the size of robins eggs and no bigger than a Ping pong ball. Does that mean they are retiring hens? The numbers are saying that they're not laying anymore but shouldn't they lay for a few more years? And after the chicks hatched some of our ladies went broody, wch we know we don't want more chicks at this time so we keep her off of the eggs. We didn't think having chicks would make the whole flock go crazy!lol! Thanks in advance!

 

[emma p]

At three years old they will stop laying as much. I do not think it would affect the amount of eggs you are getting that much but it could. Have you been having extreme weather of any sort? The tiny eggs sound like they might be coming from younger chickens, pullets will often lay small eggs. did you recently introduce more chickens? They could be stressed out about something.

 

[States family]

The only addition was the new chicks, we just introduced them to the flock about 2 weeks ago. The chicks typically stay with each other though. That may be the problem. We started with the 5 young chickens and they were laying all normal eggs, then got 23 more chickens that were all older, we haven had any small eggs for a few weeks but today I got a monster goose egg from one of them. Which happens at least 1x every month. They're free range since there are so many, we don't want them to feel crowded so they have run of about .5 acres or more. We talked about making their pen larger, do you think that may help? I'm not seeing any stress signs like fighting or anything ?

 

[emma p]

It does not sound like it is too crowded... But maybe someone else could give some input. Sorry I am trying to figure out some lice issues with my flock and do not want to give bad advice...

 

[States family]

no problem anything helps honestly. We were thinking about making the run bigger just in case they are stressed it could be that they're getting older idk lol its all guesses on this end I'm no expert Tomorrow we're getting rid of 1 rooster and a hen plus 7 chick's. That might help. Lol! Let's hope!

 

[emma p]

Good luck! hope you they get back to normal quickly!