Leghorn not laying as much

[farmerChef]

I have noticed over the past two weeks my leghorn Lucy has slowed down in egg laying. I was getting 4 or 5 eggs in a row, but now i'm only getting 1 or 2 between days off. Shes not acting sickly or anything, and all off my other hens are laying fine. I thinking maybe it has to do with the weather. Its about 40 at night and in the morning, and then it heats up to 80 during the day.

 

[Judy]

Mine are slowly increasing the number they lay now. Molting, maybe? Or look at anything else that might have changed. Or simply at her age, maybe.

 

[myloveforchickens]

She could be bleaching.............. How old is she by the way? They'll stop laying for a while if they are bleaching...................................

 

[farmerChef]

I don't know how old she is, she came from my cousin, maybe 1.5-2 years? She started laying(again) about 2.5 months ago. I don't think she's molting, no loose feathers around the pen/coop. The past 2.5 months, she's been laying 4 or 5 in a row before taking a day off. My chickens stay in a pen/coop 24/7 so she can't be hiding them, there are WAY too many flying predators, see at least one a day. I don't think anyone is eating/busting eggs either, because its just her thats slowing, and the nest isn't sticky.

What is bleaching?

 

[myloveforchickens]

Bleaching -

Bleaching of Yellow Coloring
Body Part Time After First Egg
Vent 4-7 days
Eye Ring 7-10 days
Ear Lobes (white leghorn) 14-21 days
Base of Beak 4-6 weeks
Tip of Beak 6-8 weeks
Bottom of Feet 8-10 weeks
Front of Shanks 15-18 weeks
Rear of Shanks 20-24 weeks
Hock Joint about 24 weeks

As the hen produces eggs, she diverts yellow color from certain portions of her body and deposits it into the yolks of the eggs. Bleaching of various parts of the hen's body is a very good indicator of the time the hen has been in production. The loss of color is easily seen in yellow-skinned breeds such as the white leghorns and birds on diets containing sources of the coloring agents. In the white-skinned breeds the bleaching effect is less pronounced and more difficult to detect.

The vent is the first site of color bleaching. When a pullet begins to lay, the color fades from the vent within the first week of lay. A good producing hen will have a white, pink, or bluish-white vent.

The eye rings start to bleach soon after the vent and are usually completely bleached within the first two weeks of lay. In leghorn strains the eye ring bleaching is closely followed by bleaching of the ear lobes.

The beak is the first significant portion of the body generally used to judge the bleaching effect of egg production. The beak will lose its color, progressing from the base to the tip. It takes from four to eight weeks for the beak to bleach after the hen begins laying eggs. The beak will often have a striped appearance then. The lower beak loses color more rapidly than the upper beak. If is often used as a bleaching indicator when the upper beak has a heavy brown or black pigment. A hen whose beak is fully pigmented has not laid for at least four weeks.

Bleaching of pigment from the shanks is a good indicator of a long production time. The pigment bleaches from the shanks in this order: bottom of feet, front of shank, back of shank, and hock joint. The shanks have no coloring between two and six months after the onset of continuous lay.

When the hen ceases to lay, the body parts are recolored in the same order as they were bleached, with the vent first and the shanks last. The speed at which the color returns depends on the type of feed and the state of the bird's health, but it usually returns in about half the time required to bleach.


That's what happened to my two hens when I began to notice they weren't laying. It happened right after they stopped molting.

And she may be just getting old- chickens really only live for about four years or so. And if something happened to her with out you knowing, she will stop laying for a while. The stress of what happened will cause the laying to stop and she will begin to force molt.

How many birds do you have?

Sry if I can't be much more help then this!

 

[farmerChef]

She's in a pen with 4 other hens and a roo