I'd definitely give her a little more time. Her next lay cycle should give you bigger eggs. You might want to do a thread search on Cayenne pepper. It's an old timer remedy to kick start a reluctant hen into a new lay cycle. Could just be coincidence, the results that people report, but it certainly won't hurt anything!
Katysue: you might want to contact a couple of hatcheries to have them send you some catalogs. That should give you fodder to drool over until spring. Money does not have to be a deterrent. On any given Saturday, I can go to our local transfer station and pick up enough building materials to get a good start on a coop. You can also check out "packing crates". I often see some that are about 3' x 6' on top of the burn pile at the dump. Culled lumber at the lumber stores is sold for a fraction of the cost of premium lumber, and often not much better! Doors, windows, and building supplies are cheap, and paint can be had at the Habitat store for $2/gal., and hardware can be picked up at Mardens by the pound, also Mardens and the Habitat store sell hinges and fasteners (for doors and windows) for a fraction of the cost if you were to buy at Lowes. If you use salvaged wood, paint will cover a multitude of sins! It all depends on what kind of coop you want, and how long you want to wait to start your chicken enterprise. Your time won't be wasted if you spend the winter researching, and gathering materials for a spring build. (That's what I ended up doing.)
MeMama3: Your chicken gruel sounds lovely. Nice, high protein mix. One of the chicken books I read last winter had a formula for adjusting protein in a chicken feed mix, and cat food was one of the high protein additives that was recommended.
Jazor, I understand your concern re: cat food if you're going for a organic approach. The other day, I took a very organic dead bird (one of the cat's lawn ornaments sans head) away from one of the pullets. She had a grip on it like a dog on a bone. However, the odor that was coming from that morsel was enough to gag a house fly! I doubt that there's any more junk in prepared cat food than there is in a bag of prepared chicken feed. I do wish I was set up to make my own organic feed, but I think the cost would be prohibitive... My main objection to prepared chicken food is that it's most likely stale by the time it gets to the consumer. But, I'd prefer to let my chickens have some cat food instead of the ripe left overs from the cat's most recent kill!! I just wish my chickens would leave my snakes and frogs alone!!
