Background... In November I received a 'Rainbow layer' bundle from McMurray, I ended up with 26 happy healthy chickens and only 1 rooster. In late March my mother took her 'half' of the girls, 8 of them, one welsummer, one jersey giant, one barred rock and the rest easter eggers. I kept the rest, 1 arcona, 2 jersey giants, 1 barred rock, 3 welsummers and the rest easter eggers and the stupid rooster. Starting mid-April her welsummer, barred rock and 2 of the easter eggers started laying, at this point she thinks all 8 of them are laying (she has 13 older RIR so she is entirely sure anything not brown is the youngins) My share of the chickens, 18, none of them are laying, not one. The 4 girls I had previously are still laying at regular frequency, but none of the young ones have started. What kind of environmental differences could be causing a delay? We have similar coops / quantity of chickens / pasture area and we both have 1 rooster. Her chickens do have access to her horse barn, so she claims it's the super nutritious horse poop that is making hers lay sooner and maybe I need to 'fertilize' my chickens too.. lol.
I would say diet. Have you both been using the same brand and formula of chicken feed? Do you both free feed? Do either flocks get more scratch, that lowers the over all protein in the diet? Or scraps that raise or lower the protein percentage in the diet? If you've both been feeding the same chicken feed, then it would be something they're getting from being around the horses. Either something the horses eat that they scavenge or grubs/insects from the horse poop.
