New birds in the flock will cause stress. Stress stops ovulation.
We never heard how old the original hens were.
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This is the right time of year for them to stop laying if they hatched before this year. They normally molt the second autumn and each thereafter.
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Hi, I wrote back in September saying my hens are still not laying eggs, we ended up giving one of the roosters away and now I only have one roosters and my girls still won't lay, some of the hens are about a year old and others are maybe like 3 or 4 years old, before the roosters came I was getting atleast 7 to 9 eggs a day and now nothing.. Can someone help me ..
I gave you the likely reasons in the previous posts. 3-4 year old hens will surely be molting this time of year. The year old ones will be as well. They will not lay a lump of 6 grams of protein each day while simultaneously growing a brand new winter down coat that is 93% protein. They won't lay at all until that process is complete. This also coincides with some of the shortest days of the year. This is the perfect storm to stop ovulation - molt plus short days.
In particular, days are getting shorter. The retina transmits information about light/dark exposure to the pineal gland.
Light exposure to the retina is first relayed to the nucleus of the hypothalamus, an area of the brain that coordinates biological clock signals. Fibers from there descend to the spinal cord and ultimately project to the superior cervical ganglia, from which neurons ascend back to the pineal gland. The pineal gland transduces signals from the nervous system into a hormonal signal.
The gland produces serotonin and subsequently melatonin, a hormone that affects the gonads for sperm production in males and ovulation in females. An increase in melatonin causes the gonads to become inactive. As photoperiod in relation to day vs. night is the most important clue for animals to determine season. As it lengthens, the gonads are rejuvenated. The duration of melatonin secretion each day is directly proportional to the length of the night because of the pineal gland's ability to measure daylength. Besides reproduction, it also affects sleep timing and blood pressure regulation.
Your older birds and likely the younger ones won't lay until after the winter solstice when days start to get longer.
Or you could add a light on a timer to gradually increase daylength buy starting it several minutes earlier every few days. Those that have recovered from molt will begin laying after the melatonin is decreased. That is usually in 10 days to 2 weeks depending on your lighting program.
In subsequent years, you can store eggs toward the end of summer to get you through the dearth of late autumn/early winter.
For further reading and a better understanding I offer the following links.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16687306
http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/avian/pfs14.htm
http://umaine.edu/publications/2227e/
http://www.hyline.com/aspx/redbook/redbook.aspx?s=4&p=23
Other reasons your hens may stop laying.
http://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/450/several-reasons-why-your-hens-may-stop-laying-eggs/
and welcome to BYC!
