My hens have stopped laying

[Tiffcat]

I started with 1 RIR Rooster and 5 RIR hens. When the hens started laying I was getting 4 to 5 eggs large tan a day. About 2 months ago, I had the dogs outside when the chickens were free ranging. My dogs have never attacked the chickens before, but they did this day. We lost one chicken in the attack and another hen lost a lot of feathers, but she survived. We read that the attack would probably put them off their laying. So we were down to 4 hens and we were getting 2 to 3 eggs a day about a week after the attack. I figured the one who lost a lot of feathers wouldn't produce for a while.

About 3 weeks after the attack, we introduced a Jersey Giant hen and a silkie hen and a silkie rooster to the coop. Everybody seemed to get along fine, but egg production stopped. I read that introducing new chickens to the coop would cause them to stop laying until they got used to each other. The JG was in the laying boxes quite a bit, but we never got a large egg from the boxes. We started getting a small, light tan egg that we assumed was the silkie's since the RIR's eggs had been large and we read that the JG's would be large also.

It has now been 5 weeks since we introduced the new JG and silkies to the coop, and we still only get 1 little egg a day. What gives?

 

[cypressdrake]

Feed them some laying pellets everyday until they start back , then you can cut em back to 50/50 with other feeds. Sometimes they get spooked and stop, but should have started back by now.

 

[YardBirdCountry]

I have a similar problem. I had 2 cinna queens, 2 RIRs, and 1 Jersey (all hens). They started laying and I was getting 3-4 eggs a day. I had a hawk kill one of my cinna queens. They slowed down for a couple weeks, but then I was still getting 3-4 eggs a day again. I added 3 hens to the flock (3 week old barred rocks), and around that time they slowed down to 2 eggs a day. Then they went down to where they are a day, only one egg a day, if anything (probably 5 eggs this week so far).

I don't see how and why adding little ones would stop the big ones from laying (the little ones stay out of their way, or they get pecked, in fact my big birds have been bullying them pretty badly sometimes)

I'm feeding them layer crumble, I am going to switch to layer pellets and see if that helps. (I thought it would be the same)

 

[YardBirdCountry]

My theory it is the change in weather and shorter days. I live in Georgia so it has not gotten too cold (but certainly colder than it was!). But the days are shorter and it is getting pretty chilly at night and in the mornings. (still low 80s in the day)

Have not seen any signs of molting, but I read that shorter days can slow down laying .