Need help, stopped laying...egg binding...causation?

[johnny71]

Hello,

Excuse this long thesis, just want to explain where I've come from in my chicken raising. I've been reading this forum for awhile, first post and hate to have to start out with this one. I just started raising chickens last summer and everything was going swell. I have 8 chickens, 4 Buff Orpingtons, 4 Plymouth Rocks, all the nicest and docile chickens I've seen. They were laying 6-8 eggs a day during the summer. This was on a commercial chicken feed (buckeye brand), with freely available grit and oyster shell + vegetable/fruit kitchen scraps and canned sardines once a week. Then towards fall I started reading more and became concerned with what I was feeding my chickens. After all I won't touch processed foods myself and reading the ingredients on the bag made me wonder if there was a better way. So after "researching" I created a recipe of bulk grains and field peas that equated to 16% protein and started sprouting and feeding these grains to them. BTW the ingredients in my feed are: Sprouted; Field Peas, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, Wheat berries, Race horse oats and Millet. They took to the sprouted grains well. It was around this time (Octoberish) that I also noticed a decline in their egg production. I did some reading and read that light cycles/temperature/molting all cause a decrease in egg production so I didn't worry about it. After doing some further reading and debating I decided I wasn't going to force them to produce more by heating their coop and putting artificial lighting in their coop. I started adding liquid vitamin D3 (~1000IU) to their drinking water for a VitD3 boost in the winter, and moistened alfalfa pellets once and awhile for greenage. When it started to get really cold I had to just crack their grains because the sprouted grain would freeze outside. So I was getting maybe 1-2 eggs a day and I was fine with that.

Now it is starting to warm up outside and increasing in daylight and egg production just stopped in the last couple days. I then noticed one of my chickens acting goofy like it was trying to lay and couldn't, with its tail feathers tucked down. Did some reading on here and it matched egg binding. So I went out and held my chicken over some steam and used coconut oil on its vent. I checked on it a few hours later and it is back to normal, no egg was found though. Today she is still acting normal, however ANOTHER chicken started acting like it was bound. I repeated the same procedure but I'm now confused what is causing this to happen.

What am I doing wrong? Everything points to diet, specifically calcium but I'm providing free choice oyster shell and alfalfa is high in calcium...I'm about to go out and just buy commercial feed again but if other people are having success raising their flocks on these kind of diets why am I failing?

Thanks for baring with me I'm a little bit shaken.

 

[johnny71]

*bump*

 

[Sarevan]

Your birds are doing what mine did, some totally stopped laying over the winter. Now that it is warming up and more sunlight they are starting to lay again.

They had eggs that looked like eggs when they first started laying, wrinkled, odd shapes, even a monster of an egg. 4-5 acted like they were egg bound, I did vent checks by gloving up and inserting finger into vent to feel for an egg. I could feel an egg but egg was still well back and soft feeling. The one hen took 4 days for her egg to be layed! She wasn't egg bound either, the shell ended up being fairly hard and a double yolker.

When they started acting this way I mixed in dissolved calcium tablets to the wet mash I made of their feed. I did this every other day for a couple weeks. Now after hitting a year old all 12 of them are now laying regularly, I get 10-12 eggs a day. 2 of the girls take a day off every other day.

Over the winter I had them on a high protein diet to help with the cold. As things warmed up I switched them back to layer feed with oyster and grit as free choice. They may take a bit to get back into laying again, mine are also dropping the extra feathers they grew in for cold weather.

*** I would check them over for mites and lice, and worm them with Valbazen. Parasites can mess up the laying cycle too *** Good luck with your hens!

 

[johnny71]

Thanks for sharing your story, I feel a little better now! I did notice some of them are losing their feathers near the neck area, I wonder if it is a "spring" molt. Thanks for the tips I'll check them over for mites and look into the parasite thing.