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Hi!
Hi all,
We are new to chickens and got our 5 "ladies" last fall when they were 8 weeks old. One "lady" started crowing and being VERY aggressive so of course now they have a man with them. OK, all was well and the girls started laying about Feb. but now have gone on strike. They stopped laying about 2 weeks ago and we have tried to figure out all the reasons. Any thoughts? One comment is that we went away for 3 days, came back and the laying stopped. We're stumped. We found one broken egg one day but no other signs that something else had got in and was taking eggs.
Thanks

Maybe they are hiding the eggs from you? Ours do that
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Our egg production stopped, and there were NO eggs for a whole day (Unheard of for us, even in the winter!) then we found a whole nest of eggs, and I mean FULL of eggs too, hidden between the wall and the dust-bathing bin and the wall of the coop, just out of sight.​
 
Thanks for all your suggestions. We caught 1 HUGE rat and a gopher this morning in traps. Maybe that is part of the absence of eggs but now figuring out how to keep those guys out of the coop is the hard part. We have the coop in the barn (with a raised wood floor) but the girls go in & out to an enclosed run in the day. We figure the predators must come in on the ramp up to the coop. We tried closing the girls in for part of the day but that didn't seem to work. Will keep you posted.
 
I'm wondering about another possibility, do you think any of your chickens got a taste for eggs from that broken one. It's very possible your chickens are eating them.
 

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