No eggs for a week.

[bobthechicken]

So I built a coop that has a window and is insulated for my chickens. This one is 7x7x8 ft and the old one that was 3x3x3. This batch of chickens is 8 and a half months and they spent the first 6 in the small one and free ranging then I moved them to the big one and they still free range. Up to about a week and a half ago I finally started to get 5 to 7 eggs a day from the nine of them. Then it started to get cold, it snowed and we got this inversion where I live so it stays cold in the valley, and all the snow is melting very slowly. Anyway where I am going with this is they don't come out of the coop at all. After it snowed their egg laying decreased to a few a day and then it stopped. Now they just sit in the coop all day. I don't think I insulated it enough though because the water is still freezing pretty good every night. Is there anything I can do to help them to lay again like a light or heat the coop some way or am I just going to have to wait for the day's to get longer again, and what is the problem?

 

[Kelsie2290]

You probably want to try putting a light in, chickens usually need 14+ hours of light to lay, though young ones will sometimes lay through their first winter without it. Cold usually doesn't have any effect unless it is really extreme. The lack of daylight combined with the weather change not letting them range like they used to is probably making them unhappy and stressed in general, and that will shut down egg laying. Good article on light management for layers.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/tristate_organic/poultry_2007/Light Management.pdf