No Eggs Whatsoever

[north_north_west]

Greetings, all you chicken experts

My problem is that we have gotten no eggs whatsoever in about six weeks. We have three chickens (two Australorps and a Wynandotte) (we used to have four, but our Rhode Island Red went missing one day, alas) and we live in upstate-ish NY (where it gets cold but not that cold). Round about October, they started to molt, and I think they are mostly done, but since they started, they haven't laid an egg. Is this within the range of normal?

They are a little more than a year old (hatched last May - maybe 18months) and they were doing well through the summer, 3 or 4 eggs a day.

Thank you!

 

[BarnyardChaos]

Yes, perfectly normal. Chickens frequently (not all, but some or most) will stop laying or severely slow when the daylight hours are less than 12. Once light increases in the spring they should start laying again.
You could add supplemental light, just a lightbulb will do, to give them a few more hours of daylight - but also consider that Mother Nature designed chickens this way so they can conserve energy and protein to get through molt and cold weather.

I have about 21 layers in my flock - and I'm lucky to get 6 or 8 eggs a day at the moment.

 

[azygous]

This is totally normal. Laying requires that a hen be exposed to at minimum twelve hours, ideally fourteen, of light daily. As @BarnyardChaos points out, you may supplement light to get the hens laying again. But molt and producing eggs simultaneously is an awful drain on energy reserves. I would supplement light until you've seen that the hens have all completed molt.

 

[north_north_west]

Ah thank you. Well, its not nice to fight mother nature, so I won't. But eggs are $4 a dozen!

 

[Auntiejessi3]

If you have the room, you could consider adding 2-3 pullets every spring and you should have eggs through the winter. Eggs are ridiculously expensive right now, so I hear what you're saying.

 

[north_north_west]

Just to ask - will these guys return to laying eggs in the summer?

 

[Tonyroo]

They will start when your spring comes around.

 

[azygous]

Chickens have a pineal gland in their brains, as humans do. This gland detects light, and it's extremely sensitive to amounts of light. It's what regulates our sleep patterns and syncs sleep with wakefulness. This gland in chickens does that, but it also dictates to the endocrine system when to begin laying. Even a blind chicken reacts to light through the pineal gland.

Chickens, having been around for thousands of years, have perfected their reproduction to coincide with spring when tender shoots are coming up that will feed their offspring. That's when most wild animals reproduce, and it takes advantage of this appearance of food in spring to feed their young.

After we reach December 21, the sun will then begin to shift north again. This results in incrementally longer days. The pineal gland senses this and sends a signal to the hen's ovary to begin releasing yolks. It takes around two or three weeks after solstice for the hen's reproductive system to get the message from the pineal gland and to start egg production.

You can expect eggs to appear again by the middle of January, and by February for sure.

 

[BarnyardChaos]

Wow. Thank you for the info! I love learning WHY things happen the way they do.

 

[aart]

They should start laying after the Winter Solstice...
...and likely before we get to 14 hours of daylight.
Whether the daylight is increasing or decreasing can be more important than the total day length.
How soon after remains to be seen.