not laying

[apple194]

do the hens stop laying in the winter, also one of them died the other day, i have them in a shed with a window open slightly, i let them out at 8 am and they r in the garden till it goes dark, then i leave the fluorescent light on till about 11 pm wen we go to bed, please advice

 

[sumi]

The shorter light hours in winter does make most hens stop laying and some of them will also molt now. When they molt they will need all the protein they get to grow new feathers, so they won't lay during the molt either. They need about 14 hours of light to keep them in production.
Can you tell us a bit more about the hen that died? Did she show any signs that anything is amiss beforehand?

 

[apple194]

she just started with her head dropping, and she let me pick her up and stroke her, but i put her by the food and water, but she wasnt interested, to be honest i thought she had flu, but the other 5 are okay, we clean the boxes out every day and put fresh straw in them, wondering also, why they kept laying in one box, we had six big boxes for them, but they pooed in the other five

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

she just started with her head dropping, and she let me pick her up and stroke her, but i put her by the food and water, but she wasnt interested, to be honest i thought she had flu, but the other 5 are okay, we clean the boxes out every day and put fresh straw in them, wondering also, why they kept laying in one box, we had six big boxes for them, but they pooed in the other five

I don't know why your hen died, but I will say that the behavior of laying all the eggs in one box is very, very common. As long as they aren't breaking the eggs getting in and out of that one box, it's not a big deal.

We had one hen randomly die for no apparent reason this year. As far as we can tell, everyone else is perfectly healthy. <shrug>