our girls stopped laying...

[nchuntington]

we're very new to this fresh eggs idea, and we got 6 chicks this past spring. 3 turned out to be roosters, so we got more older hens so we could tell they were hens. we now have 8 hens and 1 rooster and were getting about 3 eggs a day for a short time. then about 9 weeks ago they stopped laying. I got excited when I found 1 egg the other day, but now still nothing. We've tried them in a smaller coop (which they seemed to like) and a larger coop, with the rooster and without the rooster, and still nothing. There was one side of the coop where the original 3 would lay, all together, in one nest. When we added 3 more hens, they stopped laying but only for a short time. Then we get 2 more young girls, and they finally started laying, but none of them lay consistently or often. I've discovered that after I put fresh hay in the original "laying" section of the nest, the new girls throw the hay out, so there is no nest to lay on. So my question(s) is this?

Do we feed them something besides the chicken feed?
Did we make a problem by having more than one breed together?
Do I make chicken stew and start over? (just kidding on this one, I could never eat something I've named and carried around. They are mostly quite tame).
Thanks,
Debbi

 

[AlienChick]

This time of year (with the shorter daylight hours) chickens tend to stop or slow down their laying.
They "rest" for a while. Egg laying is hard business.
Also, this time of year a lot of chickens go through a molting period and they do not lay during this time.
Egg laying will gradually pick up, but right now I would not expect too much from them.

 

[Bogtown Chick]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/chickens-winter-egg-laying-and-lighting

Alien Chick said it all. Their biological clocks are rigged with the daylight hours and Mother nature has it set up so that they lay when it would make for a chick to survive the "elements" best. Here is a very nice complete article on our common conundrum this time of year.

If this is your chickens' first year they should not moult. But prepare yourself for next fall and another reason for not laying eggs.