Pulling straw out of nest boxes and now no eggs!

[aart]

Quote: Fixing a light and adding a light are very different.

They said they are 9 months...I had a 9 month old go into molt, hasn't laid an egg in 2 months...and I use lights.

 

[duluthralphie]

Fixing a light and adding a light are very different.

They said they are 9 months...I had a 9 month old go into molt, hasn't laid an egg in 2 months...and I use lights.

Wow.

I did not think they would molt until 18 months or so. I suppose it could be molt though. We have had weird weather here, extreme cold followed by extreme warmth and back again I wonder if that could affect them.

 

[aart]

Quote: They will do a full adult molt around 18 months, but I've read ..and now experienced... a partial molt under a year.

 

[Volcanic Egger]

The hens are only 9 months old. Half have never laid yet. The others started laying in Oct. The ones that stopped are EEs, CLs, and Welsummers. One BCM and one orpington are still laying albeit slowly. I won't do the light thing but it's funny that now that days are getting longer, they stopped laying. The only sign of lost feathering is on the saddles of the poor girls. My Lavender Orpington Rooster is a real big guy and is hard on the ladies.

 

[duluthralphie]

The hens are only 9 months old. Half have never laid yet. The others started laying in Oct. The ones that stopped are EEs, CLs, and Welsummers. One BCM and one orpington are still laying albeit slowly. I won't do the light thing but it's funny that now that days are getting longer, they stopped laying. The only sign of lost feathering is on the saddles of the poor girls. My Lavender Orpington Rooster is a real big guy and is hard on the ladies.

Interesting, My EE were the ones that shut down the most. I went from a dozen EE eggs to one every couple days, and they are losing some feathers too, I was told it was feather pulling, Here is the picture of what mine have lost.








I am getting a few EE eggs again but not many I thought I would be getting full amount in a week, because of my timer error.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

I have a flock of 16 hens and two roosters. Recently some of the hens started pulling all the straw out of the nest boxes even though it was put in there fresh, and this also coincided with the fact that most have stopped laying. Crazy chickens or something else? They all eat well and are active.

thankx

Usually, when I used straw, the birds spend the next 2 hours pulling all of it out of the boxes. I began to pay more attention to the straw and discovered that some bails have a lot more seed heads than others, and that is what the birds were sifting for. That may be what happened. This particular straw bale had more seed heads.

As to stopping laying suddenly....hmmmm....that can be a sign of something definitely off, like pests or disease...or they could be possibly going through a light molt. I've had birds do a partial molt at under a year, which is frustrating, but you'll see lose feathers here and there and I've always had that begin in October or November, when you'd expect a molt...not with the lengthening daylight.

Did you have a crazy change in weather? That can trigger a molt too.

Make sure there is no snicking, sneezing, ruffled feathers, runny noses...even ever so mild....as that could be a sign of either Infectious Bronchitis or Newcastle...and mild infections cause loss of laying with little else.

Otherwise, I bet it was a weird weather pattern change that possibly triggered a soft molt...and seed heads in the straw. (BTW...I changed to pine shavings as I got so tired of them pulling all the bedding out with straw...after they figured out from ONE straw bale that there COULD be seed heads...I couldn't keep straw in the coops.)

Lady of McCamley

 

[Volcanic Egger]

My orpington rooster had a cold or something a month ago so I administered tetracycline to the entire flock for two weeks. He was coughing but now he is fine and I detect no sneezing or coughing from the hens. My hens have the same feather loss as Dulu shows in the pics above but I'm pretty darn sure its from getting mounted regularly during the day. Do you think the tetracycline put them off the lay?

 

[Lady of McCamley]

My orpington rooster had a cold or something a month ago so I administered tetracycline to the entire flock for two weeks. He was coughing but now he is fine and I detect no sneezing or coughing from the hens. My hens have the same feather loss as Dulu shows in the pics above but I'm pretty darn sure its from getting mounted regularly during the day. Do you think the tetracycline put them off the lay?

No, I'm pretty sure the tetracyline won't have slowed egg production (although remember not to eat the eggs for 2 weeks after last administration)...BUT that "cold" a month ago may have been something that did go through the flock and that could be causing the drop in egg production now. When my flock had IB, it took a couple of weeks for egg production to really drop off...I thought, wow, these girls are so good they are laying through the virus...but no, it caught up and then they were off for about 2 months with barely an egg, slowly coming back to full production by 4 months.

Lady of McCamley

 

[duluthralphie]

This might seem weird, but I am noticing a lot of posts on a lot of different threads about young birds going into a molt or mini-molt as I call it this year. I have noticed my Sex link and EE are the most affected by it. I know up here we have had really wild weird weather this year, the stuff you get once or twice a decade. Early cold lots of snow, then a almost spring like warm up, no snow, and nasty bitter cold followed by more spring like weather.


It is as if we have had 3-4 cycles of fall-winter-spring. We are in "spring" again but headed cold soon..

There was a gal on the Minnesota thread just talking about her young birds molting now.

 

[Volcanic Egger]

All my hens are Meyers Hatchery birds. I wonder if there is any correlation.