Really??!!Only one egg!!

[iplsmama]

Uggh, I'm this close to putting a light on these girls. I'm really bummed at my egg count lately! We only got one egg today and in previous days have been getting two pretty consistently for about 2 wks. I have 10 hens!! That's ridiculous! Now granted my older hens that will be 2 in March I think they have just gone through molt. That takes out 3 hens. The rest will be one in March and really haven't been the good layers I expected. I have 2 Leghorns (come on they should be almost daily layers), 1 Polish, 1 Hamburg, 1 Sumatra (just learned that, I love BYC), 1 EE, and 1 mystery chicken that is solid black with a white face (Minorca, Whitefaced Spanish

??). I am bummed and actually only have 2 eggs in my fridge. We love eggs and I have 4 kids so we go through a lot of them. Tell me when they will pick back up...comfort me, something!!

The most we ever got on one day was 9 and that only happened once, usually it has been 4 or 5 per day

.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

Where are you located?

 

[iplsmama]

Texas, unseasonably cold here too so I'm sure that is some of it. The thing is they have not been superior layers before the cold weather. I thought I would be covered up in eggs with 10 hens.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

You could add light if you wanted to. But personally, I let the chickens be who they are. They'll lay when they are ready.

The cold snap in TX shouldn't really be affecting them. They aren't tropical birds. We had negative 18 last night, and today I got 7 eggs out of 10 girls.

I have found that the more corn I give my girls, and the more upheaval they experience, the less they lay. That's just my findings.

Perhaps check their protein level ... make sure you're feeding mostly laying feed. Fresh clean water. Nesting boxes with a fake egg in them. Could they be laying where you don't see the egg? We once found an egg on the ground, under a shelf.

Just a few thoughts.

 

[GoldenCometLady]

I personally see nothing wrong with adding light to get the eggs you need
You have chickens to lay eggs. You have children that want eggs.
Why keep paying for feed and still not getting the eggs you want.
Check the protien on your feed and add some extra protien to jump
start them.

 

[firsthouse_mp]

I feel your pain. I have 6 chickens who are all between 1.5-2.5 years old and I was only getting about 1-3 eggs a week. This went on for about three months and my hub said that they were going to be made into soup. Just this last week, as it has warmed up, I have already had 8 eggs. I think they are now back to laying. Perhaps they just needed a break! I have three more who are only 3 months old, and hopefully they will help out next year when the Winter drought happens! Good luck!!