Reduced egg laying

[drinkoj]

11 Pullets (purchased back in April as chicks) started laying in October of this year and have been steady laying 8 to 11 eggs per day. Fast forward to this week. We have seen 6, 7, 3, and 4 eggs this week. My wife and I were talking and we changed to layer feed 2.5 months ago, still provide oyster shell freely (got a 25 lbs bag so why not) and we understand the amount of daylight changes to egg production for laying eggs.

Is it possible that the pullets have begun cycling to the reduced hours of daylight finally and thus the lower egg production?

 

[theoldchick]

Yes, it is possible.

 

[SueT]

Yes, length of daylight does affect laying, so does changing feed, and also stress. Our May pullets seemed to keep laying well until we had a big ice/snow storm last week. They didn't want to come out of the coop and seemed miserable for 2 days. Ever since they are laying less. One to two eggs a day instead of 4-5.

 

[drinkoj]

Heck, I just went and reviewed my video security to make sure I didn't have a egg thief climbing the fence. Nope, just mother nature doing her thing with the egg production dropping.

 

[Ridgerunner]

While a lot of pullets skip the molt their first fall/winter, some don't. A molt is always something to consider when egg production drops. Are you seeing a lot of feathers floating around? Some may be molting while others aren't.

You've handled the egg thief possibility so I'll skip that.

Chickens can drop production in extreme heat or extreme cold. Not sure what your weather has been like the last few weeks. A few years back a group on here kept a running commentary on how cold snaps ad heat waves affected how many eggs they got. Egg production was pretty normal the day the temperature changed but was sometimes less the next day, sometimes quite a bit less. That makes sense as it takes an egg about 25 hours to go through the hen's internal egg making factory after the yolk is released to start that journey. It would take a day to see results.

Your days are also pretty short compared to what they will be. Shorter days means they have less time to eat so they may be getting less nutrition than they do on longer days. Also, in cold weather they use more of what they eat to burn calories to keep themselves warm. The immediate effect could be that the eggs are a bit smaller than normal but over time that could also mean they lay fewer eggs.

Different things could be going on but, yeah, it's pretty normal for production to drop in winter. That happens to my flock.

 

[drinkoj]

We think we've discovered the problem. We have a pullet that is eating the eggs and the others are eating the shells too. Mrs. found a half of an egg shell in the nesting box that was mangled. No more dried egg shells for them.