Thunderstorms and egg production

[RUNuts]

Houston had a real humdinger last night. Booms, light shows and all that. The flock that was laying 15 eggs from 17 hens spit out 9 today. I was curious when this would happen and here it is. I even searched the flight cage for another nest. Nope, just the 9.

What causes your egg production to drop the most? Besides winter?

 

[bobbi-j]

Drastic temperature changes - either way. Long periods of hot weather. Moving them from one coop to another.

 

[aart]

Having too many birds confined in too small a space,
which can happen if they can't go outside due to weather,
even with good bird to space ratio.
Having a neurotic nest-messer harassing the the layers in the nests.

 

[Molpet]

Weather extremes, dark days
crowding,. Too many cockerels harassing
Changing coop or rearranging
predators ...even at night on top of the secure coop

 

[Mosey2003]

Boils down to basically stress, daylight, and feed.

 

[RUNuts]

Agreed. Stressors everywhere. This is my first time seeing this. The chickens are accustomed to the dogs now. Not a good thing. They stare at each other through the fencing. Good thing is that neither of them are going over the top at the moment.