Do feeding apples to chickens stop them from laying or make them slow down? Someone told me this and I want to know if it is true or if it was a coincidence that maybe their hens were going into a molt about the time their apples were ripe? Any thoughts? Thanks.
My guess would be that it depends on how many. I think anytime there is a major switch or change in their food it will affect laying.
I hope not; I have an apple tree above the run. They have been eating the crabapples that fall into the run. I'd sure like to hear from someone who has experience with this.
It doesn't affect mine at all. Come the time our apple trees start dropping fruit, the free ranged girls go nuts over the fallen and sometimes rotten apples, and it doesn't affect their production at all.
I doubt that apples will stop hens from laying. The only thing I could think of is that the light starts to diminish at about the same time of year that apples become ripe, so that would be a better explanation than what the chickens are being fed. My DH's family has a story about feeding the hens warm oatmeal, and that they got to fat so they quit laying. They finally had Granddad butcher them for the family. I finally figured out that the hens quit laying because of it being winter in Washington State, and my MiL was tired of caring for the chickens.
I read or heard that you don't give them citris fruits. Mine get every other type of fruit, from raisens to watermelons and it doesn't slow egg laying at all.
Ours got the fallen apricots and peaches this Summer and they go nuts over cantaloupe and watermelons rinds (my white EE's have nasty looking beards right now from the latest watermelon ). My girls don't seem to notice that fruit is suppose to cause a problem with laying.
No truth to any of either food stimulating or stopping production. Light, temperature, moulting, as well as changes in their wellbeing will cause them to pause, even stop, but food isn't one of them. Mine will even fly up into the apple trees for fruit--makes no change in the number of eggs I get. The biggest thing may well be that most hens are spring hatched birds which means they will start laying in the fall and, generally, moult the next fall around apple time. Not cause and effect though.
Thanks everyone, I suspected the same as you said woodmort. Coincidental that moulting occurs the same time as the apple harvest? Makes sense to me. I do feed some things to get lazy hens laying though, cooked oatmeal and calf manna. It worked last winter and I am using it now on the spring pullets to get them moving out more eggs for me. I think it works. Thanks again.
