Weather affecting laying?

[Susancnw]

We're in Colorado....site of all the flooding recently. We are very blessed and fortunate that we were not affected by it...but after 2 weeks of 95+ temps and then a week of rain and some off and on drizzles...their laying is off...very off. We have about 30 laying hens...and we've gotten less than a dozen eggs for the past few days....does weather affect them?

 

[Tiffcat]

I've read that heat does put them off their laying.

 

[Susancnw]

We've never had them stop laying from the heat....I was getting a couple of dozen a day from them during the heat. We have a fairly well shaded yard that they are in and plenty of shade areas for them. It's just been the week of rain that started me to wondering.

 

[TexasChickenUnv]

Maybe going to molt?

Also, though y'all haven't seen much of the sun lately, the days are getting shorter.

Mine don't lay as well in prolonged super heat with humidity, so my girls were off last week, too. Most of September actually.

Something else, too--if they're staying in a lot due to the rain, there's the possibility they are stepping on the eggs in the nesting box and eating them before you have a chance to gather.

Glad y'all made it thru unscathed. The pix out of CO are wild.

 

[Susancnw]

Lack of sunlight due to rain didn't occur to me...thanks. We've not even been putting them up at night as the place where the younger ones have their 'room' is pretty muddy so that needs to be moved over. We've been taking a chance by leaving them out at night, but we figure the critters aren't out either. And in about 18 months, we've only lost 2 (both of them roosters...we have an overabundance of roosters so I wasn't too bothered...but Henry was a favorite...spunky little frizzled bantam that was at the bottom of the pecking order but he pestered the big rooster....he was our 'meth head' rooster. And yes, the mind picture you have now is pretty accurate. His 'widow' lives in the side yard yard with newer chicks. She's a bossy little thing.

I get the humidity thing...we've been having a LOT of that too so....which is my fault...we moved to CO 12 years ago and it took this long for the Texas rains to find me. I've done flooding in Texas, but the way those rains came down the canyon and just wiped out entire towns is new to me. And some of the farm/ranch land around us is just wiped out totally....