Hi everyone. Been meaning to join the group for a while and up until now I have been able to pretty much figure out the answers to my questions just by viewing other people's threads but at this point I'm finally stumped. So I have a flock of 7 young hens (approximately 8 months old). In June of this year we were getting a ton of eggs, sometimes 6 per day, but by the time mid July came around egg production had drastically slowed and now we are at a trickle, maybe one egg every other day. At first we thought they were laying somewhere else, which we have kind of ruled out because we have followed them around on the weekends and they never wondered off. We have also thought that people were stealing our eggs (set up a camera on the chicken coop) with no luck. We noticed the first drop in production when we were on vacation for almost two weeks and my parents were taking care of the flock. They made a spreadsheet of how many eggs and what colors we were getting. During that time period we had switched their feed from the cheap tractor supply layer pellets to an expensive organic one from our local feed store. When we got home we also noticed that the chickens had gotten into our garden and eaten not only all the peppers off the plants but the leaves as well (which I have read is toxic to them). We also got two eggs that were without a shell at this point in time (they have had an oyster and grit feeder in their run since day 1 and they don't seem to eat much out of it). So I removed the remaining pepper plants from the garden, switched their feed back to the cheap tractor supply stuff but after a few weeks there were no improvements. I had also been feeding them two cups of scratch a day. I have tried switching the type of scratch they get and with holding it entirely. I have tried doing a deep clean of their water jug, and a deep clean of their coop. We do not have a rat issue so they have constant access to feed all day long. We have two Australorps, two Rhode island reds, two olive eggers and an arctic egger. Right now we only get light blue and a white egg and not very consistently. The brown egg layers seemed to fall off first, I was also assuming it may be the heat as we live in Texas and its pretty hot here in the summer but the weather is fairly pleasant right now with highs in the low 80s. My last two thoughts are that perhaps they have a parasite or a worm. I have not done any type of deworming because all the chickens are running around looking healthy. Second is that they may be experiencing some type of stress related to their coup. They have plenty of space with two bars, one slightly higher than the other. However I have noticed a Rhode island red roosting in the nest box and on the ground which I thought was very odd. We also have an Australorp that has completely abandoned the coup and now roosts with the neighbor's rooster. I didn't expect her to last that long out of the coup but she has been over there for 3 weeks now and is still alive. The neighbors have lost all their chickens to raccoons with the exception of the rooster. The rooster and my Australorp join the flock in the morning and then part ways in the evening. The chickens free range although they mostly stay in my yard. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance
David
David
