What's the longest your hen has gone without laying an egg? (assuming they WERE laying eggs and then stopped) One of my chickens stopped laying the first week of Sept. She then laid one in November, and nothing since. deadbeat.
i had a hen who reliably laid 9eggs every 10days, for 2years, then one day she just...stopped, about 9months later she started up again like nothing had ever happened.
I had a hen go a little over 5 months after a coyote stalked our property for about a month. She lays beautifully almost every day now.
My game hen, Miss Prissy quit laying on her 4th year with me. Last week she laid 3 eggs. I would have gotten another from her but she remembered that she loves to eat her own eggs
No eggs for 39 days straight in Dec-Jan this winter, and then another 10 days a week after that for my 8-month-old SLW.
All my girls slow down in the fall. Then during winter one egg every week or so. Then they pick up again in March and go like crazy for five months or so. Wish they would spread it out, but the daylight stimulates their hormones, so nature dictates what they do.
Deadbeat? I usually call them lazy good for nothings. Some of mine stopped laying when they went through a molt (that was badly needed as they were naked from all the roosterly lovin going on) It's been 6 months for a couple of them and they are still getting pin feathers with almost no eggs to show for it. The lazy lot are usually hanging out laying on the hay in a sunny spot. We call it the old lady hangout. One of my older girls got very broody, so she got her feathers back while sitting on her behind oh and some eggs too. Another got separated and put in the younguns house as she was totally naked. Its really sad to see a defeathered chicken still running around. Those two are running with the young girls now while the old girls laze around waiting for me to feed them bonbons. One of them laid her first egg (again) yesterday, one is getting some color into her comb, and the other finally has some feathers and doesn't need to sit under a heat lamp to warm up. Sadly one of the old girls passed away over the winter. Course she was laping it up in the greenhouse where she could look outside at the mountain of snow, and listen to the wind howl, and smile while she ate her fresh grass (bonbon). We knew she wasn't going to make it, so we made her last weeks special. I have no idea how old she was as I got them as adults from someone on CL. Part of the problem was my neighbor feeding them corn everytime he came and snuck (with my permission) some eggs on a daily basis. Make sure they aren't getting to much of a good thing. They need to have the right nutrition to be able to lay eggs. Some of it will also depend on the breed. My lazy layers are a farm yard blend. The extra corn didn't seem to phase the RIR's at all. They still produce like a leghorn. Now that I have told my neighbor to only give a small amount of grain and to chart it on the board we are able to track what they are being fed and I am seeing some response (hey one egg is better than no eggs). I expect that the lazy lot will be back to their old health and producing as well as they can soon. Good luck
