Where are my eggs?!

Rorie

Chirping
7 Years
Apr 1, 2012
135
0
89
Last year we purchased some new hens. One was an Araucana. I am not sure of her age, but my knowledgeable friend suggested she looked young.

Last year we got perhaps 3 eggs every two weeks from her. But since October last year, we have not had one egg! I know this as they are blue obviously!

I kept thinking 'they will arrive when summer comes' but i think summer has now passed and we don't have anything. Any ideas why?

The rest of the flock have also been producing much less than last year. we have 12 hens. Most are a year old, two at most. Last year we were maybe getting 6 eggs a day, where as this year we are lucky if we get 3….often not getting any!

They always have the same food and fresh water. Thye have a run 10 times the size of their old one. They now have an automatic door, so are out longer each day.

Thanks!
 
First you need to work out if they aren't laying eggs or are they laying and you aren't getting the eggs.

If they are laying -
-do you have an egg eater?
-is something stealing the eggs?
-are they laying somewhere other than the nestbox?

If they aren't laying -
-are they getting enough food?
-is it of a high enough quality with enough protein?
-are they healthy? do they have parasites such as lice, mites or worms?

This isn't a complete list of reasons but it is somewhere to start.

Hope you get more eggs soon.
 
Thanks for the reply.

They are totally fenced in (its not that big a run, perhaps 11m x 3m). So no eggs anywhere else or being stolen
Sometimes i see an egg or two being pecked at, but not enough that we wouldn't notice - we get the eggs every day


They always have a big stock of food, so i doubt that can be an issue (unless they are on hunger strike!)
The food is the top brand (of only two brands) sold at our local store, so i'd hope so. We are also supplementing with seed as a weekend treat

They were wormed again at the start of summer.
They do have a disease (i forgot the name) that wiped quite a few out last year. We ended up injecting them all daily etc. It only flails up when they are stressed though so we haven't seen any signs of it since last year. But i wonder if that maybe has something to do with it.

At what age do they generally STOP laying? Or is it a case that they will always lay, just at lower frequencies?
 
It might be that their laying is impaired by the disease they had, I don't have much experience with those sorts of health problems.

Hens generally slow in their laying after their second year (it's why commercial egg producers get rid of their layers at about 18 months) but if healthy you would expect some eggs from them for most of their life. It depends on what breed they are how many eggs you would expect from them.

I give my hens a pellet feed that has 17% protein and get very good results from that.
 

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