Why is nobody laying?!

[ThePhoebeFive]

I have around 15-20 laying hens right now, but I'm getting an average of 3-5 eggs a day. I have literally no clue why they've started laying so badly. It used to be that I got an average of 8-12 eggs a day, but recently the production began dropping steadily to this point. I have a few 2yo EEs, a 2yo Brahma, a few 1yo Golden Comets, Black Australorps, and Cuckoo Marans, and a 1yo EE. I'm not surprised that the older EEs and the Brahma have slowed a bit, but the GCs, BAs, and CMs shouldn't be this bad off. Here is everything I can think of regarding food, habitat, and what I've tried to solve the problem.

Food: I feed them fermented 16% layer feed and then turn them out into our pasture for the day where they get grass and bugs all day. They get some treats, but pretty much only fruits, veggies, and the occasional mealworms. I'm extremely strict about carbs. They do get a couple small handfuls of corn to bribe them home at night. I have crushed eggshell on offer for them to get calcium.

Habitat: They have a nice coop with plenty of space and several nest boxes. Our pasture is about 1 acre and they share it with our goats. The pasture is mostly open, with only two pine trees and a tire playground for the goats. I have searched in the pine straw around the trees and looked inside every tire for hidden nests. The chickens cannot get to the goat sheds to lay in there.

What I've tried to solve the problem: I have increased their protein a bit with the mealworms. I used to be really bad about putting eggshell out, but I keep it on offer almost all the time (there are occasions where they go a few days without). And I have dewormed incase parasites were stealing the nutrients. Nobody is molting or regrowing feathers right now.

Does anyone have a clue what is going on and what I should do differently to solve this problem?!

EDIT: Feed is 16% protein.

 

[citymeetscountry]

I’d guess secret nest or egg eating

 

[LaFleche]

I would consider 16% protein too low to keep them laying. Adding the fruits and vegetables lowers the overall protein even more.
Meal worms provide mainly fat.


Rather try some all flock (20%) and provide oyster shell on the side always available in a separate dish.

 

[ThePhoebeFive]

I would consider 16% protein too low to keep them laying. Adding the fruits and vegetables lowers the overall protein even more.
Meal worms provide mainly fat.


Rather try some all flock (20%) and provide oyster shell on the side always available in a separate dish.

This may be a dumb question, but why would the feed specifically for laying hens not be the right amount of protein?

 

[nuthatched]

This may be a dumb question, but why would the feed specifically for laying hens not be the right amount of protein?

16% protein feed was designed 60 years ago for specifically egg farm White Leghorns, a breed that has a high feed to egg conversion. They found that 16% was the minimum amount of protein that the birds could survive off of and still be productive. Since the birds lived in tiny, little cages and didn't use protein for muscle building, it could all go to eggs. Those birds were often processed at 18 months so any long term affects didn't matter.
Modern leghorns need more protein, dual purpose need more than that. You want a minimum of 18% protein, there are many good high protein layers on the market these days but if you can't find any, chick starter with oyster shell works.

 

[Shadrach]

I just need to clear a couple of things up here.
16% layers feed is fine for laying hens. The larger breeds just eat more. Providing a higher protein feed may have other benefits but I very much doubt it will solve your lack of eggs problem.
To make this quite clear and to dispel the notion that modern high production breeds need higher levels of protein to be productive here is a link to a UK feed company. If you have a look through their range you will notice that the majority of the layer feeds are 16% protein. I think it's reasonably safe to state that if feeds with this protein level didn't provide enough protein people wouldn't buy these feeds and the chicken related media would be full of posts complaining that their laying hens were not laying.

https://www.farmandpetplace.co.uk/s...d/marriages-everyday-layers-pellets-20kg.html

This is a link to Amazon's chicken feed first page in the UK. The majority of the feeds here are 16% protein. The same arguement as above applies.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=chicke...&sprefix=chicken+feed,aps,85&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Are there advantages to providing a higher protein feed? Possibly, but they have more to do with the hens overall longterm health than the amount of eggs they lay.

I have fed hens here in the UK and in Europe 16% protein feed and these hens were free range. There was no apparent impact in the reduction of the overall protein intake should the notion that ranging hens forage contribution reduces the amount of protein they need in their diet. In fact thye laid like troopers and lived to ripe old age provided a predator didn't get them.

While medicated feed does not prevent coccidiosis it does help chicks build up a tolerance to the strain that is prevelant in their environment. Whether one should be eating eggs from a chicken eating medicated feed should be a non issue because the medicated feed should only be given to non laying chicks.

Even high production breeds such as Red Sex Links, Golden Comets, Hi Line, Red Rocks, etc do not lay every day all year round once they reach the age of 18 months approximately. This is why they get "retired" at this age. The winter (roughly) after their 18th month usually involves a time off laying period, be that at moulting time or not.

Older hens lay fewer eggs in general so the age of your hens needs to be considered as does the time of year (?)
Apart from the possibility that your hens are taking a break from laying, the next thing that in my experience is likely to prevent a hen laying is stress. Have you made any changes to your keeping arrangements recently? Have you had a predator incident or a recent introduction of new hens?

There is ceratainly no harm in providing a higher protein feed up to say 18%, or supplementing their diet with plain fish/meat which will provide a complete protein boost but as a remedy for lack of eggs I suggest you consider other factors.

 

[NatJ]

Truth is if you free range your birds you could get by with corn and free choice oyster shells.

Don't be ridiculous (winter in Alaska, Montana, various other northern places.)

Of course you are perfectly correct (part of Hawaii where feral chickens are clearly doing fine with no human input, showing that they don't even need the corn and oyster shell.)

The problem with "free range" is that it depends on where the chickens are ranging, and what food they can find to eat. Climate matters a lot, and so does the amount of space, and how many chickens are in that space.

 

[aart]

Unfortunately, this is going on everywhere and if you check out instagram, everyone's been talking about it. It's the feed. Something's going on with the feed.

This was beat to death for weeks, it's been debunked for quite some time now.

 

[3KillerBs]

I had a downturn in laying in the past few weeks that I attribute to several factors,

1. Five broodies. That means 5 less eggs per day.
2. Repecka getting out. I would not be surprised to stumble across some eggs somewhere at some point. She's repeatedly hidden nests in the coop "clutter". Repecka's Hidden Collection! That's another missing egg.
3. Too many cockerels in the flock. Girls are getting stressed and rooster-worn. Stress reduces laying.
4. Black rat snakes. It's the season and there's very little I can do about it but to move snakes to the back of the property when I can catch them.
5. The spring hormonal surge is over so some drop is natural.

There are feeds with higher levels of protein, but they seem hard to get a hold of and they're usually only 17-18%.

Do you have a Southern States in your area? I'm using https://southernstates.com/products...medicated-crumble?_pos=2&_sid=d93060a58&_ss=r which isn't perfect, because it's got bacitracin (which is perfectly safe, just not desirable to me), but it's 21% protein and less expensive than anything other than the cheapest 16% layer so I'm gritting my teeth and tolerating the antibiotic.

If I didn't have enough birds to be going through 50# a week I'd cough up a few more dollars a bag for unmedicated chick feed.

Any feed store *ought* to carry some kind of "All Flock" feed in the 18-22% protein range.

I know that before mass-produced chicken feed a lot of people free-ranged their birds and all they ever fed them was a little scratch to bring them home at night. I do think that would be a lot more simple, but I do wonder how many eggs those people were getting.

I found this an interesting read. 100 years ago, this book was aimed to help farmers get a then-profitable 100 eggs per hen per year -- from LEGHORNS. The worst bird I've had, a Brahma, did better than that.

Thread 'Poultry for the Farm and Home'

If 8 hens went broody last week and you've only just broken them, it'll probably be a little while before they start laying again. I'm guessing that's your biggest problem right now

*Gives my 5 broodies an accusatory look*

One of them is back to laying now. Not sure about the others because they all lay very similar eggs.

 

[nuthatched]

Up the protein of the feed, 16% is too low for modern dual purpose breeds.
Protein is essential for hormone synthesizing, hormones that control laying
Plus eggs, meat, feathers etc all require protein. Too little and laying is the first to go.