Will My hens ever lay consistently?

bizzeeb60

In the Brooder
11 Years
Apr 8, 2008
96
1
39
Frostproof, FL
So lets see. back at the first week of August on of my 5 hens had started laying very tiny eggs. After about 1 month of laying one about every 2 or 3 days she stopped and went very broody for about 2 months. Then they all started moulting. No eggs.

Now, They are now 1 year old and I thought they had finally begun to lay when on 01/08/09 I got 1 nice large egg. Then on the next day I got another nice egg (the size of a grocery store large white).

Since then no more eggs!

They get plenty of laying mash and I give them scratch mix and treats like berries, stale bread, lettuce etc.

Size wise they have grown into very nice size hens. Someone tole me my Roo could be keeping them from laying but I never heeard of that.

I'm not sure what else to do with these hens, after a year nearly a year of feeding them (they were 1 month old when I got them) it is becoming very disappointing not be getting any egg production from them
 
I woud wait for spring to make a judgement on how they lay. Coming of age in winter just throws them all off balance anyways. You probably only had a mini molt, as a full molt happened around 18 months, and they probably stopped laying because of the time of year.

Give em chance - we are experiencing the same thing with ours too....
 
Yep, wait until spring. This happened to a friend of mine. She waited a year and when spring came her hens layed an egg everyday 9 months. Go figure.
 
I would think that since I live in Central/South Florida that the winter weather should really have no effect on the hens and their laying. Except for the very rare cold snap (which we are having this week) there never is any extreme cold weather. I would think the heat of the summer would be more of an effect on them than our winters.

I don't know if my Hubby will understand waiting until spring for them to start laying consistently. He grew up with a grandmother that raised hundreds of chickens at time a says he has never had hens wait so long to lay. He says they never had hens that waited until after they were a year old to start laying, and they lived in Michigan in the snow.

He is about ready to put them in the freezer. We started with the hens so we would not have to buy eggs and so far...we are still getting our eggs from the grocery store and paying for the feed too.

Just not becoming a very economical venture...........
 
This is why people have more hens then what they really think that they need. I would say if you had 10 laying hens then you would get the eggs that you wanted with some extra to give or sell. I have hens molt at different times as well as the whole broody thing.
 

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