How to make chickens lay eggs?
Discussion
Some of you will be aware from my Spot the Cat thread a couple of years ago that I'm not completely in tune with animals. Notwithstanding this, I have been asked (told) by my wife to try & get our chickens laying eggs again, as we currently have 11 birds of which 3 are laying consistently.
7 of the chickens are battery rescues
3 are 18 months old
1 is pretty old
Through a process of elimination, we have figured out that it's the rescue chickens who are not pulling their weight, so I need to kind of bump start them into action.
Is anyone suitably qualified in chicken keeping to offer up some suggestions?
7 of the chickens are battery rescues
3 are 18 months old
1 is pretty old
Through a process of elimination, we have figured out that it's the rescue chickens who are not pulling their weight, so I need to kind of bump start them into action.
Is anyone suitably qualified in chicken keeping to offer up some suggestions?
)
ds, go and lay some bAre the existing hens destroying any laid by the newcomers? We've had that issue with new battery hens before. The solution was a few solid fake eggs. After a couple of days of the oldies realising they couldn't break the eggs, they gave up and haven't tried since. Chickens are stupid.
Also, ours lay alot less / not at all during the winter, but it's not that cold yet.
Also, ours lay alot less / not at all during the winter, but it's not that cold yet.
Having a wife that works as an egg marketign inspector that makes me an armchair expert! So here you go. There are three main factors that stop chickens laying, stress, sickness and age. They could be stressed if the coop is too small, getting bullied, not enough outside area to scratch around in. They could of course be sick, as in sick and tired of laying as it's all they have done for a year. Age though I doubt will play a part as they should lay an egg a day till they are about 3. then you might get 3-4 a week.
freecar said:
I have heard that having a cock scratch around for a day spurs lazy chickens into laying again!
Our egg production is down at the moment. While we were on holiday last month they were feed too much corn rather than layer pellets. They are also moulting so feathers take priority over eggs.Charlie the cock doesn't seem to make any difference to production rates.
Flock is currently five hens bought as POL plus a hen and cock obtained as chicks via grandson's biology class.
FlossyThePig said:
freecar said:
I have heard that having a cock scratch around for a day spurs lazy chickens into laying again!
Our egg production is down at the moment. While we were on holiday last month they were feed too much corn rather than layer pellets. They are also moulting so feathers take priority over eggs.Charlie the cock doesn't seem to make any difference to production rates.
Flock is currently five hens bought as POL plus a hen and cock obtained as chicks via grandson's biology class.
As I said, it's something I've heard not researched!
i live on a farm so we have about 35 of the buggers. as its said it may be one of hundreds of things, a fake egg is a good one to do, also be wary of rats, and others stealing the eggs, or if they dont have enough grit or if the others dont like them they make get eaten by the chickens. another important factor is Red Mite, make sure you spread lots of powder around as I found this is the main cause for them to stop laying. also could they be laying away? we found that ours will lay away unless they have barley straw, but they may just be fussy barstewards.
still nothing tastes better than a grass fed chickens homemade egg, still warm from the bird at 7:00am....
still nothing tastes better than a grass fed chickens homemade egg, still warm from the bird at 7:00am....
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