chicken laying question

A hen will lay for about 8 months depending on the breed. Then they will go through a molt...loose feathers in a set series and regrow them. After they have almost finished the molt, they will slowly start to lay again. Usually it takes about 3 months for a complete to be molt, but they should start laying before the molt is over. When mine go through this I continue to feed them a 16% layer PELLET (they wasted to mcuh of the crumble) in a steady hopper so they could have all they wanted, and they would slack on laying during a molt for only about 2 months. I also feed them some ground corn loose on teh ground, grass clippings, bugs, veggie scraps and so on...NO MEAT PRODUCTS!!

I would say give them a good layer pellet aside from what you normally feed them. If they look good and feathered out...check a few things....if they have red waxy looking combs and wattles, yellow legs, and a large moist looking butthole, they ARE laying. If the comb and wattles look greyinsh and dry, the legs look grey and scaly, and the butthole looks small and puckered, they are not laying. Your hens may be laying but you could have 1 of 2 major problems...this is the perfect time for snakes to make a feast on chicken eggs and they do it daily and will frequent the same nest every day...watch your nest boxes and ceiling, floor and corners of the coop before entering...get a couple glass eggs and put them in a box. If they disappear, you have a snake, but the glass will kill it. If the glass eggs get broken...one of your hens (or rooster) are an egg eater and needs to be gotten rid of. Figuring out which one is a bit tougher.

I use an egg, poke a tiny hole in it, use a needle and syringe and inject the egg with a bunch of BLUE food coloring and use candle wax to fill the hole back in. I make up a dozen of these eggs and place them in different nest boxes at night while the birds are on the roost. I use a black crayola to mark a ring around these eggs and keep them marked so I don't mix them up and I will know if one or mor disappears. Then all I have to do is look at their beaks for signs of blue food coloring. That bird goes in the slow cooker for dinner.

Hens are good for laying for about 3 years before they really start to decline in the amount they lay. But I have had good layers last 5-6 years if cared for properly and of the right breed or cross breed. They will molt about once a year and after each molt, production will go down a little more.

Hope that helps!!

You can use a 40 watt light bulb or an old door knob for a glass egg, snake will still swallow it and it either breaks and kills it or doesn't break and won't pass and kills it.

Excellent information, Dink. Thanks for posting it.

Thanks a lot Dink was hoping you'd chime in. I do feed them egg layer and I've killed two snakes so far. There not molting either. I've been checking where they lay about 6 times a day and never an egg. A few times I've found an egg in the morning and it's still there in the evening but then I'm not sure it's the same egg. So this has made me think no more snakes. Just can't figure it out.

I will check there butts today. I looked at one last week and her butt was good as you described.

Dennis:

Ta increase yer hens a layin, pick her up gently, tuck her head up inta yer armpit, carfully hold them wings one between yer side an the other with yer arm.

Gently lift the birds tail feathers, now give a good rapid squeeze a the hen between yer arm an yalls side (think bagpipes) an be ready ta catch the egg what pops out! ;D

Up date. Well this is what I've come up with. For the last four days I've got one egg a day. I left the eggs in the coup and marked each one. Every day I checked and no missing eggs.

So I did a little research about my chickens which are Red Sex Links a hybrid type bird. I found that they will stop laying at around age 2-3 years. My birds are almost 2 1/2 years old.

Guess I should have done that first. So please forgive my ignorance I'm learning as I go. I'm sorry now that I my pullets are Red Sex Links but they do lay an egg a day with out fail and there in the jumbo size.

Thanks for all the help I leaned a lot through all this.

Some breeds are better but most hens need rotated to the cooking pot every three years. Our 20 hens are 11/2 years old and we get 15 to 20 of the big brown eggs every day. One guy buys 4 doz every two weeks and another get two doz. With seven Grand kids here for the summer we will eat the rest. Once the kids leave I think we will hatch out 10 new hens, butcher 15 of the older ones and end up with five or six new layers and one rooster.

After out test run on supplementing food if we had no feed store we have replaced chickens from the SHTF plan with quail. This summer we will turn 50 quail hens and 10 roosters loose at each bol and keep 10 hens and three quail as breed stock. If we want/need to butcher some we will just hatch out 30 and rotate our breeders.