I live in zone 9, {desert AZ} and my hens are on strike and have been for months. Is anyone else in the area having the same problem? Does anyone have a clue as to what I can do, other than start a large pot of chicken soup?
No Laying hickens
Are you giving them extra light to make up for the shorter daylight hours? How old are they? Or maybe they're moulting? What about offering them some extra tidbits like sunflower seeds to boost the protein intake?
The ten we saved for the winter have never missed a beat. 7 to 10 eggs every day. It is cold in their little coop. Water is on a heating thing & still freezes. Our days are starting to get longer, but they only have light for about 12 hrs. During the summer we do 16 hrs.
Our low temperature was -29º two weeks ago. Below zero every night for nearly 3 weeks.
We feed them a 18% egg mash that never changes. No other food of any kind.
Bernie
But there has been a widespread dearth of eggs--if you go back a couple months, almost everyone was complaining about it,
My chickens were on strike last month but have started laying quite well again in the last two weeks. I haven't changed anything - same feed, same light, same schedule...(?)
Hello Neighbor bigcce,
My chickens are on strike as well, ever since the bobcat wiped out all but one in one pen. In my other pen, they got my RR (Rescue Roo) and left Miss C and Miss Z the 2 girls . So I threw the remaining one in the pen with the other two girls. Have not gotten an egg since and that was well over a month ago.... Up until then, they had layed every day.
Usually mine come back a few days after a scare, MissJestr. Maybe you should try a bit of higher protein feed for a short period? Bernie, that's a higher percentage than I see recommended for layers, but obviously it works for you. We supplement with sunflower seeds and scratch in the winter when there are no bugs or other natural food sources for them to find.
right now I am adding scratch to keep them warm, I have added cat food lately as well
How cold does it get where you are in AZ ?
I think that's part of everyone's problem with not getting eggs. To much changing diets of your chickens. Why cat food for a chicken ? There are meat scrapes in cat food & who knows what else. Certainly not meant for chickens.
We tried to feed some scratch grain to our hens a couple years ago. They went down in egg production very fast. As soon as we went back to egg mash, production picked right up.
I had some sex-link chickens several years ago. Got them as babies. As soon as I put them in a pen on the ground, they started pecking tailfeathers out and eating flesh. Lots of blood. I was feeding them all the right stuff, I started putting fat meat from the butchers and they stopped it. The first I gave them was still on the styerofoam "plate", and they ate that, too! Didn't hurt them. I've seen my ex feed his gamecocks ground beef and buttermilk. When I was a kid we gave our chickens excess buttermilk. They love it. ?????
I agree with CG. Feed companies go to a lot of trouble to produce carefully formulated feeds for specific uses; we spoil their efforts when we dilute them with too many "supplements". It's fun to offer treats, but the bulk of their diet should be more scientifically determined.
This message was edited Jan 13, 2010 11:17 AM
I changed to a laying mash that is 18% protein & I got eggs all the way thru our nasty weather. Mine also get corn chops every day & cat food. When its really cold they get a few slices of white bread or as a treat a couple times a week otherwise. Mine eat all table scraps.. including raw meat. It seems to be their favorite next to cat food. out of 15 standard sized hens i get 12 to 14 eggs a day.. during our big snow even when wind chill temps hit -30*.
keep in mind.. chickens 100 yrs ago didn't have the perfectly formulated laying mash to eat... They thrived. If i had the money mine wouldn't eat any processed food at all including my cats & dog. For now its all I can afford.
well here I am months later and I only have one girl that is laying.. they all better do something soon.. I have lost all my customers, they don't even call.
That's the really odd thing. Everyone I know around here with chickens that sell eggs has so many extras they can't find enough people to get rid of them too. Last winter (which was warmer) they stopped laying for my neighbor for about a month.. & a friend's chickens gave maybe 1 egg a day for the entire winter. You'd think with our strange weather they would stop laying this year too. Especially since no one I know here has them on extra light. The only time mine got extra light was the 3 nights the windchill was so low & it was a red heat bulb.
I'm giving eggs away:)
As to formulated foods being better, I guess that's an individual thing. When I read the ingredients on many cat foods, well, they couldn't be less appropriate for obligate carnivores, full of "healthy" grains and vegetables . Since my chickens free-range, I figure they'll balance pretty well themselves. I do add whatever I have around, certainly including meat scraps, and leftover veggies. All are (IMOO) appropriate for chickens, who love to eat bugs and flowers....
Oh, and canned cat food. Without grains....:)
Mine are still laying. Nine hens with four to seven eggs a day. I have a few friends who are lining up for extra eggs.
They are on laying mash, scratch, and I give them safflower or sunflower seeds as well. They cannot free range due to the coyote population in our area. They do have a large, fully enclosed chicken run, though, that they share with two peacocks. I've noticed that a couple of them will go after the cat food I supplement the peacock's food with. I've seen organic cat food at the farmer's co-op. Maybe I should just give some to the chickens for the winters. One is made with salmon.
Only a couple of them really seem to want it. I'm pretty sure one is my tail feather thief. I've been trying the separate her out, but she is fast and sly. She is identical to three of the other hens and she immediately drops the feather and runs to them when she sees me coming. Doe41, maybe I should try your tip and just leave some bits of good catfood or something meaty for her. I think maybe it might be easier to get her interested in the catfood and forget about the tailfeathers. Has feeding them bits of meat worked permanently? Come to think of it, she might have been the one who caught and ate the mouse a while back. Its not hard for me to imagine that chickens are dinosaur descendants when I watch this chicken do her thing. If I could tell her apart from her friends I would name her Dinah!
After I fed them the raw meat for a while they stopped "tail biting". Every once in a while I would feed them another batch, just in case!
The thing about "scientifically formulated" diets is though they do provide the minimum daily requirement, they hardly replicate the animal's natural diet... chickens do eat meat naturally (what do you think a bug is? and watch what they do with a dead mouse!), but because of expense it's not included in the chicken diets.
One thing I recently read, in the Wall Street Journal in an article about top secret gov't egg farms, is that the salt proportion can screw up egg production--high sodium decreases egg numbers. So maybe check into that, you folks having unusual layer troubles. Cottage cheese is pretty high sodium... maybe some of the other treats as well?
Or maybe they're just not laying because they're republican chickens and they're protesting something... last year's non-layers were democrats and they were feeling too smug to work. IDK. =0)
So what else goes on on these "Top Secret Egg Farms" ? Should we be concerned or perhaps alarmed, or worse?
Probably best to keep politics to yourself.
The egg farms are to make sure there are enough fertile eggs to produce vaccine.
Sorry to have offended you CG...
Oh, that's a relief!
Not me, it's rule here on Dave's. No politics.
The egg farms are top secret because they are worried about terrorist threat... can you imagine the omelet? LOL James Bond does chicken farming...
It's top secret what breed of chicken is used, top secret what the ratio of rooster to hens... top secret the number of eggs actually produced each year.
I wonder if their hens are laying any better?
Mulder and Scully retired, got married, and are now running a chicken farm =~)!
Seriously, I'm sure they have their reasons. The auxiliary info generated is interesting, though. Thanks for posting.
Sometimes minimum is optimum...
hi
all
sorry about your chicken that not laying
egg
we got 3 differed stage of chicken
young one,young hen,that is about 20 of them .
and 6 old one
we get from 8,or9
then 5 whem is was cold cold
now it back to 10 or 12 a day
yestered we had 17
the 6 old one are just laying 2 a day
got 10 so far today
elle
Elle, you must be doing something right, or maybe your chickens just love you!
We have been in the 50's and 60's for the last two weeks, now we are headed for rainy weather. I give them egg maker, with a few handfuls of scratch every few days. They do not get alot of treats until the summer when it is veggies and such. I do throw a hand full of cat food in there, protein being what it is.