Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Here we are ten days form the shortest day of the year. Always low or no egg time of the year. I have no heat in the coop but I do have a timer. I don't feed mash or anything, just scratch. Out of a total of 30 birds, some only a month old, several ancient, and too many cockerels, there are about a dozen candidates. I am getting average four eggs a day. And I notice if it is bright and sunny today, tomorrow I will get more. Overcast drizzly today? It will be down tomorrow. Even with the timer, there is no replacing natural light. And with no snow really here so far, they are still finding lots to peck at as they free range the yard. I purposely don't rake leaves in the fall just so they can kick and scratch and hunt til the snow.

What is anyone else seeing or thinking about eggs as we approach the shortest day of the year?

And for anyone that is wondering, Winter Soloist was not a typo. It is a relatively new term. Yogi Berra said "It aint over til the fat lady sings" Well that applies to the calendar year too. So lots of people refer to New Years Eve as the Winter Soloist. Not to be confused with the winter solstice, which is not capitalized. That's when the druids and other cultures would wack the heck out of heir drums and virgins to convince the sun to start back up in the sky. Now, being more science based and a lack of virgins, we just let the sun do what it wants.*

*Source: Prime.

The thing that worries me is if this is related to April Fuels day (source @Farrier1987 )? We all know about burning the Yultide log and how they had to be kept going for 12 days. I think that it must have been the Nogs with their leader Noggin who originated this because of the Nogs sitting around the log and telling stories of when the Nogs used to site around the log and tell stories of....
..https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/ann ... in-the-nog
Perhaps this contributes to the egg problem?

Yup, my 21 hens are averaging 4 eggs a day. Yesterday I only got 1 egg and today there were 6.
We have also been letting them out to free range on the nice days. Heck! They start crowding at the door when they want out. They do enjoy all the sunshine they can get.
Actually, this has not been a good year for egg laying here. For this entire year, my hens have been laying an average of 5 eggs a day. Last year, it was 8 eggs a day.