Eggs???

[Jaye]

so strange. I wonder what's at play here. Climate change throwing things out of whack in some regions perhaps?

[Kbr42]

OK, apart from my crested cream legbars, my Silkies are laying anout 4 or 5 eggs everyother day. Several are moulting...one is broody and moulting
All my big girls..6 new pullets are laying. I'm pulling in about 11 or so eggs a day

I'm still able to sell 6 doz a week...watch...i just jinxed it

[Nicole B]

Same here. I am getting 1 egg a day from one of my Wyandottes. I have 28 hens. I am ok with them taking a break but it is surprising how drastically egg production fell.

[kenya]

All my standards are not laying and haven't for about a month, my silkies are still going strong, the ones that aren't broody that is.

[Penny]

So....what I'm hearing is a good excuse to add a few silkies to my flock!

[Kbr42]

So....what I'm hearing is a good excuse to add a few silkies to my flock!

You need an excuse i thought everyone just adds silkies to their flocks

[Ontario Chick]

One mystery solved, apparently "somebody" forgot to move the light in to the pen with the 3 pullets, so no encouragement to start laying, since the days got shorter without any light supplements they did what mother nature told them
I must say they do look plump and beautiful, compared to the old hens which have been wasting their energy on laying whole summer and fall, I guess we can't begrudge them stoping the egg machine to grow some winter duvet :)

[modern17]

Just a thought.. although I have no knowledge any of your set ups ( coops) from those who have commented are like...my assumption is lighting is the issue. The main reason for egg production drop at this time of year is lights.A female chicken needs approx 14-16 hours of light to be in full production. If you are saving eggs for hatching .. males need this range of light as well to remain fertile. I dread this time of the year as I bring birds in from the out door pens ,as my show birds ( who I do not want to be in production due to production changes the confirmation of modern females ( sagging in the vent are not the sign of an ideal modern game female) When I bring them in from the out door pens the natural season day light is averaging around 9 -10 hours per day ... then they go inside to lights on a timer. With natural day light coming in the windows, and my lights on timers extending the day light to accommodate my work schedule vs my chore schedule , they are getting close to 14 hours of day light...and are in full production.I think if you were to figure out what time natural day light commences and sync your artificial lighting with a timer to extend the light exposure to 14-16 hours you will see a big turn around in production. Basically what I am trying to say here is hens are at their peak production on June 20 of each year... this is summer solstice... aka the longest day ( light wise ) of the year. In order to keep hens in production we must mimic this day . All the commercial egg farms use this knowledge to keep viable. Just my 2 cents.
TL

[Jaye]

That may be the case for some who posted abut their egg laying downturn, but in my case all my coops have been on 14 hours of supplemental light since the daylight hours got too short to be able to do any chores without it. I think in my flock's case, there is something else going on, because many of mine had already stopped laying by mid-summer.

[Killerbunny]

Interesting about the males too. I overheard one of the judges (geese) telling a chap that to maintain fertility in his males to supplement the light in the pens. My turkeys get supplemental light early spring and I have had great male fertility. I also give them a vitamin/mineral supplement in the water just in case.That means I can get some earlier hatches cooking. The old Swedish study (1947?) on lighting showed that beyond 16hrs was not required or even a good thing. Now some of the big poultry barns are going away from the 24hr lighting the poor birds had to suffer. It was creating too much stress and feather picking. Currently my mutts are on 12hrs because I figure thy deserve a rest and a comfortable moult!