Lots of complaints about no eggs from chicken or ducks on backyard chickens site too. Must be something in the air.
Need help! Can't get an egg to save my butt!
I got my 1 egg today. I also put new straw in the nests and dumped some leaves in the pen. Started them on the laying pellets too. Now I need to get the flaps on the nests.
Grownut, this is not so! My chickens gift me with eggs on a regular basis, sometimes as many as twelve a day. Granted this is not overly generous considering that I have about forty-five of the feathery female critters, but at least it keeps me in omelettes and my customers' hopes alive.
On the other hand I do not allow my chickens to read Dave's Garden posts because I don't want them infected by any Mysterious and Nefarious Poultry Propagation Schemes.
{{Get out of the computer area, you! And stop squawking!}}
Has it occurred to anyone that They have finally, after millennia, caught on to Us? I mean they lay the eggs....we take the eggs....
So cat.. are you saying it is now.. them against us??? a good mean squeeze we could have all the eggs we want ya know!!
Now.. why is Mr Hay the only one with eggs??? What do you think he bribed his girls with?
Well, we all know what a sweet talker Hay is....
Hey there Grownut, Catsy. No sweet talking here. Read the post by whirlybird on ZZ's Seramas. Ten for ten is very hard to beat for productivity. However he did buy some of his girls from my sweet talked flock...LOL It's all about the charisma...ROF. Hay
Hay you and i must be blessed somehow (well i know you are!!) mine havent stopped laying either..we must be doing somthing right..mine are spoiled too..they get popcorn before bed and scratch grains in the morning..so they are special..
hang in there they will start laying again..
cindy
Humph, mine are still laying too, as I said a few posts above this one. Not a huge amount but enough to keep us in eggs and satisfy a few customers. I give them pellets in the morning and scratch, sometimes with sunflower seeds, around midday.
Honest, My chickens aren't neglected, they just won't LAY!
Hey Greenhouse! Did you see where Cindy Davis said she feed her's popcorn? Well lets you and I get together and we'll gather up all our wonderful chickens and go over for a movie, and popcorn. We'll watch "CHICKEN RUN! Then discuss what were doing right that the rest don't know about. ROTFLMBO...Haystack
There you go, Hay! Best offer I've had all week!
Jyl, no one is suggesting that your chickens should be contacting the SPCA; we're just tossing around various management strategies pretty much at random. ;-D Maybe the ghosts of the former tenants of their coop are haunting your chickens and stressing them out?
Maybe there is a noise that distresses them at some point during the day that you don't know about? I learned that certain ones of my chickens refuse to lay when i start up the drill to work on the new coop. They stand there & fuss at me but won't lay.. When we used the hammer.. they didn't care one bit. I curently have 6 dozen eggs in the fridge... so i think mine are laying decent enough. Found another 2 dozen rotten eggs around the yard in various hidden locations today too.
I got my 1 beautiful brown egg today. Wish the pullets would get with the program.
made connections yesterday.. could sell dozens of eggs this week.
:-( I have none.. that zero.. nadda..
I even sang to my girls... they have thier wings and legs both crossed and their beaks in the air.. there will be no egg laying until they get.. ??? WHAT, just tell me, I will do it! one month.. no eggs!
We need a....chicken whisperer
maybe u need to brain wash another chicken... take one inside, treat it like a princess.. explain that if it tells them all that they lay eggs they all get treated like that.. :)
I feel more like bringing one in the house, opening the freezer door and showing her what happens to chickens that don't LAY EGGS!
I was at an antique store yesterday and came across this little wooden chicken with an egg hanging from her neck..
I wonder... maybe I should try this and remind them what they are suppose to do.
An albatross?
wow, I would hope they wouldn't take it as a burden.. more of this is what mommy wants.. hehe..
I hung a stuffed big bird in their coop to remind them of who they could become if they tried hard enough..
Seems to me those with hens still providing are either in the NE or NW. Cannot help wondering if the weather has something to do with it. I got my first tomatos in August this year rather than late June...anyone have comments??
(Thanks, g_g! Still...Hay's having sweet-talked his way around several coops is also sounding most plausible...){{whispering sweet eggings into little chicken auricles...}}
Our summer was exceptionally hot and dry (that is no rain, the humidity was only slightly less than usual.) The egg production was a little low throughout the summer, but it's worse now.
ours was über wet...and dark because of it...hmmm
I fell so utterly bad!! It is just past noon and I have collected just one shy of three doz eggs...EGGS ANY ONE!!! ROTFL. Hay
My Seramas that are being hatched by their mom's are hatching right now. Can't see any babiez yet but can see the broken eggs shells as they are being pushed out by mom and babiez. Will get pic's to post soon. On the serious side I wished you were all close enough to share my eggs with, I would surely do it. Hay
;p
I didn't get my egg today. I did get a new chicken. It's a game hen that has been with my roos out in the backyard for about a week now. I lured her into the chicken yard and closed the gate behind her. The other hens and Gumbo were tormenting her so I caught her and put her in the small chicken tractor with Eaggie, my young Gray game cock. He is the one the others nearly killed and I had to doctor him back to health. His back is all feathered again. He is going to be very pretty. He and the new hen make a nice couple. I'm going to ask the neighbors if any of them are missing a chicken. I am missing one of my roos. The pretty RIR roo. I think he may just have moved into the other hollow. There are some chickens over there and he may have gone hen hunting.
Hen hunting?! no one told me they'd wander like cats.. hopefully mine don't go hen hunting or they will be a pancake on the road the way the cars drive.
He was in the yard with the other 6 roos. They are roaming around the mountain in the back and all around our big yard. There are chickens at the neighbors just down the mountain in the next hollow. No road to cross. I imagine he got tired of the boys and wanted some female company again. He always was a strutter who fancied himself very handsome. I haven't found any feathers so if something got him it made a clean getaway and one roo must have filled it up because none of the other boys have been bothered. Actually, the only other one that has been bothered is my big leghorn, Dumplin'. My dog has wallowed him twice. I had to catch him off the roost tonight and spray him with the "purple spray". That roo is so dumb. The dog only has so much chain.
oh to gather three doz eggssssss...
Three dozen! All I want right now is one freekin egg! I''l know my life is back on track and there is hope for normalcy if I could just get these stupid chickens to LAY AN EGG.
Now if I could get 3 dozen out of my 15 hens...
idk if it works.. but i've done it & the lady next door has too, when the chickens stop laying, feed them veggies & white bread. ours lay with in a few days. I've always wondered if chicken feed (laying mash) is balance.. or does one bag end up short a little bit of what they need one time & extra the next. Could this be the reason our feeding them extra worked for us? or are our chickens just spoiled & hold out till they get the "right" treat? It would always jump start my RIR's into laying again. I also fed them lots of ice berg lettuce when they weren't laying along with the bread. it seems i've read on here that lettuce isn't good for them but maybe it was cabbage. so i'd check that first but its what we did. Loaded them up on fresh veggie calories & high calorie treats.
Feeding white bread and iceberg lettuce sounds like reducing nutrients not adding nutrients to me.
"Golly girls, we'd better get back to laying, they've put us on bread and water!"
This message was edited Nov 23, 2009 11:21 AM
they got the normal feed too.. but the extra empty calories seemed to help in some way.
I'll try anything.
I will try too.... have plenty of bread.. and a little special lettuce
i may feed my chickens more than usual too.. idk.. no one has every told me what to feed them so I guess. They get a 24 oz cup of crushed corn x 3 & 24 oz of laying mash x 6 for 30 chickens plus table scraps from me & my neighbors. I get my bread from the day old store here in town. They will sell a basket of bread for livestock for $10 which is a small car load which would last me several months, since it molds I go in with the neighbors on it. I feed 1 loaf(or bag) a day to 35 chickens. i stick to hot dog buns, hamburger buns & cheap white bread. They seem to like those best.
Goy my 1 dommer egg again today. I love that hen! I just wish she had more influence on the pullets.
my girls always get all kinds of scraps..from lettuce to bread, even a little meat once in awhile..i dont have any problems with them laying..it doesnt take away anything from them..they even get apple peels and stuff like that..they love it all, and all the vitamins they get always helps.
cindy