Are your hens laying eggs?

We're in Southern Idaho and it's still cold here (snow yesterday), so our 12 hens are still laying only one to two eggs most days. If the weather's really bad they don't lay at all. We don't have a light up for them.

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I think they may be laying elsewhere, too. A hen of mine gets into the pole barn, she squeezes under the door, and leaves an egg in there every day for me now

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Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.

mine layed like crazy all winter,but I think its because of the heat lamp/light.
I have turned the light off now and I`m only getting about 4 eggs a day.I have 29 hens all but 6 being 4 yrs old.
They usually pick back up late in the spring,but I don`t know about this year with their age.
Yours will probably start laying as the days get longer.Good Luck!

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"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."~J.R.R.Tolkien

I'm in southern maine and it's been freezin' butt cold here even till now. (Except that one day over 70 in march). My 6 RIRs kept layin' consistent all winter long. They do have a heating lamp bulb in their space all winter on a timer,( all day if its really cold i.e. well below freezing). But you couldn't feel the heat at all, just the see the light. Hope evrythings ok with you and yours. God Bless.

Our hens just started laying again a few days ago - three or four days after the solstice, the "egg tap" turned on again, even though it's still stupidly cold and snowing up here in my bit of Canada.

We have 7 Chantecler hens, 3 mixed-breed banties, and 4 roosters (2 of which are going into the freezer as soon as it's warm enough to hang them to bleed outdoors!) We don't give them any additional heat or light all winter, as they are a Canadian breed designed for our winters. From January to Mid-March, we only got about 4 eggs a week (and twice I had to buy eggs from a neighbor!), but now we're up to 4 or 5 a day from the 7 Chantecler hens.

The banties I bought at auction a couple of weeks ago, wanted them to brood the Chantecler eggs. My goal is to have a dozen hens through the winter so we get enough eggs for us year round and some extra to sell in the summer.

I got 12 eggs in Feb (started on 2/26) and 310 in March as of yesterday, so they're averaging 11 per day this month. Yesterday was the first day I got 15/15. We used lights for a while, but it made no difference so we took them out of the coop.

Feed 'em a hot mash,bet you'll start getting eggs.

Mine have been laying all winter long. They live in an unheated coop with a light that turns on about an hour before dusk and turns off a couple of hours later. We've been getting about 30 eggs out about 40 hens but there's a couple of 3 year old hens and several 2 years old hens. The rest are last year's hatch.
I find that in the spring the numbers go down but that's because they start hiding them all around the farm and I can't find them all. I'm sure that somewhere there's a HUGE stash of eggs from last year.

I mentioned before, but my hens have been 75%-80% all winter in an uninsulated coop and lots of -30 temps. I had two heat lamps above their water which sometimes kept it from freezing. They are dedicated birds, for sure. ISA browns.

Your hens are either eating their eggs, or hiding them. Golf balls or fake eggs in the nest boxes might help either case.

Chickens don't just respond to day length, they respond also to increasing day length. Mine pick up in January, the coldest month. I'm getting 12-15 eggs a day for 17 hens.

They are probably in moult, which can last up to 6 months. The older ones (over two years old) usually do this, which is why most people raise up a new crop every year and butcher the older ones.

Our hens never did quit laying-- we do have 1 light in the coop one like we use on the baby chicks) We have 12 2 year old hens and we get 6-8 eggs a day.

We got 6 eggs today!!
Tom says we are weeding out the 2 year olds now too.
We were hoping to brood chicks and have new pullets but I'm not going to keep feeding hens that are not laying and too old Feed cost so much now.
I'll give it another week or so

If I read you right, you have silkies and you just moved your chickens last year? If so, last winter, Febuary and March were much warmer on average than this year.

My silkies, when I had them, always laid later than my Buff Orpingtons. Ohio is difficult weather for some strains of silkies. Especially as cold as it has been this year.

I agree with the poster that suggests warm feed helps to jump start the laying

Northeast Pa here... ours just started picking up after a winter break, about two and a half weeks ago. 7 eggs a day for 7 hens. I have a mixed flock, free range. They are fed an all purpose mash and we don't have a light in the coop.

When I was growing up, a neighbor advised my mother to add crushed red pepper to our chicken feed to help them start laying. Not sure how it works but every time my hens have slacked, adding it to the feed has helped.

Our chickens laid all winter and we had a cold winter here in IL. Do you have a light on them?

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Moms don't look at things like normal people.
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Ours were laying very nicely, until a January thaw caused melt water to short the outlet in the coop with a light on a timer and I disconnected that loop. It's on a GFCI so there was no real danger, but without the added daylight hours, our chickens shut off pretty quickly. They are just starting to pick back up again, but I think that I have two problems - 1. they aren't always laying in the nest boxes., and 2. there are one or more nasty egg eating hens (soon to be stewing hens).
To the OP, my guess is that you have one or both of the same problems that I suspect for our birds.
Tom

Laying here in central Kentucky again. Ours are au naturale, no artificial lighting, so they do slow down in the winter. Once we start them back on laying mash in early spring they fire up production again.

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