The majority of our older hens started molting back in November. I wasn’t too concerned as I watched our egg production plummet.
I could get by for a while without eggs. I learned all sorts of new recipes by Goggling “eggless pancakes” and “eggless cookies.” I discovered that a tablespoon of sour cream works great in muffins and quick breads instead of an egg. And flax eggs work in most other things.
We missed the eggs, but molting doesn’t last forever, so we knew the hens would start laying again soon.
Except they didn’t. And my older hens recovered from their molting with beautiful new feathers. But there were no eggs. Well, almost no eggs. We would get two eggs a week sometimes.
And this lasted a LONG time. We thought it might be the cold, but this was honestly the mildest winter we’ve had in years. Scratch the cold.
Maybe it was the Tom turkey that was pecking. We butchered that Tom. And still no eggs. Scratch the Tom.
We searched all over the barn, assuming that the chickens were laying somewhere. But even offers of money for every egg found didn’t produce any results when the kids searched. They sure tried though! Scratch laying in the barn.
Begrudgingly, I started buying eggs from the store. After a couple of years of farm fresh eggs, this was really hard. We have nineteen laying hens after all. Buying eggs wasn’t what I planned on.
Then Bryan remembered that we had a light in our old chicken coop, on a timer. And that kicked my brain into remembering what K had researched about chickens before. They need 12 hours of light to lay.
So my wonderful husband ran an extension cord from the barn to the new coop location and set a light on a timer for the early morning hours.
We also stopped feeding a generic poultry feed and went back to a good layer blend. In winter, the birds weren’t getting enough variety from plants and bugs while free-ranging like they do in the spring and summer.
Guess what? It worked and brought my hens off their strike. I got three eggs a day at first, and yesterday I got five! I’m really looking forward to scrambled farm fresh eggs for breakfast later this week. Their production isn’t yet where I want it to be. With that many birds, a dozen a day is what I’m shooting for.
But, spring is coming and I’m hoping the production continues to increase!
If you have hens, have they ever gone on strike? How did you help them through it?
My nest boxes that stayed empty almost all winter.
[…] I know that much of the US is dealing with extra snow. But…here at the farm, we’re seeing many signs of spring. The pussy-willows are budding at the creek, the grass is starting to grow again, and the chickens are laying eggs! […]