Cube mk2 and WIR

[CALNICK]

hello

 

my girls are approx 25 weeks old, or so we are about to believe and as yet they are not laying. We have placed a dummy egg in the nest box. The girls are fouling the nest boxes.

 

When we originally had our 6 girls 2 of them died in the first week and then we purchased 2 more from a different breeder.

 

Someone has told us that because we lost the 2 girls early on then its quite possible that the other girls had a virus and that they will never lay - is this true???

 

Is there anything else that we can do to try and encourage them to lay.

 

thank you

 

calnick

[Cate in NZ]

Hi Calnick,

I just moved your topic to "Eggs" as it's more likely to get viewed and hopefully some helpful responses in there. I hope that's all OK with you.

You do seem to be having a difficult time with your introduction to hen keeping , but I think that 25 weeks is a little young to be worrying too much about them not laying yet. Some chickens take much longer than others to get into their stride and your girls may just be "late developers" . What breeds are they, generally pure breeds start laying later than hybrids, also it's not unusual for pure breeds to slow down or stop laying when the days begin to shorten in Autumn . Hybrids will usually lay all year round though.

I've never heard of a virus that stops laying, I suppose it could be possible , but we've had loads of threads about late to laying birds and I've never yet come across one that didn't ever lay, nor of any virus that damaged the egg laying equipment, so to speak, so I'd suggest that that's just a bit of speculation and not worry about it for now.

One of my hens once took over a year to start laying, she was a gorgeous, flighty, cream legbar (Phil , I still miss that daft bird) we got her supposedly at POL at the end of May......first egg was end of March the following year, after that she popped them out regularly, just took her an age to figure out what to do .

What do your chickens combs look like, generally as they're coming into egg production their combs and wattles will get noticeably larger and redder, and they start to squat when you approach them.

I'd also suggest that you check your girls diet. Plenty of layers pellets, not too much of the treats which will fill them up and fatten them up, but won't encourage egg production. Often giving layers pellets throughout the day then a few treats late afternoon is a good way to go.

Good luck with it, I do hope that you get an egg very soon.