4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[MrsC]

Hello! I hope someone out there with more chicken experience than me can help... I have had 2 hens for about 6 months, they are about 18 months/2 years old I believe.

 

For the last 2 months one has stopped laying, well sometimes she lays an eggy mess, sometimes soft shelled eggs. We get the occasional good one from her. The other hen lays fantastic eggs every day.

 

Today, she laid a soft shelled egg on the doorstep (weird in itself) and I discovered the pair of them eating it!!

 

They are free range, fed on layers pellets and oyster shell. They have the pink conditioning stuff in their water. I have wormed them. What else can I do???

 

All advice gratefully received!!

[Redwing]

You could try limestone flour in their feed - it will add more calcium to their diet, you can get a decent sized tub from a horsey shop for about £5.50, I'm not sure what the dosage is but if you do a search on here you should find it

 

A drop of cod liver oil (tiny drop or the eggs will taint) helps with the absorbtion of calcium so you could try that in conjunction with the limestone flour as the next step

 

A tradtional remedy is to crush egg shells finely and feed them back to the chickens (wash then dry the shells in an oven first to make them easy to crush) but some chickens will pick at the food and leave the shell

 

The step after that would be to try a calcium supplement like Davinova C, its not that expensive and is available 'over the counter'

 

I would always suggest starting with the softest (scuse the pun) 'cure' first so as not to complicate things and then you always have an option to move on to in the future if things go downhill again

[chickencam]

It may be down to their age, once hens are over 18 months old if they are hybrids their egg laying quality and quantity does go down.