Smart Feeder - Light sensor values

[Banus]

Hello all,

 

Has anyone ever heard of / experienced this before. We have an Eglu Go with a 3m run. Our 2 girls are fit and healthy and are regularly cleaned out. Now, over the last 2 months we've noticed that everytime we change their bedding with fresh clean meadow hay bought from Pets at Home, within a few hours they chuck it out into the run and appear to be happy laying their eggs on the empty plastic nesting tray. We've tried changing their straw but it does not make any difference, they just chuck it out into their run and don't want to appear to have any straw in their nesting box. Any ideas why they are doing this as we have had them for over 2 years and they've only just started doing this?

[sjp]

a couple of my older girls do this I've put it down to them finding some left over grain in the bedding at sometime in the past and they are searching for more

I've never fed them in the coop but I've found the odd ear of barley in the bedding before the company that makes it started to chop it up finer

[daxigirl]

Have you had a good look for mites in the house and lice on the chooks. I have had mites in a 2nd hand that I bought. Have a good clean and squirt about with some poultry shield and a few fluffs of diatom. (I know the plastic isn't supposed to harbour mites but having experienced it, it's worth a try. They were in some old bedding that had got wedged between the two grey base sections and were only really found when I unscrewed it all.)

 

Or maybe they just don't like the hay.

[Egluntyne]

I wouldn't use either hay or straw in the run or coop, as they can cause problems with mites and impacted crop if the hen is minded to eat it. I use Aubiose or Hemcore if I can get hold of it, or dust extracted wood shavings. They don't rearrange that quite so much.

[sjp]

the bedding I use has a % of barley straw in the mix which is now a good size of chopped bedding plus it's the right price hemp based bedding isn't that easy to get around here as the price is to high