Few Eggs, could Layer Feed be the problem?

I’ve been reading up on layer feed ingredients, analysis, layer age, egg production, etc.

Overall Question:Has anyone seen/done research on layer protein amount to thrive?

Long Story Version:
I am currently doing so because my layers are 2 years old and have been on organic feed for a year and a half now. I had a supplemental light for a while as they were young that prompted them to lay eggs even during the winter (my mistake as a new chicken owner, I don’t supplement with light anymore, I let them rest). My chickens had their first winter without the light so I’ve seen more molting activity this year as well. We’ve been in spring/summer where everyone’s chickens are laying greatly for 2 months now… 2 of my chickens are laying every other day.
I keep my coop very clean, these are pets to me. I free range them noon to bedtime everyday as their routine always has been. I’ve given them ACV in their water and oregano mix for worms in case they needed it… I’m feeding them. 16% protein natures best organic feed.

Hi Alexis,
At face value, it seems like you are feeding them just fine. 16% protein is generally the amount recommended for layers. You might try supplementing some oyster shells for extra calcium.

Otherwise, how long have they been laying poorly?
What breed are they?
How many do you have?
How big is the coop where they are for the night?

Stress would be another possibility for not laying well. Also, if you had commercial breeds like white leghorn... laying poorly would be expected in the second year. If you can give us some more info, we might be able to help you figure things out.

I have an ISA brown, Orpington, Rhode Island Red (laying every other day), leghorn mix (Smokey pearl: she usually lays every other day at peak but isn’t laying right now), java (lays every other day typically and is my second bird laying her normal amount right now).
They’re all 2 years old.
They have at least 7x9 coop building but has outdoor enclosures for the morning part that is huge predator proof.
I definitely am going to try the oyster shell. I went out this morning and saw my Orpington laid an egg that was broken in her box. Could be calcium! They all eat the same things that’s why it’s confusing some are producing well and others aren’t even though they are higher producers as well.

Oyster shells for sure! Free choice, all the time. It's not just for their eggs, but also their heart health.  

I don't know if lights are the problem.  But I'm probably further north than you and we need lights in the winter as it's dark here and they won't get up to eat unless we shake them in the mornings.  Having the light for 4 hours before sunrise (like 6am) greatly improved their health and survival here over the winter.  But in most places, lights aren't needed.

They do lay less as they get older.  The first year will be the most, often 6 out of 7 days.  The second year, it's more like 4 or 5 eggs out of every week.  

Chickens also go off the lay at the drop of a hat.  Have a storm.  A loud noise.  Any little stress.  The way around this is to give them lots of variety in both diet and environment to make them more resilient.  

If molting gets really bad, I buy a bunch of liver from the local butcher and feed it to the hens.  I often feed it raw, but if there's a concern about fighting in the flock, we cook it first so they don't get used to eating blood.  A couple of meals of liver and they usually start laying again in a week or so.  

Whoops... I completely forgot to give a "Welcome to Permies"... so Welcome to Permies! :)

And yes, cracked eggs in the nesting box could be a sign of not enough calcium. Keep in mind that, especially with free ranging, even though the chickens are "eating the same thing", some will get more, some will get less. Some will get this and some will get that. ok, enough Dr. Suess :), but some of them may just be eating more things with calcium.

‘Layer feed’ has 4 times the calcium of regular ‘feed’.
Alexis, it’s a bit unclear, you’ve been feeding them ‘organic layer feed’ or ‘organic feed’? Because ‘organic layer feed’ has 4 times the calcium of ‘organic feed’.

What is important to remember is the fact that ‘layer feed’ HAS TOO MUCH CALCIUM. On the other hand, ‘feed’ (usually called ‘all-flock feed’) HAS TOO LITTLE CALCIUM.

Why? Because ‘layer feed’ is formulated for hens who lay DAILY. The all-flock feed is formulated for flock members who don't lay at all (those too young to lay, those too old to lay, roosters). So... a quarter of the calcium in layer feed goes to general body maintenance and three quarters of the calcium goes to egg production needs, but it's meant for hens who lay everyday. So, a hen who lays every other day needs only half of that, so for her 37.5% of the calcium in her layer feed is poison. For the rooster 75% of the calcium in the layer feed is poison. With the micronutrients, we need to be careful- too little and we're dead (us and our animals), too much and we're just as dead. The body can adapt to some extent, by not absorbing all the extra, but receiving daily an exaggerated amount is an unrelenting assault... They develop gout in their feet, so many cases I've seen on the internet, the feet of older hens getting swollen and red, must be so painful too. The roosters just die extremely early.
The layer feed is very practical though for people who want to keep only hens of the specific breeds and age who actually do lay daily. But if your hens don’t lay everyday, layer feed is toxic to them.

All-flock feed being for non-layers, of course it has too little calcium for hens who lay. As everyone said, you'll need to make available, separately, a source of calcium for the layers. They'll take as much as they need. Their own eggshells are usually an excellent option, but if they’ve been on regular feed and no source of extra calcium, then oyster shells would give them a boost. Until now, were you giving them back their own eggshells?

Are your chickens free range?

This is the time of year they want to brood and will hide a nest site if able. It just takes one hen being broody and all the others seem to bend to her will.

Mine stopped laying a few weeks ago. A few days in I saw one hovering near our large hay bale. After some investigating I found they had built a nest under the tarp and it had all twenty-four eggs I was missing in it. Why use a safe, stable nest box when you can get creative?

If you are feeding them adequately, which it seems you are, that would be the next thing I check.

It's also possible that something is eating the eggs. Where I live, snakes are a likely culprit.

Welcome to Permies! I hope you enjoy hanging around with these fun people!

What everyone else said, more or less, but add in:
Where are you, location-wise? If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, we're heading into summer at high speed. Where I am, I'm just getting off two weeks of randomly bad weather which has been causing my flock to have random laying issues, and the heat is starting to affect lay rates.

Chickens, while being descended from Jungle Fowl, are not the same and generally have a simple reaction to heat - they stop laying. Anything over 80F can be enough to have them switch up their rate of lay from bird to bird. If they were used to cool weather, then any sudden warming would potentially cause issues.

My Orpington, a beautiful fluffy mound of opinionated feathers, hasn't laid more than 3 eggs a week in Spring and Fall in a couple of years. I'll get an egg a week from her in the summer, but she's probably the most sensitive bird I have to temperature and weather changes. She's 5 years old, from what I can tell/remember, so I don't worry about her production.

The Java should be better adapted to the heat. The ISA Brown should do reasonably well with higher temperatures, as will your Leghorn mix.

The large single combs are great for radiating heat, but the birds will still need shade, and lots of water (however you can convince them to take it), and you need to accept that lay rate is reduced in high temperatures, low temperatures, when it rains, when there's a dust storm, and when there's something stressful going on.

You're right that they should be laying something, somewhere. At two years old, all the hens should have at least 1/3 of the lay rate they had last year. It's odd that you only have 2 birds laying at all, and the others just aren't.

The shell-less egg is something that can happen. It generally doesn't recur but can be a sign of a hen with an infection or issue. Unless it happens again, I wouldn't worry about it but keep the idea of some sort of minor irritation or infection in the back of your head.

Please let us know how things are going for you. Any changes you make to their care will take a bit of time to reap results, but sharing whatever data you have is great!
I hope the advice you're given can help you to figure out what's happening.

Chickens do that now and then - our too many to easily get an accurate count hens went through a dry patch during their normal peak laying season this year, which was really odd to us. They laid more than normal during the mild winter we had, but then mostly stopped in late march and are only picking up again this last week. With 50+ laying hens, we'd see maybe 5 to 10 eggs in a day for nearly two months. This isn't the first time, but it always catches us off guard.

There's what's referred to sometimes as a "hard moult" where the birds don't just put on some new feathers, they seem to just keep replacing feathers until they're all new and fresh. What triggers it and how to recognize it when it starts is still a mystery to us. Some will say that a higher protein feed during moult will speed things up and get you more eggs during the rough patch, but we haven't had any success there.

And yes, 2+ years means less eggs for most breeds...just the way it works, especially with the higher production breeds. We try to add chicks to the flock each summer, and cull older birds each fall, so our flock is in a continual renewal. Easier said than done, but it mostly works

Hope that helps

This has been super helpful! I’ve been feeding them Layers Organic Feed, they are 50% of the time free range so I’ve been keeping a good watch on them for where they lay. Also got oyster shells just in case they want it.
Since I’ve posted, my chickens started laying again the 2nd day after I put ACV in their water and gave them oregano, red pepper flakes, and a few other helpful herbs.
My leghorn mix (we got her as a Smokey pearl chicken, but her color is definitely not Smokey pearl, nor leghorn… she lays white eggs). She hasn’t started laying again. She goes into the box and makes her chicken egg drop noise but nothing yet. Her comb brightened up and feathers started looking more smooth since I gave them the ACV and other stuff.

Other Question:
One of my chicken looked to have laid a lash egg before this treatment, but has started laying again. Everything on the internet said they’re going to die or infect the others or to cull them… it doesn’t seem to be an issue now. Anyone have any experience of this?

Alexis Makowski wrote:Other Question:
One of my chicken looked to have laid a lash egg before this treatment, but has started laying again. Everything on the internet said they’re going to die or infect the others or to cull them… it doesn’t seem to be an issue now. Anyone have any experience of this?

Lash eggs happen.
They're like shell-less eggs and wind/fairy/pullet eggs. They're an anomaly that's noticed because they are just so weird. I had a lash egg that was a Möbius strip early this year. It was the oddest thing I've seen yet, but I'm sure one of my birds has some new devilment for me in planning stages.

Generally, lash eggs happen because of irritation, infection, or an odd bit of something that happened to the hen. By itself, it's important to note, but it doesn't mean anything. Just keep an eye on your flock and try to see if one of the girls is having trouble of some sort.
Lash eggs are the hen's way of clearing a bad situation in her reproductive tract. Yes, it can mean that she has an infection and things are Not Good inside, but the lash egg is both a symptom and a potential cure. The hen's body will try to encapsulate the infection or irritant and expel it. If it's able to do that, that's great! The problem comes with the "but what if it doesn't work?" That's when you see the hen's health start to decline.

If it was a one-time situation and none of the hens seemed to have any lasting issues, once the hen has recovered from whatever was going on, she'll be fine. That's it. That's the entire experience. Congratulations!

My question to you is - have you checked the vent of the Leghorn mix? Her continued efforts to lay an egg are troubling. She thinks she's getting the job done, but I'm curious about whether she has some sort of blockage or problem.

Chickens are considered low-value livestock. Most people won't pay too much for them, don't consider them worth a vet visit, and don't think buying expensive medications is worth all the cost, work, and trouble. Sick chickens, like most other sick birds, will go through their illnesses very quickly. Because of the way most of us keep chickens - many of them in a smallish space - they will spread illness among themselves quickly.

If your bird has some signs of an upper respiratory illness or has a nasty discharge from her vent, you should separate them from the rest of the flock and keep them someplace where you can treat the illness while preventing it from infecting the others. Because chickens will get very sick very quickly, and it can be hard to treat them, hard to diagnose them (prey species do their best to Not Look Sick), they frequently die, after spreading whatever they've caught to the others.

A lash egg doesn't mean that your bird has some deadly disease that's going to wipe out your flock. It just means that something happened to the egg-making equipment and that she's trying to do a hard reset. If it works, she'll be fine and will start laying again, though her eggshells might have bumps to them or an odd pattern on the shell. It's fine.

Lash eggs are considered a symptom of several chicken diseases, but then so is a sneeze. The hard part of chicken health is the learning curve - you have to know enough sick chickens before you understand what a sick chicken looks and sounds like. Until you get to that point, it's hard to know. Not all chicken sneezes mean it's sick, and not all diseases are easy to notice.

Chickens do die from what I call Sudden Chicken Death. Some chickens seem to go out of their way to find odd ways to die. I have yet to have a bird die from anything that could be connected to lash eggs, though I would guess that an untreated vent gleet might do it. I would also think that you would notice a chicken that was so very sick. What you're doing is fine and, as long as your birds are healthy and you're happy, everything is good.