Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (54 page)

Even if you have a breed specifically developed for high egg production, you’ll get few eggs if your hens are old. Most hens lay best during their first year, although a really good layer should do well for 2 years or even 3. As hens age, they generally tend to get fat — especially when fed too much grain by well-meaning keepers — which significantly impairs their ability to lay.

During the molt, all hens slow down in production, and some stop laying all together. Low production as a result of an out-of-season molt is a sure sign of stress. Stress itself, with or without an accompanying molt, can cause hens to slow down or stop laying.

You may get too few eggs if your hens hide their eggs where you can’t find them or if a hen lays her eggs and then turns around and eats them. Egg eating, a form of cannibalism, is a management problem that usually starts when an egg gets broken in the nest. An egg eater won’t necessarily come from within your flock; it may be a wily predator.

Improper nutrition can cause a drop in laying. Hens may get too little feed or may be fed rations containing too little carbohydrate, protein, or calcium. Imbalanced rations often result from feeding hens too much scratch or from failure to offer a free-choice calcium supplement when the diet includes grain or pasture. Low temperatures increase a chicken’s requirement for carbohydrates, and unless rations are adjusted accordingly, low production may result.

Anything that causes hens to eat less than usual also causes them to lay less than usual. To encourage better laying, encourage eating by feeding more frequently or by simply stirring the ration between feedings. Insufficient water can cause a slump in eating, so make sure the drinkers remain filled.

Dehydration due to lack of water for even a few hours can cause hens to stop laying for days or weeks. A hen drinks a little at a time, but often, during the day. Her body contains more than 50 percent water, and an egg is 65 percent water. A hen, therefore, needs access to fresh drinking water at all times for her egg-laying apparatus to function properly. If she is deprived of water for 24 hours,
she may take another 24 hours to recover. Deprived of water for 36 hours, she may go into a molt, followed by a long period of poor laying from which she may never bounce back.

Pullets and hens may suffer water deprivation if the water quality is poor or they don’t like the taste — reason enough not to medicate water during hot weather. On the other hand, adding vinegar to the water at a rate of one tablespoon per gallon (15 mL per 4 L) — double the dose if your water is alkaline — encourages drinking; chickens seem to like the taste of vinegar. In winter you may provide plenty of water, but if it freezes, egg production will drop. In summer, deprivation occurs when water needs increase but the supply doesn’t.

A nonlayer will drink 1 to 2 cups (0.25 to 0.5 L) of water each day. A layer drinks twice as much and in warm weather, may drink up to four times more than usual. During the summer put out extra waterers and keep them in the shade, and frequently bring your hens fresh, cool water. They will thank you by continuing to lay those wonderful eggs you prize them for.

A pullet that starts laying at too young an age, that is too fat or unhealthy when she starts laying, or that lays unusually large eggs, may experience egg binding or prolapse. Even pullets that start laying without any problems need to learn to put their eggs in the nests.

Egg binding
occurs when a too-large egg gets stuck just inside the vent. It can be an extremely serious condition, especially if the pullet goes into shock. If the pullet does not remain bright and alert, take measures to keep her warm.

The first thing to do is to make sure the pullet is truly egg bound. If she’s straining to release an egg, and you see the end of egg near the opening, then you know for certain. If you can’t see the egg, you can verify egg binding by lubricating
a finger with K-Y Jelly or other water-based lubricant and gently inserting it into the vent until you feel the hard shell with the end of your finger. Don’t attempt to stretch the vent, as you may tear the pullet’s delicate tissue.

Sometimes lubricating the vent area, and as much of the egg as you can reach with a finger, will aid its passage. Gently squirting in warm (not hot) saline-solution wound wash, or warm soapy water, may help get things moving.

Warming up the vent area may relax the muscles enough to release the egg. If the pullet is tame enough not to be frightened by being handled, moisten an old towel, warm it in the microwave (make sure it’s not hot), and apply it to her bottom. Reheat the towel as needed to keep it warm, or better yet use two towels and warm them alternately, to maintain moist heat.

An alternative warming method is to put warm, not hot, water in a bucket or basin and stand the pullet in it with the water reaching just above her vent. After warming the pullet’s bottom for about 15 minutes, give her a rest, and if she doesn’t soon release the egg, try again.

If warmth therapy still doesn’t work, maybe you can dislodge the egg. Again lubricate the vent and egg with K-Y Jelly and/or warm soapy water. Gently insert your lubricated finger to help maneuver the egg, while with your other hand push gently against the abdomen and try to work the egg out. Be careful here — you don’t want to break the egg, which can cause internal injury.

If all else fails, you may need to collapse the shell to remove the egg. This maneuver is tricky and can injure the pullet unless you work slowly and carefully. First suck out the contents of the egg by piercing the shell with a needle at the end of a syringe. Use a large-bore needle, 18 or lower gauge, or emptying the shell will take forever.

Once the shell is empty of its yolk and white, try to collapse it while keeping the shards together. This part is the trickiest, as you must take great care to avoid injuring the pullet with a sharp shard. For this reason, don’t squeeze the pullet’s abdomen to crush the egg, but rather work gently with your fingers directly on the shell, or at least one or two fingers on the inside and the other hand gently pressing from the outside.

Using lots of warm saline or soapy water as a lubricant, carefully remove as much of the shell as possible, then rinse away remaining pieces with squirts of saline gentle enough not to wash the shell bits deeper. Don’t worry about getting the last little bit; once the egg is out, the pullet is better off left to rest, and any bits left behind should come out on their own. If tissue protrudes through the vent, treat the pullet as you would for prolapse.

Prolapse
is a natural process by which eggs are laid. The oviduct’s
shell gland
, or uterus, holds the egg tightly and prolapses, or turns itself inside out, through
the cloaca, (the chamber just inside the vent) to deposit the egg outside the vent, then withdraws back inside the hen. If an egg is too large, or a pullet is too immature to begin laying, the uterus may not retract back inside. Instead it remains prolapsed, a serious condition in which uterine tissue protrudes outside the vent.

If you catch prolapse right away, you may be able to reverse the situation by applying a hemorrhoidal cream, such as Preparation H — if necessary, gently pushing any protruding tissue back inside — and isolating the pullet until she heals. Unless you catch it with the cream in time, the exposed pink tissue will attract other birds to pick, and the pullet will eventually die from hemorrhage and shock. Prolapse that progresses to this stage is called
blowout
or
pickout
.

Prolapse may be largely avoided by ensuring — through seasonal hatching or the use of controlled lighting and proper nutrition — that your pullets don’t start laying too young; a pullet that lays before her body is ready is more likely to prolapse. In a mature hen, prolapse is usually a sign of obesity.

Floor eggs,
or eggs laid on the floor rather than in nests, are likely to occur in a flock of pullets just starting to lay. Floor eggs get dirty or cracked, making them unsafe to eat. A cracked egg is easily broken, encouraging birds to sample the contents, develop a taste for eggs, and thereafter become egg eaters.

To minimize floor eggs, prepare nests early so your pullets have time to get used to them before they start laying. Place the nests low to, or directly on, the floor until most of the pullets are using them, then raise the nests 18 to 20 inches (45 to 50 cm) above the floor (or have two sets of nests and close off the lower ones) to discourage the pullets from entering nests for reasons other than to lay.

If pullets continue laying on the floor, perhaps you have too few nests; provide at least one nest for every four layers. Or perhaps the nests get too much light, causing pullets to seek out darker corners for laying. Since the primary purpose of laying eggs is to produce chicks, layers have a deep-seated instinct to deposit their eggs in dark, protected places. A nest that is properly designed and located offers just such a place.

A
nest egg,
or fake egg, left in each nest shows a pullet the proper place to lay. When she sees an egg already in the nest, she says to herself, “Ah-ha, this must be a safe place for my own egg.” Old golf balls make good nest eggs. You can find multicolored plastic toy eggs in stores around Easter time; wooden eggs, available year-round at hobby stores, are better than air-filled plastic eggs because they aren’t easily bounced out of the nest.

The idea that nest eggs make hens lay more eggs is an old wives’ tale. Here’s what it does do: By encouraging a hen to lay in a nest, rather than hide her eggs elsewhere, the nest egg lets you find more of the eggs she does lay.