[twigwot]

Hi there folks,
We're quite new to the whole chicken thing, though both our families had hens when we were kids. We now have 4 Road Island Red crosses bought as POL at the begining of this year. We've had eggs large (120gs!!) & small, eggs without shells and even a shell without the egg! But since the first shell-less egg near the begining of laying we've only had 2 eggs per day. I'm pretty sure I know which 2 hens are laying (we have 2 dark ones, & 2 light ones) and I think it's the dark pair that are laying.
I've tried introducing a cock bird for a while, but to no avail. In fact the light hen that thinks she's boss, kept seeing him off every time he tried any thing with any of them! I've also had breeders pellets recommended to me, but I've yet to try these.
All 4 hens are heathy, they come out to rome the garden in the afternoon each day, and they also get all the kitchen scraps from veggies etc as well as layers pellers, so a good all round diet.
So if anyone can give any advice on how to get them all laying it would be really great.

[henamoured]

You could try only giving them layers pellets - no treats at all for a week - this has worked for me in the past. If it works just reduce the amount of treats they have.
Other things - are they laying elsewhere? Are they getting enough food (not being prevented from doing so by hens higher up the pecking order)? Are their wattles red (indicating their laying maturity)?
I had one hen who was very late coming into lay at over 40 weeks. I know others have had to wait even longer, so it might just be a case of being patient. As they have a finite number of eggs over their lives at least it means you'll get eggs for longer if they eventually do lay!!

[henamoured]

Sorry, meant to ask if their combs (NOT wattles) are red yet?

[orchardlady]

You may find that they are in fact all laying but just on alternate days. Yes young hens will lay regularly but not always every day. You could separate them to find out but hat could just stress them out and put a kibosh on the whole experiment!

[bantam novice]

Welcome to the forum twigwot  lots of good people and good advice here.

[twigwot]

Hi again. Thanks for the info. Henamoured - I think all their combs ( ) are all red! At least not so different that I can tell. I'll try your "no treats" suggestion and see if that helps at all.  I must admit that after reading one of the other leads on here about odd laying spots I'm going to try keeping the girls in for a few days and see if this makes a difference too, just in case. I think that they are all getting enough food, infact one of the girls who I don't think is laying is the head honchoe (sorry cant spell for toffee some times!) I must admit that I'm supprised by the lateness of some hens coming in to lay & I've been trying to work out how old my girls are! I got it wrong when I said we got them at the beinging of the year, it was about Oct last year (I was reminded that they tried to excape on chistmas day! So they are about a year old - is that still within the time frame?
Orchardlady - thank you, I had thought about that as well, and come to the same conclusion - that it might stress them too much! Who'da thought there was so much to think about keeping chickens

[rachelr]

Its not easy is it but its soooo much fun and they are such characters you wondered why you did not do this earlier well i do anyways

[twigwot]

Too true - oh so true! They make me laugh nearly every day!!