[psychobabble]

Hi all, I have trawled the net and not been able to find a reason for why my little chicken, nugget, has stopped laying...she doesn't seem to have lice, red mite, she's not moulting (or at least I don't think she is??) it not because of daylight hours, she is eating and drinking and behaving otherwise as normal - she doesn't seem to be broody - is not sitting in nest box etc so does anyone have any ideas?  the only thing that I can possibly think of is that she is my daughters favourite so she is picked up and "played" with more than the others and maybe this is causing her some stress (my daughter is 14 so she's fairly sensible with her) but she has always been the most docile and friendliest of the girls so I can't understand this being the cause... She is a gold star hybrid and lives with my other two girls, salad and soup (a bluebell and a sussex star).  BTW the kids named them, not me!

Many thanks

[Kenilworth]

How old is she?

[psychobabble]

She was POL (18 weeks) when I bought her just after Easter. 

[Raven81]

How long is it since she laid?

[psychobabble]

I think about 10 days or so give or take, as i have three it probably took me a few days to really notice I was consistently only getting 2 eggs a day, but I chekced them out at the weekend and it is definitely nugget who has stopped.  She also has stopped doing the crouching thing when I put a hand over her back...I hope you know what I mean by this?? lol

[Kenilworth]

Still relatively young, hens do lay in 21 or 28 hour  cycles if i remember rightly so   will miss a few days every now and then, 10 days seems a bit long for that.

Could be the beginning of a moult? Though not sure if she isnt still a bit young for that?With our hens the severity of the moult does seem to vary from hen to hen with one hen shredding what seems like sack loads of feathers and looking really bedraggled whilst with a different hen its hardly noticeable.

I guess a change of food or routine could be a cause. Even down to thunder storms, we had a hen stop laying after she got a fright from a rather big storm we had a few years ago. There are storys about hens dropping dead from fright at  thunder claps though i dont know how true this is

She doesnt seem to be in any form of distress so perhaps just an idea to keep an eye on her.

[Raven81]

Are you certain she was laying regularly before? Mine have been laying just under a week so I'm no expert but I couldn't tell you which has laid each egg!

[themagicaltoad1]

Is she allowed to free range in the garden? The usual cause of apparent "not laying" is that they are hiding their eggs somewhere else.

[Kenilworth]

Is she allowed to free range in the garden? The usual cause of apparent "not laying" is that they are hiding their eggs somewhere else.

Very Sneeky

[OpiumEater]

I bought three hens with different colour eggs so I could tell who was laying and when. So I know Bernadette hasn't laid for weeks. To begin with I put it down to the move as they slowly dried up after moving here.

Then she moved from middle pecking order to bottom, and lost a few feathers in the process, so I thought that would have an impact.

Then the fox attacked and took one, and injured another badly. Bernadette got off lightly, but I thought that the shock would knock her back a bit.

Since then, the injured hen has healed beautifully and has been laying for a week, while Bernadette is just not interested. I'm stumped for ideas.