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Figured out why my hens quit laying in July, and it wasn't the heat
Three weeks ago my 6 hens dropped from 5 eggs a day to maybe 1, and I blamed the heat wave here in Modesto. Turned out a scrub jay had found the gap in the run netting and was spooking them off the nesting box every morning, so I patched it with zip ties and hardware cloth and we were back to 4 a day within a week. Anyone else had a wild bird cause a fake molt before?
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wren2172d ago
The gap in the netting thing gets me because I had the same deal with a hawk last fall, except mine was a gap up top over the run. What really got me reading your post was how much of backyard farming is just figuring out which one of ten things went wrong, and the animals never tell you which. I keep a little notebook now of what changed each week, feed, weather, new holes, and it has saved me twice already. Your zip ties and hardware cloth fix is the kind of thing that sounds too simple to work until you see the eggs come back. Makes me wonder how many "bad seasons" folks blame on heat or feed when it is really just one small hole somewhere.
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