Four hens, no eggs for eleven days, all healthy and eating normally

Question

Flock of four, all just under two years old, laid consistently through spring. Eleven days ago production stopped dead — not a slow decline, just nothing.…

shallow_well_shea · Accepted Answer

Check for a hidden nest before anything else. Four birds stopping on the same day is behaviour, not biology — real laying problems come on staggered. Keep them shut in the coop and run for three full days; if eggs appear, you had a nest under a hedge somewhere.

If they're still empty after three days confined, then look at daylight hours and at whether anything is spooking them at night. A fox that can't get in but visits nightly will shut down laying completely and you'll never see it.

leggy_seedling · Answer

Vent feather loss plus a sudden stop can also be a rat or a corvid taking them. Rats will take eggs and leave no shell at all. Put a couple of golf balls or ceramic eggs in the nest boxes overnight and see if they disappear — that tells you fast.

raised_bed_rue · Answer

Also worth checking under the coop and in any stack of pallets or feed bags. Mine picked a gap behind the water butt one summer and I walked past it daily for a fortnight.

seedstart_sim · Answer

Two year olds do take a break, but not usually all four at once and not usually in the middle of the season. Second the hidden nest theory.

wild_ferment · Answer

One more thing to rule out — did anything change about their access to grass or scraps? A flock that suddenly gets a lot of high protein treats or a lot of grass clippings can go off lay for a week or two while their gut sorts itself out.

Four hens, no eggs for eleven days, all healthy and eating normally Laying

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