If you have noticed a trend where your new pullets are taking forever to begin laying (up to 7 months), your older hens don’t resume laying until the next spring after they are done molting and all the eggs you’re getting seem to be smaller than they were in years prior, you are not the only one. Something is going on and it’s dietary. Let’s jump right in to what you can do to help your hens come into lay sooner and stay in lay using natural, healthy inputs your flock will love:
Laying Issues Are Real
Many keepers are experiencing issues with their hens. Breeds that once had pullets who would come in to lay at 19 weeks old just a few years ago now need 24 weeks to start laying. Adult hens who molt and experience the accompanying pause in laying now may not resume laying for four months. Worse, many of the eggs laid by first year pullets never seem to reach the extra large size in their first year that their grandmothers laid effortlessly. These issues are really happening and they are plaguing flock owners all over the US.
Free Range Flocks Are Generally Unaffected
Let me first state that if you fully free range or pasture raise your flock on a swath of acreage, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. These lucky girls are doing fine! Their glossy feathers, plump breasts, and massive orange-yolked eggs are the same as they have always been. This very obvious anecdotal evidence has many believing the issues stem from some commercial chicken feeds.
Bio-Available vs. Less Bio-Available
Everyone knows we absorb nutrients from what we eat. Chickens are no different. Eating whole foods, such as the entire seed, grain, or leaf is known to provide the most bio-available nutrients. This means our bodies are able to digest, absorb and use the greatest percent of these nutrients. Synthetic vitamins are known to be less bio-available. They are man-made and our bodies don’t absorb them or utilize them quite as well. Using larger amounts of synthetic vitamins is one way to compensate for the reduced absorption.
What Happens When Chicken Feed is Less Bio-Available?
We can see right on the label that our chicken feeds have added vitamins. They also contain protein meals, grain meals, and a number of other things, all pressed into the familiar layer pellet shape, which may then be pulverized into chick crumbles. But what if the “grain” contains too much chaff, stems, husk, debris, filler, and fluff that a hen’s body cannot actually derive protein, carbohydrates, and fats from?
I don’t think it is any secret that some commercial feed producers have had to reduce the quality of their inputs in order to continue to offer their product at a price that doesn’t continuously sky rocket upwards. The label provides a guaranteed analysis and we trust it’s sufficient. But after trying a few different feed brands for my penned breeding flocks – while their laying remained mediocre – I realized it had to be the feed. A few hours of fenced pasture ranging would flood the nest box with eggs over the following days. Natural foods that they selected themselves “cured” them.
How to Help Your Hens:
Let’s jump right into what I have found works to help your older girls lay better, help the new pullets come into lay on time (around 20 weeks), and get everyone laying larger sized eggs with golden orange yolks:
Homemade Feed
I began crafting my own scratch grain mixes as a bright, fun way to treat my hens. This quickly morphed into me making my own layer pellet + scratch grain feed blends and finally crafting my own homemade chicken feed recipes. I began doing this in late May 2024 and even though we endured a hot summer, I still had a number of older girls lay all the way through the heat and keep laying through the early weeks of their molt. While molting, I saw pin feathers grow in rapidly. Real foods were working!
Garden Greens
My flock does not get much free range time. The horse farm behind us is home to a pair of red tailed hawks and the male is positively behemoth. He killed my enormous Black Copper Marans rooster 15 minutes after I had let the Olive Egger pen out for some fresh grass. Now my flock gets all the garden weeds and clippings that they want, delivered right to their run. Strawberry tops, lettuce bottoms, bell pepper seeds, and fresh kitchen scraps go directly to them as well.
Flaked Oyster Shell
The white rock-like things sold at the feed store labeled “oyster shell” are not. Your flock wants real flaked oyster shell, which I have to order from Amazon. (Afflink) If you sell your eggs and cannot give the hens back enough of their own egg shells, a bit of flaked oyster shell works wonders. This is because the calcium carbonate in flaked oyster shell and chicken egg shells is highly bio-available. Eggs will have thick, durable shells that are less prone to cracking.
Good Hydration
Hens enjoy fresh, clean water and they need to be drinking plenty of it if they’re going to lay an egg that contains enough egg white. A dehydrated hen will lay smaller eggs. It’s that simple. I use this easy homemade hen rehydration drink to ensure my girls get a burst of nutrients in a molasses-sweet water they enjoy guzzling. Overheated hens whose laying has slowed will perk up and begin filling the next box again.
The Magic of Variety
It is hard to blame myself for the laying issues I noticed among my flock but in a big way, it was my fault. I was feeding them commercial feed from a bag that I thought was healthy enough. Of course it was also very convenient. My birds needed to remain mostly penned, either to avoid the always-hungry hawks or because they had to be in their special breeding groups. It was this combination of penned hens and commercial feed that proved to be the true issue: a behavior + dietary inputs problem. If I changed just one of those, like allowing free ranging (behavior) or giving whole foods (dietary inputs), the poor laying issue resolved quickly.
I also noticed that changing up the hen’s diet a little each week, like offering one scratch recipe now and a different recipe later plus rehydration drinks once a week and varying garden greens remedied the problem, too. The bottom line was that my hens needed variety in order to be their healthiest selves. I had bought into the idea that my flock was “safest” or “best” eating from a commercial feed bag. Yet experience was showing me my birds needed whole foods in order to thrive.
Breaking the Rules
I know there are so many people online who will screech that “treats” (literally real whole foods) can only make up 10% of a hen’s diet and the rest must be commercial feed. But on the days I carefully let my hens out to fence range or gave them “too many” whole grains and garden clippings, there was an immediate boost in laying. And when I was experimenting with my own homemade feeds in late summer 2024 and watching to see how my hens did on them, the explosion of eggs in the nest box was real. Even when we were still hitting 95°F here in south Texas in October and I could see feathers all over the coop as the autumn molt began, eggs kept coming.
Besides, my Great-Grandmother who kept chickens through the Great Depression never used commercial feeds at all. (Chicken feed pellets weren’t invented until the 1950’s.) Her flock was fed scratch mixes, some of which were spilled grains swept up from the floor of local mills, and given daytime free ranging along with kitchen scraps. The eggs her White Leghorn flock laid helped keep my Grandmother alive.
Helping Chicks Get What They Need
Cracked whole grain chick feeds are incredibly expensive. I fed Scratch & Peck brand whole grain chick starter to my very first flock and did have hens come into lay at 19 weeks old. Commercial chick crumbles are convenient and easy for chicks to swallow without needing grit, so I started using them. I currently use non-GMO commercial crumbles for my own chicks, always at 20% protein or higher, which I sometimes blend myself by adding in 30% protein game bird starter crumbles. Once the chicks are at least 3 days old and eating well, I introduce a few dried meal worms (about 3 total for every 12 chicks) and begin hand training them with tiny meal worm bits. I believe the little boost of protein and fat in the meal worms helps compensate for anything that might not be as bio-available within the feed. The chicks who get plenty of quality feed always mature into my best layers.
Helping Pullets Come Into Lay
The truth is that you cannot force a pullet to begin laying eggs. She needs at least 11 and up to 14 hours of daylight entering her eye to stimulate her pituitary gland to begin ovulation. I have observed that chicks who got only chick crumbles and less of the extras always seemed to be the ones that took 7 months to come into lay. I’m planning to return to using cracked whole grain chick feeds mixed with non-GMO chick crumbles (which crumbles should be easier to coat in the fish meal powder the chick mash includes) to see if I can again raise pullets who come into lay at 19-20 weeks.
Help Hens Come Into Lay
Hens that are bored with their feed may be eating the bare minimum of what they need to get by. Offering just about anything new will entice them into filling their crops, which boosts their nutrient intake and can improve egg laying. I discovered that providing my flock with small chopped pieces of kale and just-picked cherry tomatoes from my garden helped hens that had completed their molt resume laying quickly. (The combination of highly bio-available folate, vitamin A, C, and K plus potassium seemed to be the secret here.) These fresh foods were given alongside the 16% protein homemade layer feed and it was the first autumn my flock had so quickly resumed laying after molting.
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