my 3 ladies have all suddenly stopped laying - is this normal??

[rainbowsprite1]

title says it all really - 1 of them (the smallest and scrawniest) has always been a slightly erratic layer but the other 2 lay like clockwork. Today no eggs, yesterday was 2 instead of 3 eggs. They have laid all through the winter. Are they having a rest now, are they thinking about moulting? should I be panicking?? they seem to be acting normally, they look a bit scruffy but tbh they have looked a bit scruffy since we got them 7 months ago, although they have filled out quite a bit. Help???!!!

Could be moulting - 2 of my girls stopped recently and moulted and are now back laying really well with lovely new feathers.

2 eggs this morning but they do seem to be loosing feathers - maybe they are starting to moult.....

• losing... doh!!!

yep sounds like moulting to me. do you feed them the egg shell stuff? might help a bit when they start to lay again. we also sometimes try the china egg trick - put it where you want them to lay and they do.

this changeable weather is not helping ours...they seem to buck up production when the sun starts shining and then we have a couple of grey days and they slow down.

My have gone bonkers at least 9 - 10 eggs a day. i am giving them away!

How old are the three hens that have stopped laying?? If they are less than a year old then they shouldnt be moulting!!

It's perfectly common for chickens to have an off day, and it looks as though you two chickens have managed to have their coincide. I always made jokes about mine laying if there wasn't an R in the month, if they felt like it, if Saturn was in the right alignment with Jupiter, and so long as all these things coincided they would lay! I exaggerate somewhat, but you get the picture.

To be honest with you, whilst mine went through periods of reliably productive, they also sometimes just stopped laying for a few days, because they felt like it. Unless they're also looking off-colour, then it's probably nothing to worry about. If feathers are being lost from the breast area and she is spending almost all day in the nestbox, then she's broody (I remember taking a chicken to the vet and finding she was broody in my early days - whoops ). If they're free range, then you may find that they've just chosen to lay somewhere other than the nestbox (for those with cockerels, there are legions of stories out there of hens going missing, presumed dead, and then returning 21 days later with a clutch of chicks!). If you suspect that that's the case, then try and find the other nest, remove those eggs, and put some fake 'pot' eggs in the nestbox to give them the right idea.

If she's acting unusually in any other way, then try and give us the symptoms, and we'll see what we can do ;)

the hens are laying again and have also been moulting a bit, they are approx 2 years old, we got them 6 months ago from a free range egg farm. i'm paranoid about red mites and have been checking everything and i havent seen anything, but maybe i've missed something??? shall i just treat them anyway??

It's unlikely to be red mite by the sounds of things; it's more likely to just be the effects of the moult. If you're worried, then go down after dark (quite important that bit), with a torch, and look around the cracks and crevices in the coop. If they're there, you'll see them (and the little buggers may even bite you), and they look like this upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Dermanyssus_gallinae_mite.jpg/220px-Dermanyssus_gallinae_mite.jpg

The first sign for those who aren't particularly vigilant is normally the hens refusing to go into the coop at night. If they'd picked up red mites in their free range farm, then they would have become very evident long ago. Summer is the season for red mite, so stay vigilant and you'll be fine :)