chickens on strike

[old-wos-is-name]

have two hens, justy over a year old, have stopped laying for nearly two months, just the odd egg. both hens in good health, very friendly, feeding on layers mash and household scraps. finished moult couple of weeks ago. nothing scaring them, they seem very happy, always digging about and having dust baths. have not got any mites etc. They appeared to stop laying when I bought a new bag of layers mash. is it possible that the bag was marked wrong and it was finishers mash ( does this stop them from laying?)
any ideas??
Alf.

[Barmaid]

Is it the same variety of food you normally feed them? Mine went on strike for about 2 days when I accidentally bought different layer pellets. I just took them off "treats" for a few days and got them to understand that was all they were getting and they started laying again.

Do they have plenty of FRESH water? Chickens really don't like dirty water. Has to be changed daily.

Have you wormed them?

How have you checked for mites?

[old-wos-is-name]

hi
,how do you worm them, and would there be any indication that they had worms?

[Barmaid]

You can get spot on wormers, wormers for putting in feed or in water. Flubenvet is pretty good.

I am more concerned about what checks you do for mites and what treatment they or the hen house has.

[old-wos-is-name]

I have checked under the hens feathers down to the bare skin, and perfectly clean and white, not a sign of anything.

[Barmaid]

Right, that is where you could be going wrong. The mites will not live on the girls. They live in the hen house and come out at night to feed (on the girls' blood) but don't actually live on the hens so you won't actually see the mites on the girls. Wait til dark and then run a piece of kitchen towel under the perches - if you get red spots, you've got red mite. Another way of checking is to look at the end of the perches - if you see an ash like substance at the ends there are red mite present.

Mine are perfectly clean and white, but I still had a serious RM infestation in the hen house. Wash hen house down weekly with Poultry Shield, and then sprinkle Diatomateous Earth in hen house and in their dust baths. Treat the girls with red mite powder. Also put vaseline at the end of the perches and any joints in the hen house.

My girls went off lay before I realised we had got mites - once I had dealt with the problem and treated them they were fine. This chicken keeping lark is a steep learning curve!