We have just bought some young hens to replace the old girls who are now in their third year of lay. (These we gave to a neighbour who is just starting out.)
Our 6 new birds were hatched last spring and should be laying right through the first autumn. Unfortunately they obviously didn’t read the manual, and have slowed right up. We're getting on average just 1 or 2 eggs a day from our 6 ladies. They don’t seem to be moulting, they are just not laying very well. The only reassurance is that everyone else who bought hens from that batch has the same problem, so it’s not something I’m doing wrong.
Poor Mildred!
Oh yes, and one of them, let’s call her Mildred, has gone broody. I have tried in my best hennish to explain that, as we don’t have a rooster, any egg she sits on is not going to hatch, so she is never going to be a mother, so she may as well resign herself to being an old maid and get outside scratching and pecking with the others. She doesn’t seem to understand (maybe I am speaking the wrong dialect) and still trills unhappily when I lift her backside up and retrieve her eggs.
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