In all our years of chicken keeping we have never had to buy eggs in the summer before. We have only one girl laying which is the first time during summer. Snow is our only girl laying and she lays the tiniest eggs. She lays four eggs a week and we need to eat them two at a time so she is providing enough for one breakfast a week.
We usually have eggs for our weekend breakfasts and one weekday breakfast. Having lost our lovely Dot we have not only lost a lovely girl but also lost our best egg layer. She never went broody and she laid quite big eggs so we could eat them just one at a time.
Had we not have got new girls this spring we would have no eggs at all.
Red has yet to start laying. Autumn should be laying but stopped on the first of February. Mango and Cloud are moulting and probably won’t lay again this year. Sugar, Gold and Storm have all been broody and should start again in a couple of weeks time.
I thought Storm may have come to the end of her season but realised she had gone broody. It’s more difficult to tell with Storm because she isn’t a committed broody which is a good thing. She spends half her time in the nest box and half her time in the run when broody whereas the other girls want to spend all their time in the nest box when broody. She also gives up after two or three days.
I have always said that eggs are a bonus but I must admit that with a flock of eight girls I would never have thought that we would have only one girl laying.
I am hoping that next year will be better because we should have Autumn and Red laying during the summer. That remains to be seen though.
Click here to see the history of my flock.
Broodiness can have a major impact on egg production, and some are persistent broodies! We are getting more eggs again, but I had 7 in broody jail for 3 days only 3 weeks ago. 2 more serial offenders are now on their second day. Chocolate, my mottled chocolate pekin who has already raised a clutch of chicks only 11 weeks old, has been broody twice since! I hope that your girls come back into lay soon and that your wyandottes start to lay and, most importantly at the moment, that Snow does not decide to follow suit. Happy days!
Broodiness seems to be effecting us more than ever before. It sounds like Chocolate is a real serial broody too. I hope Red starts laying soon and I also keep thinking that I hope Snow doesn’t go broody. I thought today that if she went broody we wouldn’t have any eggs at all but I just hope she keeps going. Eggs have never been so sparse at this time of year before.
I think it is to do with this heat that they have gone off laying.
It probably doesn’t help but having had three go broody at once and two moulting at once is the main reason. I checked back to last year and Snowflake started laying at five and a half months as did Snow this year. Autumn started laying at six and a half months and Red is six months so I am hopeful that she may start in a couple of weeks time.