Why are my birds not laying? You’ve got dogs in your poultry yard!
Just in time for Christmas, I received my first chicken egg. I was beginning to worry as these are my first chickens and I had no clear idea of when they should start laying. Everything I read said I should start getting eggs between 5-7 months. And my girls were almost 8 months old.
I began wondering if I was feeding them the wrong feed. But the week before Christmas, I discovered my neighbor’s very large dogs were coming in the yard at night scaring them and my quail, who had been laying since early summer, had stopped, but I thought the quail had stopped laying due to winter and the shorter daylight hours.
Anyway, I decided to move them all into the shed, while I built an electric fence. I had prepared the cages to protect them from raccoons, snakes, and hawks. It had not occurred to me that dogs from the community would be my problem.
So, with the birds warm and safe in the shed, not more than 5 day’s later, I received my first egg, on Christmas Eve!
The quail have not started laying yet, but my boys have begun crowing again and chasing the girls, so things are looking up all around. I put the quail’s lighting on a timer, so they are now receiving the light needed to get them laying again. And today I received 3 eggs from the chickens, which leads me to believe 3 of my 8 girls or producing.
They are New Hamshire’s and so they lay brown eggs. Right now the eggs look more pinkish and are very small, but to me they are beautiful. By spring I’ll be ankle deep in eggs!
And in another week those dogs will get the surprise of their lives if they touch my fence!