Hi all,
Please help with this mystery condition:
My 6 hens are about a year and a half old and several months ago their egg production went waaay down and now I am only getting 2 eggs a day from 6 hens. We also have one hen that lays rubber-shelled eggs and one that lays thin shelled eggs. The other two eggs seem normal. I haven't seen blue-green eggs from my two americaunas in forever.
We had a 7th hen that died suddenly a couple months ago- she was the biggest and what seemed like the strongest, no signs of illness. After she died i checked her for impacted egg and sour crop, but she had neither.
The rest of the hens look perfectly normal except that their bellies are bald! I haven't noticed them molting yet, but no other feathers are missing! None of them are broody, so i don't think they're pulling their own feathers out, and i've checked for lice (no visible lice or eggs near vent, even after a warm butt bath in soapy water). I've also examined the coop for mites- no visible mites in the coop, none on the chickens. I've checked both in the middle of the day, and at night (11pm and 5 in the morning). I've rubbed the perches, their legs, and ruffled them all with a white cloth and i get no mites falling off and no red or brown streaks. I cleaned out the coop with 10% bleach water and dusted with DE anyway, dusted all the hens, and put plenty of DE down in their bathing areas. That was a week ago.
When i first cleaned out the coop, there were these little larvae (pictured) in the poopy bedding- i assume they are fly larvae because they're kind of big, but could they be something that's bothering my hens?
I've also tried egg boost (minerals and vitamins) in their water and giving them even more oyster shell than normal.
I can't go back to store-bought eggs and am thinking that i need to replace some of the hens... but i want to give them another chance, and don't want to introduce new hens to an unhealthy coop if i've got something going on in there.
Any ideas?? Thanks for your help!
Please help with this mystery condition:
My 6 hens are about a year and a half old and several months ago their egg production went waaay down and now I am only getting 2 eggs a day from 6 hens. We also have one hen that lays rubber-shelled eggs and one that lays thin shelled eggs. The other two eggs seem normal. I haven't seen blue-green eggs from my two americaunas in forever.
We had a 7th hen that died suddenly a couple months ago- she was the biggest and what seemed like the strongest, no signs of illness. After she died i checked her for impacted egg and sour crop, but she had neither.
The rest of the hens look perfectly normal except that their bellies are bald! I haven't noticed them molting yet, but no other feathers are missing! None of them are broody, so i don't think they're pulling their own feathers out, and i've checked for lice (no visible lice or eggs near vent, even after a warm butt bath in soapy water). I've also examined the coop for mites- no visible mites in the coop, none on the chickens. I've checked both in the middle of the day, and at night (11pm and 5 in the morning). I've rubbed the perches, their legs, and ruffled them all with a white cloth and i get no mites falling off and no red or brown streaks. I cleaned out the coop with 10% bleach water and dusted with DE anyway, dusted all the hens, and put plenty of DE down in their bathing areas. That was a week ago.
When i first cleaned out the coop, there were these little larvae (pictured) in the poopy bedding- i assume they are fly larvae because they're kind of big, but could they be something that's bothering my hens?
I've also tried egg boost (minerals and vitamins) in their water and giving them even more oyster shell than normal.
I can't go back to store-bought eggs and am thinking that i need to replace some of the hens... but i want to give them another chance, and don't want to introduce new hens to an unhealthy coop if i've got something going on in there.
Any ideas?? Thanks for your help!
