Twiggy has finally taken a break from laying. It’s been ten days since she’s laid an egg.
Although there have not been visible signs of her molting – no piles of white feathers on the ground – somehow, her tail is back to looking good. Remarkable.
Actually, everyone is taking a break. I’m not surprised. The hens are older. It’s winter. Laying usually starts up again in February, and I’ll be curious if Twiggy leads the group into the nesting boxes or if she remains on an extended vacation.
Good for her! My Henny has laid 4 eggs so far this year but I’m expecting that she’ll hit the pause button. She did this last year and started laying steadily in February.
My 3 year old hybrid went through a stage at the end of last year producing softies. She had a good moult and then laid a couple of perfect eggs. She has now stopped again! I always worry about the laying problems that start to occur in older hens and wish she would stop laying altogether (and just concentrate on being a spoilt pet). I read somewhere that hens have only so many ova to produce eggs and then when all have gone, that’s it.
Our girls took an extended vacation from laying from late Sept until just recently! So nice to see eggs in the nesting boxes again! A few of the eight have yet to begin again though….but the days are visibly longer so hopefully the wait is almost over.
Good for Twiggy just what she needs, my Maggie is also taking a break which I hope will be a long one as she had not stopped laying in nearly 2 years and her eggs were showing problems.
Also off blog but wanted to tell you our readings for December which have just been issued. For the whole of December we had 50% more rain than usual, only 3 dry days and the well dipped 26 feet above average our water table is very high. January at the moment is following the same pattern, roll on a dry Summer please…:)
It’s difficult to keep animals healthy when it is so damp. Here’s hoping for a long dry spell for you.
Looks like Twiggy is in a nesting box this (Friday) morning!
My version of Twiggy (a white leghorn named Sally) laid 5-6 eggs a week steadily for 14 months, and only stopped production about three weeks ago. She shed a ton of feathers, including all of her tail and the top of her head. New feathers coming in nicely, but I hope she takes a little more time off.