Older Hens and egg laying

[lydiacminx]

I have a 6-7 year old Hen in with a male of the same age, and they have not displayed a interest in mating in all the years I've kept them except for very recently, they've been mating constantly.

The Hen (Stitch) now has a bigger bum/vent area, and has had some solid poo stuck to the feathers surrounding it (I clean any poo away as soon as I see it on her) however I was under the impression that Hens of this age couldn't produce eggs.

Is she laying her first egg well into old age? If so, any tips to stop it going horribly wrong for her and any potential chicks?

Thank you

[marleen4]

I agree this seems a bit odd. Has anything changed, e.g. a bigger cage / nesting area / food? To have chicks you will need a reasonably big cage and a nest box. Without a nest box, hens usually drop their egg on the floor of the cage and won't look at it again.

I trust others on the forum will be able to help with preventing problems in older hens e.g. nutrition.

[BudgiesBuddy]

The droppings get bigger when hens are breeding but does not stick to vent, so there maybe something wrong with her.
She is past her breeding years.
Does the pair have any breeding setup?

[nat]

Hi there. It must be a suprise that shes getting jiggy now! The most important thing now if shes going to lay eggs at this late age is to give a calcium supplement asap in order to stop her getting eggbound which is a bigger risk in older hens. Normal cuttlebone probably won't be enough and a calcium supplement that is disolvable in the drinking water is recommended for this such as Calcivet or Calciform.

It would be a good idea to try and hamper any egg laying if possible. Try and change the furniture and toys around in the cage to give them something else to think about. The more disruption you can give them the better. Do they come out of the cage for a fly? If so, encourage that even more. Remove any toys which are shreadable as that also encourages the hen.

But to be honest if she wants to lay eggs she will and will even make a nest under the paper on the cage floor.
If she does start laying and has no problems doing it then if you keep removing the eggs she may continue to keep laying more which will be very detrimental to her health.
One thing to do in that case is to have some budgie dummy eggs on the ready and replace any real eggs with these and let her sit on them if she wants to and she will eventually stop laying.

Hopefully she is not going to lay eggs and the jiggy stuff is just a recreational hobby which is very normal too.

Also if their cage gets alot of light during the day it would be a good idea to cut down the daylight hours that their cage gets to winter hours from say 8am-4pm. The lighter evenings/nights bring them into breeding mode!

Really the best thing to do would be to avoid having chicks as it will be hard on 2 older parents who would be novices as well. It really depends on the hen and how hell bent she is on breeding. Some will lay on eggs on the floor and sit on them and in that case its better to give them a nestbox to make them comfortable and replace eggs with dummies and let her sit a fake round out just to preserve her as cleaning the cage out then becomes impossible without disturbing her floor nest and consequently she lays more eggs.

Hopefully they have just taken up a new hobby and she won't lay! But the most important thing is to get a good supply of liquid calcium into her just in case she trys to lay :-)

Appologies if I've repeated myself in this post but I'm knackered lol :-)

[Hezz]

There's some really good info in all that, Nat. Thank you.