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My egg count went from 2 a day to 9 after I moved the coop 15 feet
Two springs back my four hens were giving me maybe 2 eggs a day, sometimes just 1. I had the coop tucked under the big maple on the north side of the yard in Salem because it looked nice. Then a buddy who keeps 20 hens asked why I was hiding them from the sun, so I dragged the whole thing 15 feet to the southeast corner. Within 3 weeks I was getting 8 or 9 eggs a day, same birds, same feed. Turns out they need real morning light to lay, who knew. Anyone else move their setup and get a surprise like that?
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casey_torres606h ago
Nine eggs from four hens is a lot, and that part makes me scratch my head. Daylight does matter, that's real, hens need around 14 hours of light to keep laying well. But 15 feet under a maple versus the southeast corner is not a huge jump in light, and you went from 2 to 9 in three weeks. That jump is too big for shade alone. Four hens laying 9 a day means some are dropping two eggs in a day, which almost never happens. What else changed at the same time? New bedding, different feed batch, a predator scare that stopped, mites getting cleared up, a molting cycle ending. Those things swing egg counts way more than a short move. I would look at the timing of the molt before I gave all the credit to the sun.
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