[Mammyshaz]

I started with 4 hybrid hens POL in 2011 so a year later than I remembered  but I'm down to 1.5
I say 1.5 because another is looking unwell.
We lost the first one in the first year. She was constantly sickly  and treated with flubenvet several times for gape worm. Finally was very depressed and suspected peritonitis due to  being egg bound. Taken to vets who also diagnosed this. Given antibiotics and antiinflams but died 3 days later.
The second one laid an egg every day until her last few weeks. I asked about her on here as she had a couple of bouts of ruptured eggs and was worried about her health. She recovered each time then we lost her to suspected peritonitis.
Now another is going the same way.usually lays an egg a day but the last few months has dropped off to one or two a week. I put this down to age thinking she was 3 instead of 2years. In the last month her condition has dropped off drastically. She has a red comb but few eggs. A couple soft shelled and her last two eggs were huge and she was unwell the day before each one. I put this down to the shear size of the eggs.
The last two hens both had bald, sore areas around the back end too as the egg problem started.

They are fed layers pellets with a handful of mixed corn and mealworm at night fresh greens grown for them and dandelion leaves. Oyster shell grit ad lib. Wormed with flubenvet spring and autumn, given poultry spice when moulting. Biodry and diatom used in house after poultry shield sprayed. Dusted with diatom now and
then. Bedding of sawdust and straw in nests. ACV in water once weekly.

Their enclosure is 5m x6m with an apple tree growing in the middle and perches and logs to play on. They have a dustbath with added diatom. There is little/no grass left but they get time out in a pen to nibble now and then. Checking constantly for REDMITE but nothing visible. Have found the odd lice in the past but seem fine at the moment.

To lose two and the third girl looking poor in less than 3 years can anybody pick up what I'm doing wrong?
I'm becoming totally paranoid!

I've reared 5 chicks who are 15 weeks old this week and wanted to start integrating by the beginning of next month but want to be sure they are entering a safe area and that I am capable of looking after them correctly At the moment I feel totally incompetent.

Any help or advice, good or bad, will be appreciated. I just want answers to what I'm doing wrong.

[Victorian Farmer]

First thing get youre head round this ,you are not doing nothink wrong remember if you are a good caring person qwote treated with flubenvet several times for gape worm etc .The problem is stock you need good stock no highbreds i dont no where you are if you were nere me i would sort .You carnt breed good stock from crap .Can you incubate eggs to build stock up or see if you could get some of these            http://www.johnstonspoultry.com/sussex.html         Then get some good utilatey sussex cock birds 2 breed new stock everey 18 months sorted look at victorian farmer heritage poultrey  face book if you need help il help there is stockists all over my foundation stock is amrock bared rock road sussex sext linct  at birth onley hens .

[SallyintNorth]

Others with more experience will be along later (edited to say VF already posted while I wrote), but my own experience is that commercial brown hybrids don't last very long at all.  They are bred to do one season laying an egg a day and frankly the breeder doesn't much care what they do after that, the commercial egg producers mainly slaughter or rehome after 12 months egg-laying.

I've told you about my 11th hen being called Arfer, because I reckoned she had 'alf a chance of living?  Of our first 10 birds bought POL, only 5 made it past 6 months.

Of all the brown hybrids and Black Rocks I had, only one had a second birthday.

Much as I liked the friendly Warrens, Gold Lines, Babcock 380s and similar, I moved onto the older breeds.  They don't lay as many eggs in a year, and are more likely to stop laying at moulting and not start again until mid-January - but they live a few years, so over their lifetime I reckon they do better.  And it's nice to have birds who get to have a few birthdays.

At the moorland farm, after the incumbent brown hens died off, I bought first cross Light Sussex x Rhode Island Red, and they were better at staying alive than the Gold Lines and Babcocks.  (Don't ask me why, I thought that was what the Warren types were.. )  But even they mostly didn't make it to a third birthday.

Here we have inbred mongrel birds, with some LF and some bantie blood, and they live for ever.  They're too good at hiding their nests, though.

[Mammyshaz]

Thank you Sally and VF. Perhaps it is just the type I have and/ or their background.
They seem very healthy until the egg problem starts then they rapidly have lost condition. The black rock looks fantastic still. Lays almost every day and her condition is great. Shiny green gleam to her and well muscled. She is the only one who has had a long moult through winter and stopped laying during it. Perhaps a better breeding.

Each time one doesnt look 'right' I spend hours reading my books and surfing Internet for answers. It's awful not knowing the exact reason why or whether there is something simple I am doing wrong.

VF I am not permitted to keep cockerels to breed my own which would be a preferred option. I have hatched eggs this year. 15 weeks now, just hybrids ( SLW xand RIR x) but much bigger than what I have. Only 2 girls we think so would like a few more eggs come spring. Il have you in mind 

Sally, I didn't realise your flock were mongrels. They look so robust and breed-specific, and healthy. Free ranging helps I'm sure (  one day I'll  be able to do that,    ) yes, very good at hiding nests in odd places  too 

[Victorian Farmer]

I'm a black rock agent I've made some am rock /roads fantastic stock over also made some cinnamon queens il send you some eggs sex linkt.

[Mammyshaz]

 Great 

[jaykay]

Agree with both VF and SitN (of course ), you'll not be doing anything wrong, you're a good animal-keeper

My first chooks were Black Rocks and they lived to a ripe old age. They were quite 'feisty' with each other. at first I had them in a large run, and in the end I needed to take of the very ends of a couple of their beaks, as they kept pecking each other badly.

Once we'd moved and they were free-ranging they were fine.

[Fleecewife]

Hi Mammyshaz.  As the others have all said - so you can believe it    - there is nothing wrong with how you are rearing your birds.  I agree with VF that your original stock may have been a bit sickly from the start and that's certainly why you lost your first hen.  It's really sad, especially when you just keep a handful, but hens' lives can be short.  One of ours turned up her toes yesterday, after 3 years of egg laying (not continuously - we don't light them in the winter but let them have a natural break)
 
One thing I would suggest is to move the run every now and then.  Would it be possible to have an alternative exit, so say for one month they could go out into one run, then close that off and let them into the new run for a month?  Whilst one run is resting you can treat it with lime or similar, or just allow nature to clean it up and the grass to regrow.
 
Even once you have your hens free range some will have the occasional problem, but don't take it personally - you're doing great 

[ladyK]

Hi Mammyshaz,
I can only chime in with a similar first-time hen-keeping experience:
We got our 6 hybrid POLs in December - hybrids always seem to get recommended for beginners. They all seemed to get off to a great start (it took til February for them to start laying though). They are completely free-ranging (shut in a coop overnight) and it's a real joy seeing them roaming really far out on the fields, obviously having a blast. I'm giving them the same care/feed/treatments you described above.
Still, we lost one to a sudden fit of convulsions (she was dead within an hour, before I could even quite figure out what had happened), another one suffers from chronic peritonitis (not egg bound, it's eggy liquid collecting in her belly and making her bloated/unconfortable/ill, I suspect she never laid an egg), and I hope I managed to succesfully clean out a bumblefoot infection on yet another only last week... so out the of initial 6 only 3 are really healthy, and we have not even had them for a year yet!
Luna, the poor hen with the swollen belly gets a new lease of life every 6 weeks or so when I take her to the vet to have the liquid drained, which really does help her and she goes back to normal & happy for a few weeks - (sometimes I wonder myself about the fuss I'm making of 'just a chicken').

I have come to believe what other already said above: these laying hybrid are so highly specialised to do just one thing that their system simply isn't very robust... poor things.
I will be looking into getting a traditional utility breed next (and a cockerel too!) when I decide to add to my flock (or what's left of it).

Just don't blame yourself!

[jaykay]

I have Sussexes, Wyandottes, Cream Legbars and Marans. I'm pleased with all of them, they seem healthy, they lay well (though not like the hybrids) and they are pretty 

With the Sussexes and Wyandottes in particular, the cockerels grow to a good size for eating too.

[chrismahon]

As everyone has already said Mammyshaz, you are doing nothing wrong at all. It is just the hybrids you started with. Great for short-term year round egg production and cheap to buy, but they are only meant to lay for a year. Some last longer -our Black Rocks got to over two years and Annie Black Rock made over 3 years. But they can start going badly downhill after 12 months with soft eggs and abdominal problems.


We were fortunate in starting with Pedigrees, purely by accident. 4 Orpingtons, the remaining one of which is over 7 now and still laying the occasional egg. We used to sell our eggs to passing tourist trade so the fact that they (Wyandottes) didn't lay much in Winter wasn't any problem at all. The reason we bought the Black Rocks was that we had no eggs at all in Winter from the Orpingtons.


As LadyK says hybrids seem to be recommended for beginners. I suppose that's because people starting with chickens generally do so primarily for eggs. Pedigrees are longer term 'pets' and that's all we have now.

[Mammyshaz]

Thanks everyone. If its due to being hybrids  then I'm going onto traditional breeds and see how well I do.   Cream legbars are also on the list if I haven't already got two in Scotland just for the pleasure of a coloured egg basket 
I like the idea of hatching dual purpose so the males dont have a wasted life. But I'll decide how well I can do that when we deal with our young cockerels who have started crowing this month. Light Sussex could also be on my list

FW the problem of being on the same ground has worried me.originally we were going to get hens and make something like a Fordham ark so they could be moved around but I kept thinking bigger and better until we took up a third of one of the allotments for the birds. It's an area where there was an old garage and bramley apple tree so not used. Half covered run area and lots of places to dig around. We are hoping to set up a
winter area for them under a beech tree and incorporating the three old greengage trees. It is sheltered and
they can live there until late spring when they can go back to the more open area. Do you think six months per area if each area is  dry disinfected while empty is ok?

Edited to say our girl is still with us but is running at around 3/4 health. She is eating but throughout each day has a relapse and sits hunched but back to normal again by evening for her corn  Just an awful waiting game to see if she recovers or goes back downhill    I think it's the end of her laying life

[devonlad]

A few have mentioned Black Rocks and we're great fans too. We have a right old mix of birds including L sussex, welsummers, marans, warrens etc. etc but nowadays more often than not when we're refreshing we look for black rocks. there also seems to be a correlation between the life span of a "bargain" often from the market - not very long, and those who we spend a bit more on from known suppliers where we can go and pick them and see where and how they were hatched and raised.- much longer and usually much healthier in the long term.
the other fact we've found is that hens do just die sometimes, not every day thank god, but sometimes for no explicable reason and with no prior warning they keel over. got a few ancient unproductive old girls who to be honest would do us a favour by popping off but you can guarantee its always the regular layers who do it. like you we feel we give them a good existence- sometimes it just happens it seems.