Why Hens Stop Laying: 9 Common Causes and Fixes

Most people panic the first time their hens stop laying. I did too. I remember standing in my coop on a cold November morning in 2018, staring into six completely empty nesting boxes, convinced something was catastrophically wrong with my flock. I’d had those Barred Rocks for two solid years of reliable production and suddenly: nothing. Not one egg in three days.

It wasn’t a disease. It wasn’t a predator terrorizing them at night. It was just winter.

But here’s the thing nobody really tells you when you start keeping chickens: a hen stopping or slowing her laying is almost never a single-cause problem you can fix in an afternoon. It’s almost always a combination of factors, and a few of them are things the hatchery catalogs genuinely gloss over. After a decade of keeping anywhere from six to thirty hens at a time across two different states, I’ve traced just about every egg-production mystery back to one of a handful of real culprits. Let me walk you through them.

Light Is Running Your Flock’s Reproductive System

I’ll be honest: I didn’t fully understand the biology here until my third year of keeping chickens. Hens lay eggs in response to light hitting the pineal gland through their eyes, which triggers a hormonal chain that stimulates the ovaries. The threshold most backyard keepers cite is 14 to 16 hours of light per day. Drop below that, and production drops with it. This is why commercial egg operations run artificial lighting 24/7, more or less, and why your flock reliably tanks in October and November regardless of how well you’re feeding them.

What surprised me was how fast this happens. It can be a matter of two to three weeks from the equinox before you notice a real dip. And some breeds respond more dramatically than others: my Easter Eggers will basically quit in winter, while Rhode Island Reds tend to push through a bit better. Production breeds like the Leghorn are particularly photoperiod-sensitive.

If you want to extend your winter production, a simple 40-watt bulb on a timer set to kick on at 4 a.m. will usually do it. You want to add light in the morning rather than the evening, so the birds aren’t suddenly plunged into darkness mid-dusk, which can cause them to miss their roost. I’ve used the BN-LINK timer (runs about $12 on Amazon, check current price here) for years with no issues. Keep in mind that artificially extending a hen’s laying season also means she’ll hit her “retirement” sooner. The research on whether this meaningfully shortens a hen’s productive life is genuinely mixed, so you have to decide what matters more to you.

Molting: The One People Always Forget to Account For

Chickens molt annually, usually in fall, and it completely shuts down egg production. It has to. Growing new feathers is metabolically expensive, and a hen’s body can’t do both things simultaneously at full capacity.

A molt typically lasts 8 to 16 weeks. Some hens are “hard molters” who drop nearly all their feathers at once and look absolutely terrible for a month before recovering quickly. Others are “soft molters” who lose feathers gradually over a longer period and are barely noticeable. I once had a Buff Orpington go through such a soft molt that I genuinely didn’t realize she was molting at all, and I spent about three weeks convinced she was sick before I actually looked closely at her feather condition.

During a molt, bump your flock’s protein up. A 20% protein feed or a dedicated feather-fixer supplement will shorten the molt and get them back to laying sooner. Purina’s Flock Raiser (currently around $22 for a 40-lb bag at Tractor Supply) is one I’ve used specifically for this purpose.

Age, Breed, and the Laying Curve Nobody Plots Out For You

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Here’s a table that I genuinely wish someone had handed me when I started, because the difference between breeds in terms of laying trajectory is significant:

I thought for years that a two-year-old hen was still a young hen. Technically she is, in terms of lifespan. But in terms of egg production, many breeds have already started their long decline by 24 to 30 months. A hen who laid 280 eggs at 18 months old might be down to 140 to 160 by age three. That’s not illness. That’s just chickens.

If you’ve had your birds for a few years and production has been slowly declining, age is almost certainly a factor. The question you have to answer for yourself is whether you’re keeping hens as layers or as pets with laying benefits, because those are different calculations.

Stress, Predators, and the Invisible Disruptions

A hen who is stressed will stop laying. Full stop. And “stressed” covers a wider range of things than most people realize: a dog running the fence line repeatedly, a hawk perching overhead, a new bird introduced to the flock badly, construction noise nearby, extreme heat above 90°F, or even a significant change in their routine. I had a reader email me last spring (a woman named Kathy from central Tennessee) who had two hens completely stop laying for almost six weeks after she repainted her coop interior. Same flock, same feed, same everything, just a few different colors and some paint fumes, and her girls were done until things settled.

Summer heat deserves its own mention because it gets overlooked. Most people expect winter slumps. What surprises people is the summer slump. Hens are actually most comfortable between 55°F and 75°F. Once you’re consistently above 85°F, you’ll see production drop. Above 90°F and some hens quit entirely. Shade, ventilation, and cold water matter more than most coop checklists suggest.

Predator pressure at night is a sneaky one. If something is regularly disturbing your flock after dark, they won’t tell you by clucking loudly. They’ll just stop laying. Check your coop at night. Look for evidence of attempts to dig under the run, gaps in hardware cloth, or any sign of raccoon or opossum activity around the feeder.

Feed Quality, Calcium, and the Mistakes I Made Early On

The first two years I kept chickens, I was cheap about feed. I bought whatever layer pellets were on sale without reading the protein percentages, and I couldn’t figure out why my production was inconsistent. What I eventually learned: layer feed needs to be at least 16% protein to maintain reasonable production, and many budget brands cut corners. A 20% protein feed will outperform a 14% feed on egg production numbers, full stop.

Calcium is the other piece. A laying hen needs about 4 grams of calcium per day to form an eggshell. If she can’t get enough from her feed, her body will pull it from her bones. You’ll start seeing soft-shelled or shell-less eggs as an early warning. Separate oyster shell offered free-choice (not mixed into the feed) lets each hen calibrate her own intake. I’ve been running a small gravity-fed oyster shell dispenser in my coop for years and it’s genuinely one of the most useful things I added. A simple ceramic dish costs almost nothing.

One scenario worth naming: hen on scratch-heavy diet → production drops, soft shells appear → switched to quality 18% layer pellets plus free-choice oyster shell → full production resumed in about three weeks. I’ve seen this pattern play out more than once when people treat scratch grains as feed instead of a treat.

Health Problems That Actually Stop Laying

I want to be careful here not to turn every egg gap into a disease scare, because the vast majority of laying interruptions have nothing to do with illness. But there are a few health conditions worth knowing.

Infectious Bronchitis (IB) can cause a hen to stop laying permanently if she contracts it before or during her first lay cycle, because it can permanently damage her reproductive tract. Marek’s Disease can affect ovarian function. Internal laying and egg yolk peritonitis are serious conditions where yolk material ends up in the body cavity, and they’re more common than most people realize in high-production breeds. A hen with peritonitis often looks “penguin-like” (standing very upright, abdomen swollen) and will stop laying.

If your hen looks unwell, has lost weight, has a swollen abdomen, seems lethargic, or is off her feed, that’s when it’s worth a vet call. A basic exam from a poultry-savvy vet runs $50 to $80 depending on your area, and current as of July 2026, more large-animal vets are adding backyard poultry to their practices than ever before.

Otherwise, if your hen looks healthy and active and simply isn’t laying? Work through the checklist.

Walking Through It Systematically

When I get the “why isn’t my hen laying” question now, I run through these in order:

1. Age and breed. Is she over two years old? What breed? Check the production curve.
2. Lighting. How many hours of natural light is she getting right now?
3. Molt. Look closely at her feathers. Is she losing any?
4. Feed. What protein percentage, and is oyster shell available?
5. Stress or disturbance. Any recent changes? Predator pressure? Heat?
6. Health. Does she look and act normal? Check her abdomen, her weight, her activity level.

Most of the time, you’ll find your answer by step four.

Sources

• University of Florida IFAS Extension: Poultry production guides covering nutrition, lighting, and laying hen health
• Merck Veterinary Manual: Clinical reference for poultry reproductive disorders and infectious diseases
• Poultry Science Journal (Oxford Academic): Peer-reviewed research on laying hen nutrition, photoperiod response, and breed production data
• Penn State Extension: Backyard poultry guides including molt management and layer nutrition
• The Chicken Health Handbook, Gail Damerow (Storey Publishing): The single most useful reference I’ve found for diagnosing health and production issues

Photo: Roman Fotografie via Pexels