why wont my chickens lay?

Quoting from a book; Rate of lay=all pullets lay small eggs when they first start out, and they lay only one egg every three to four days. By the time a hen is 30 weeks old, her eggs will reach their normal size and she should lay at least 2 eggs every three days. a good layer hen produces about 20 dozen eggs in her first year.At about 18 months, she'll take a break to molt. After the molt, she'll lay bigger eggs than before, but fewer of them. During her second year, she'll average 16 to18 dozen. A hensrate of lay is affected by a number of external factors including temperature and light. hens lay best when the temperature is between 45 degree F. and 80 degree F.(7-27 degree C.)When the weather gets much colder or much warmer, production slows down. All Hens stop laying in winter, not because the weather turn cold , but because daylight hours are shorter in winter than in summer. When the number of daylight hours fall below 14 hour, hens may stop laying until spring(use timer lights). A healthy hen should lay for a good 10 to 12 years- occasionally you will hear of a biddy laying to the ripe old age of 20- but most layers do not live that long because they get eaten by one or two years. Flock replacement- Pullets generally reach peak production at 30 to 34 weeks of age. From then on, production declines approximately 1/2 % per week until the birds molt or are replaced. some producers molt their birds at the age of abut 60 week to induce a second round of laying l Others raise a new batch if pullets to replace the older hens when they reach 72 weeks of age. Keeping layers for a second year has quite a few disadvantages. As hens get older and their production declines, the shells of their eggs get rougher and weaker, the whites get thinner, and the yolk membranes become so weak that they break when the eggs are opened into a pan. As production declines, the cost of the feeding older hens becomes greater than the value of their eggs. If you're selling eggs, production by older hens may fall below the number you need to meet he the demands of established customers. While you may find a market for 1 year old layers, by the end or their 2nd year hens lose nearly all of their laying value and are good for little more than stewing. The older a chicken gets, the more likely it is to experience disease complications. . Free range is good and holds down expenses. As for corn- hens will love corn over pellets any day- but corn is not very nutritous - it makes fat hens - which means fewer eggs and smaller eggs and kitchen scraps and surplus milk is okay but can also cut down production - so cut it to what they can eat in 10 minutes and should be given after they eat their pellets. Gee whiz -you are filling them up with dessert first. You are buying very expensive birds - you should invest in good chicken books also - go online and get Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow- see if you can get it used from amazon or ebay -she writes what is considered the easiest to read and go through to diagnose problems -and she writes the best chicken health handbook also. --I quote out it all the time- like today - and there are other good facts about raising chickens - but there is a restriction on space on this site and I got to go take of my parents

Moulting birds and fewer day light hours will result in less egg production. None of the chickens I raised liked the layer pellets but would eat the crumbles. I would add the cracked corn/scratch only as a dressing on top of the layer mash/crumbles. Kitchen scraps are good too. In the winter I would get a bail of horse hay and let them have a slice of it to keep them busy. They will need oyster shell too to help with the calcium. Place a light in the hen house with a timer and see if that helps.

This is the moulting (I'm in the UK, so spell moulting with a u) season, so they are to be expected to stop laying as they can't lay a lot of eggs and grow a new set of feathers at the same time.

Regarding the food issue, you're not the only one to have this problem. The best way round it is to just give them pellets in the morning, and give them the corn and scraps later in the day.

Chickens will stop laying eggs when the days start getting shorter- that is nature. People that want chickens to continue to lay during the fall and winter often set up a timed light in the henhouse to simulate longer daylight hours. This fools them into laying when they normally would have stopped.