The Cottage Smallholder


stumbling self sufficiency in a small space

When will my chickens lay eggs?

three eggs todayEven though I know that egg laying is unpredictable at this time of year, it’s always a bit disappointing when I lift the lid of the nesting box and there’s only one. An egg from Carol. She is firing on all cylinders now and producing one egg a day, the maximum that a domestic hen can produce.
“What’s going on with the other four chickens?” I think as I stump back through the garden in my dressing gown and wellies.

The other four chickens are elderly maidens, well into their third year. I know that after two years egg production diminishes but somehow I hoped that the organic food and beautiful adornments in the pen might make a difference. Of course they don’t. As the years roll by, the chickens will produce fewer and fewer eggs until they go to that great pecking ground in the sky.

The pretty white bantams, have never been very obliging on the egg laying front. In their prime, they probably only laid two or three eggs a week. They are not a laying strain and we knew this when we bought them. But we have discovered that they are very photogenic and are happy to model endlessly.

I’ve been checking the hen’s combs. A pink comb indicates that a chicken is going broody, and will not lay. They are all a bright vibrant red, including Mrs Boss (this chicken won The Broodiest of all Known Chickens Award 2004, 2005 and 2006).

So you can imagine my delight when I lifted the roof of the nesting box this morning and found two small eggs nestling beside Carol’s large speckled brown one. I sprang back to the kitchen to make the perfect breakfast omelette.


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661 Comments

  1. I have 2 -1st year Austalorps and they are off laying now, but want to add 2 more (the max allowed in my little world) in Spring. How do you introduce newbies?
    I am just waiting here for them to notice that the days are getting longer!!

  2. bantam_man

    There is some interesting information about how many eggs you can expect per month over the lifetime of chickens at this site:

    http://sites.google.com/site/egglayingstats/

    You can see that for these bantam breeds (Bearded Belgian and Silver Dutch), the number that they lay increases quickly in the spring and then decreases slowly after peaking in early summer. Some of the hens died after a year or two, but others carried on laying until their eighth year!

  3. what wrong with potatoes for my girls??

  4. Hannah, our birds love a wee bit of mashed potato! Why shouldnt I feed them it? Still no eggs but I have read they will lay when the days start to get a bit longer!? I reckon they are 6 or 7 mths old and I am feeding them 2 thirds corn and 1 third laying pellets. They also eat what they find around the garden. Fingers crossed I get an egg soon.

  5. Hannah M, 18 y/o

    @leeane – they’re normally 18 weeks old when they lay….we’ve been keeping hens since I was little and fake eggs don’t really work. They will lay where they want to sometimes until they work out for themselves where the nesting box is…we’ve always had a little straw in ours to make it comfortable and in regards to their sleep, ours sleep on perches or even on the floor in the sawdust. We feed our hens laying pellots, leafy veggies, grass cuttings and salad leaves (kitchen scraps mainly but never feed them potato!!!) mealworms as a treat (Can get from pet shops) and corn as a definate treat 🙂

  6. Hannah M, 18 y/o

    Your chickens should be laying- our chickens lay 1 a day each day even now in winter 🙂 if they are brooding then they’ll be sitting on the eggs and you have to be a bit mean and kick them off every single day, maybe even lock them out of the hen house so they can actually get some exercise, food, water etc. otherwise you’ll have a scrawny chicken….one of our chickens went broody and even after kicking her off everyday it still took over a month for her to behave 🙂 she went from top hen to bottom of the pecking order during this time

  7. Hello Fn (and what a wise old bird you are, on the subject of chickens at least),
    I bought my two black, quite small hens in Aug this year (I reckon they were born in spring), I have not got any eggs yet but now see from your site that I may have at least another month to wait. The hens are free range and all I feed them is corn. Should I start feeding them the laying pellots yet? Also I was told to leave the nesting area clear, would the hay encourage them more? I have just placed into the area a dummy egg and the 1st night they slept elsewhere! Im just soo excited, maybe they’re waiting to give me a wee xmas pressie. Finger crossed

  8. Hi can anyone tell me when my hen will lay again? She has hatched three chicks one hen and two cockerels. They hatched on 23rd July and up until the point of broodiness she lay every day. Her comb is bright red and Shea back to fighting weight but no sign of her laying again….

  9. I have 5 Silver laced wyandottes which are about 27 weeks old now, they have a pen to do what they want in and a Cockerel which has finally started to crow. Can anyone tell me when do they start to lay eggs. I have been told the saxony ducks we have about the same age will not lay till Feb but with the chucks its very dis-heartening checking the box and there been nothing there.

  10. I have bought three pol chickens, a bovas nera, a speckled sussex and a columbine. The speckled is the only one to lay and she has laid an egg every day for us. We have had one other egg but not sure who has laid that one. Should i be worried that the other two are not laying?
    Also can you help with ideas as to what we can put on the ground in the run. We have a cosy hen house and an enclosed run we have put down wood chippings and straw but it is getting wet with all the rain we are having. Any other suggestions would be helpful.

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