The Cottage Smallholder


stumbling self sufficiency in a small space

How many eggs does a chicken lay an hour, a day, a year?

first egg of the yearIf only there was a standard answer.

We often are asked this question. Danny reckons that it’s school children researching a project. I suspect that it’s grown up chicken owners that are gradually being driven crazy by the fact that their point of lay chickens, bought six months ago, have never ever laid an egg.

I’ve been there. We bought six hens, expected six eggs a day, promised eggs to our nieghburs. Five months later we collected our first egg.

Apart from our nifty little plastic hen that sits on the table at Easter and obligingly crouches to lay a small chocolate egg each time you press her back, real hens lay on a cycle of roughly a day at best. These are the hens that are bred to be layers. Our Pekin bantams are not great layers but, like Mrs Boss they go broody easily and can be great mothers if you want to breed. If you don’t want to breed and just want your hen to lay eggs this can be a nightmare. You can find out how to get over the problem of a broody hen here.

Perhaps it’s because we grew up on fairy stories that we expect all our hens to lay at least an egg a day. A golden egg would be good too, every now and then. Our hens tend to go off lay from October to January. It’s a very long break. This year it began to seem like an extended famine. Both my patience and the arm that lifts the lid of the nesting box were easing towards repetitive strain injury. This morning I nearly didn’t bother to look – the empty nests are so disheartening.

But, ever the optimist, I took a peek. Carol had laid a long brown speckled egg. I plucked it gently from the nest and rushed back to the house to announce the good news.

The first egg of the year is always a delight, almost as good as a golden egg and far more tasty.


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60 Comments

  1. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Cathy

    How many hens does your son keep and how often does he collect the eggs?

    Hens lay in each other’s nests. Sometime you might get a couple of eggs in a day from a single hen but this is unusual and generally one of the shells is soft (hasn’t had time to form properly).

    If your son has a hen laying eighteen eggs a day at this time of year (assuming you are in the northern hemisphere) he could easily become a millionaire selling fertilised eggs on Ebay. Even if the hen only laid two eggs a day, I’d still buy half a dozen!

  2. cathy king

    Hello,
    My son started raising chickens for the first time. He has just started getting eggs. He called with great excitment to say there were 18 eggs in 1 nest. The hen had been sitting for 2 days. He has other chickens that are starting to lay. One chicken had 4 eggs in her nest Another the same. I’ve been reading that hens usually only lay 1 egg a day. I went over to see this exciting event. This a true story. Please let us know how this could happen as we are knew to the chicken egg thing. Thanks, Cathy

  3. Hi
    can anyone tell me if its possible that one of my hens can be crowing they are laying but twice now i have been woken by a low crowing noise is this normal or is it my mental trauma from having to get rid of my three cockrels a month ago.
    By the way now the proud owner of 2 more welsummer hens.

  4. Sounds to me by reading all the comments on all the sites that it will probably never happen to me again,get three new girls monday to keep henrietta company and to help her turn back in to a hen and to stop trying to be a duck.

  5. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Kev

    How interesting. Unfortunately this has never happened with my flock!

  6. Hi
    I have one girl henrietta who one day laid one egg missed aday then laid 3 missed another day then laid 4 yes 4, thought i was been wound up but found out i wasnt, I only have 1 hen and 2 ducks so i no it was her, Just goes to show that throws the egg per day out the window by the way shes a sussex white.

  7. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Jack

    Thank you so much for your interesting input. I wish my hens laid more than an egg a day!

    Hello Tierra

    Egg laying depends on so many factors. There are breeds that are raised for meat (they will still lay eggs but not so many each year) and breeds that are raised for good egg production – a good layer will produce 250-280 eggs a year. There are breeds that are raised for eggs and meat – generally slightly less eggs per year than the layers.

    Then there are the ornamental breeds that don’t lay many eggs at all.

    As hens get older, they lay less.

  8. i cant find how many eggs they lay a year!!!!can somone help???

  9. yes its funny I’ve grown up most of my life with chickens not known why people say that chickens can only lay one egg perday but I know for fact that it cant be true I use to live in malaysia four years ago because of schooling it’s quite hard to explain but while I was their I was told that a chicken can lay more eggs than one every day and I beleaved it but I have realised while living in england and growing up with chickens and having chickens and ducks that they can lay more than 1 in a day and this morning 8:00 (I let them out yesterday) my ducks laed 2 eggs both hard not soft like when they resart laying. and my friend has seven chickens and had 11 eggs and when she let them out and when they came back they layed two more so i think someones theory was wrong about 1 egg perday.

  10. Fiona Nevile

    Hi Sara

    What breed of hens are these? Are they a laying breed? Either the guy that you bought them from was selling you hens that have past their laying best (over 2 years old) or very young pullets. Hens can take up to eight months to mature and start laying eggs.

    Hello Alexandra

    I reckon that your immature hen just needs a bit more time to get into an egg laying cycle. Hens do lay at different times of day, the cycle is never just a simple 24 hour one. The cycle can vary so the time of egg laying will vary too.

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