How Many Eggs Will Your Backyard Chickens Lay?
I get this question a lot, usually from well meaning, curious non-homesteaders. "How many eggs do you get a day? How many eggs will a hen lay in a lifetime? Is it cheaper to keep chickens than to buy your eggs?"
The answer is...it depends!
On average, a hen will lay between 150-250 eggs per year, depending on age, breed, and environmental stressors.
A local chicken expert explained it to me this way: it takes 16 hours of sunlight for an ovarian follicle to develop and release an egg. After the ovary releases the egg, it takes about 25-26 hours to be laid.
This is why, as the days get shorter, a hen's production will slow down. Naturally, hens want to have babies in the Spring and Summer, when it's warmer and the bugs and grasses are plentiful. However, we can intervene and add lights to their coops, and extend their productive year...but more on that later.
As for if it's cheaper to keep chickens...again...the answer is = it depends.
One hen can lay up to 250 eggs a year, and produce for up to 7 years. That's 1750 eggs...or 145.8 dozens. At 4$ a dozen (really they go between $4.5 and $5 here), each hen can provide you with $583 worth of eggs in her lifetime. Now if you let her go broody (and have a rooster) and hatch out some of her eggs, you've got pullets that go for about $20 each.
That's not including the amount of manure she'll produce for you over a lifetime (at a rate of roughly 3.5 lbs a month) or 292 lbs of manure over a lifetime (!!) which is worth $350 (at $30 for a 25 lb bag of manure -- god I love Amazon). Which you can use to feed your garden and eventually your family.
While feed and bedding can be expensive, there are very easy ways to cut down these costs (I'll write an entire post on this at a later date...it's too much to get into now).
What can affect a hen's production?
- Diet
- Stress
- Breed
- Disease
- Age
How to Increase Production
If your girls have slowed down because of the shortening daylight, there's a very easy way to keep up their production. Simply simulate a longer day by adding artificial light to your coop. Buy a set of LED lights and hook them up to a timer so they kick on early in the morning before the sun rises.
NOTE: only add daylight to the morning. If you suddenly turn off their light in the middle of the night, the sudden change can cause them to panic.
Now one thing I haven't experimented with is fermenting chicken feed. I've heard it can increase their production as well. Has anyone else done this? Any tips?
upped and resteemed :-) Using artificial light to extend the laying comes with the price of interfering with the natural cicle and is not worth the risk of side effects in my opinion... We just switched feeding them outside to feeding them inside the chicken-house this year and this gave us many more eggs as they were no longer stressed with the sparrows constantly "stealing" food. At this time of year I sprout wheat, corn etc. and feed it them - the chickens love it! So far I have not tried fermenting chicken feed, but if I remember correctly @fishyculture does it :-) Cheers from the Seven Mountains in Germany
Hello to the Seven Mountains in Germany!! I don't add artificial light for my girls, but I know others that do. Personally, I need a break from eating so many eggs too!! I had never thought to sprout wheat and corn...but what a great idea! My girls free-range most of the day, but I'll likely be keeping them locked up for more of the day as the days get shorter. It would be nice to add some variety to their diet. Thank you for resteeming!
Our hens have been laying half their usual amount of eggs daily. Between the molt and shorter days the output ranges between 1 and 4. I miss the brown eggs Dot lays. Interesting info about lighting.🐓
I should have added about moulting! I haven't dealt with that yet with my ladies, but it's inevitable. Is it cold where you are? Do you do anything extra for the girls that are moulting?
Mine are in their 1st year, still young. 4 started moulting in October. I was startled one day when Feathers were all over the coop. I researched about it and found that “Save a Chick” electrolytes added to their water a couple times weekly and a little extra protein (if hens are not totally organic) helped. They seem to be thru it for the most part. I discovered it can last for 2 months!🐓
Wow! Thank you for sharing! We bought a lot of 13 chickens from a friend who was going through rough times. She said they were between 6 months and 2 years...but not which ones were which. I'll have to keep an eye out for any moulting.
Great words of chicken wisdom here! I sprout barley for my chickens. Sometimes it ferments instead of sprouting but I TRY to sprout lol! They LOVE it, and lay very nicely on it.
Another odd thing I learned accidentally is that orange yolks are not always a sign of "free range" but can mean there is a lot of PEA in the feed. I was playing with ratios and when I got perhaps a bit too much ground peas in the mix the yolks were almost fluorescent!
I am gunna try this barley thing, i have a bag of seed for some reason.
Hahaha my before-coffee brain read that as "PEE" lol. Do you mix your own feed? What do you put in it?
I use organic stuff: corn, sunflower seed, barley, wheat, peas, a little kelp, calcium, fish meal, Redmond minerals and a bit of fish oil. I have a local supplier who I usually buy from, but I keep that stuff on hand because if he runs out, there is no where within 100 miles that I can buy non-GMO feed.
What a great idea! Any set ratios or do you change it up for variety?
I sort of eyeball it, but about 5 pounds corn, equal parts barley wheat and sunflower to equal about 5 more pounds, and maybe 10% peas, then a tablespoon of kelp, minerals and fish oil, and about 1/4 cup of fish meal. They get about half dry feed and half sprouts for daily rations.
I remember the time where I used to collect eggs for my grandmother. She had chicken at home and vegetables. Now everything is just memories.
It is nice to have fresh eggs from the farm. I dont feel like buying the commercial eggs anymore :(
Do you have anyone local you can buy farm eggs from? I don't think $4 or $5 is too much for a dozen local eggs. My girls' eggs taste like butter...they're soooo rich. I can't imagine going back to store-bought.
This is a well done post that I see hits home with the one's who keep hens and for others like me who grew up with them in one fashion or another. I have fond memories of my Granny and her hens. We even had ducks at one point. Nothin' better than fresh, organic eggs from Granny. Lot's of very kool memories for me. I still have the buttons she gave me of the big rattle snake she beheaded with a shovel that made its way into the coup one afternoon. I miss her. One of her favorite sayings was " Mad as a wet hen." Thanks for the post and the walk down memory lane. I look forward to more from you.
hhahaha mad as a wet hen is a great saying. Sometimes one of my chickens goes around squaking really loud as if she was mad, but I dunno if it was because she was wet lol.
Hahaha mad as a wet hen! Too funny...I'm going to have to use that one! My grandmothers both grew up with chickens, but they were considered 'poor', so they desperately wanted to get away from that image. My one grandmother thinks it's odd that I grow vegetables, and can, and keep chickens. Something she saw as a necessity growing up in North Dakota is now a fashionable thing to do.
They are pretty cheap pets, and reward the owners well, in eggs and amusement and compost! I keep my chickens in the summer and warm months for like 20 bucks of feed a month, 40 in the winter. Although I dont get eggs for a couple months in the winter, I love my chickens and dont mind feeding them more. In the summer I get about a dozen eggs every couple days and I have 14 chickens, 9 of which are laying. I haven't done the math but the fresh eggs are way yummier then store eggs, and chickens are incredibly entertaining lol. Totally worth it.
and yeah I don't do the extra lighting, id rather the ladies have a rest and conserve their heat and energy in the wintertime. They will be more productive for me in the spring and coming years I am sure.
I read a post somewhere about chickens that made me laugh. It was talking about how they were t-rex's...and haven't forgotten they were t-rex's. I love watching them run across my yard like a miniature pack of dinosaurs. My husband (a reluctant chicken owner) even gets a kick out of watching them swarm whenever they think he has food. He was working under his truck the other day and looked up to two of the chickens checking out what he was doing...couldn't help but laugh.
I can calculate how beneficial they are with eggs and manure, but can't put a price on entertainment and bug-harvesting. :)
They totally always remind me of t-rex's. thats exactly on point, a flock of t-rex chickens lol. They can amuse even the most stoic of people with their silly sideways chicken look.
Hubby likes to watch them tear into table scraps. One will grab a long piece of something and run away with it while the others chase him. lol too much fun!
Oh yeah tiny dino chicken tag/keep away is good, wholesome entertainment for everyone. Funny chickens, and funny sounds they make too.