Chickens,  Farms

How many eggs does a chicken lay per day?

 

If you’re thinking about getting chickens, you might be wondering how many eggs they will give you every day. This is a good question, and the truth is, it varies! I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about laying hens. People think that if they get 3 hens, they’ll have 3 eggs per day. This may or may not be the case.

How many eggs you get from each chicken every day depends on several factors:

  • The time of year
  • The breed of the chicken
  • The age of the chicken
  • Whether or not you have lighting in your chicken coop
  • If your chicken is molting
  • If your chicken feels stressed because of predators, or mites, or a lack of appropriate food
  • How “free range” they are (They may lay eggs that you can’t find)


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If you’ve got young hens (between 6 months and 2 years), it’s bright outside, and your chickens are living a relatively stress-free life, you should expect about 2 eggs per day from a coop of 3 hens. Take the number of hens you plan to purchase & multiply them by .75, and you’ll come up with the average # of eggs you will get per day. Example:

  • 2 hens should give you 1 to 2 eggs per day
  • 3 hens should give you 2 eggs per day
  • 4 hens should give you 3 eggs per day
  • 5 hens should give you 3 to 4 eggs per day
  • 6 hens should give you 4 to 5 eggs per day
  • 7 hens should give you 5 eggs per day
  • 8 hens should give you 6 eggs per day
  • 9 hens should give you 6 to 7 eggs per day
  • 10 hens should give you 7 to 8 eggs per day
  • 11 hens should give you 8 eggs per day
  • 12 hens should give you 9 eggs per day
  • 13 hens should give you 9 to 10 eggs per day
  • 14 hens should give you 10 to 11 eggs per day
  • 15 hens should give you 11 eggs per day

 

There are many people who end up with 15 eggs per day from 15 chickens, or even sometimes 16 per day from 15 birds. If you have this kind of luck, GREAT! But it won’t last forever. The chickens will taper off and start producing less, and the average amount of eggs they produce per day over a year’s time will be something closer to the above numbers.

You’ll need a hutch for your chickens. Something like this will work for a small flock:

Do you have chickens? How many eggs do they lay per day?

More Reading About Chickens

 

 

Photo Credit: Carly & Art

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43 Comments

  • NMHeckel

    We have 6 hens laying right now (2 others are “crazy broody”–i.e., broody without having anything to be broody on–and 8 others are too young), and with those 6, we generally get 4-5 a day. Very occasionally everyone lays and we get 6, but that doesn’t happen too often.

  • Keith Jones

    We had six, one recently died from the crazy 118 temps that we had, so now we are down to 5. It is still crazy hot (110 yesterday) so we have only been getting three a day from our five hens. It’s just too hot. We had much better production in the spring, typically 5 eggs a day.

    • Oben

      My name is Oben and deaf from Cameroonian, also farming livestock. I have an incubator. I have 4 hens and sometime get 2 eggs one day but my problem is that I gather 20 eggs and put in the incubator for 10 days but some of them have 8 successful. What can I do if the 4 hens lay eggs different days?

      • brenda

        Hi Oben, I am sorry, I don’t have experience with an incubator like this. I hope you have found some other helpful information online. We let our hens go broody and raise their own babies and only attempted the incubator for turkey eggs one time. Good luck & blessings to you!

  • Kerri Costa

    We have 4 girls and get 3-4 eggs a day… perfect for my husband and I and the occasional half dozen giveaway to friends and family.

  • NMHeckel

    Actually, a second egg in one day will not necessarily be shell-less. Some commercial layers will occasionally lay one egg very early in the morning, and a second late in the afternoon. One of our Leghorns did this last year.

  • Lisa Steele

    Excellent post. No chicken lays 365 days a year, for the reasons you mention. I often advise families they will need more chickens than they think in order to come up with enough eggs for their family.

    • brooke

      mine 4 don’t even lay that much eggs in a year and that’s all 4 of them. They do go off laying when it gets to cold some times.

  • Eva Wright

    I had good results last year with one hen laying one egg in the morning then being bred by the rooster then laying a second egg in the evening but it was a rare deal and then winter came so she stopped laying completely. I’m sure the roo had something to do with it because without him she only ever laid one a day.

  • Britney Greenway Rudder

    I have 6 hens and get 6 to 8 eggs a day, I have three sex link and 3 pellets my sexlink hens lay bigger eggs and one of my hens lays 2 eggs a day and they are double yoked. I thought this was odd and would never happen again until I started seeing a pattern. So I mark her eggs with a x, n sure enough I always get a double yoke.

  • Jen

    I have three hens that lay 2-3 eggs per day. They free range for about 3-4 hours per day and have a really large coop where they walk around throughout the day.

    • Alison

      Chances are you collected the eggs by early afternoon. While the ladies deposit most of their eggs early, some might drop them later than you collected them, or some laid them very early and much later.

      While most chickens will be regular, if their food, water, heat, and other care are regular, some won’t be … just like people. Young chickens lay lots of eggs, especially in the late winter and early spring. We had them for 25+ years and couldn’t keep up with them at that time of year. We’d box and refrigerate them (we always rinsed them off despite what people say); when we had 10 or so dozen eggs beyond those we ate, we’d put them in a carton and go visit the local home-for-the-homeless. They were SO appreciative! And they loved the Araucana eggs. Ours were aqua.

      Have fun!

    • Anonymous

      i have 17adult hens that are betwen 3-6 yrs old …… and a few older ones …. im hoping they get more so far today i got five 2 at morning feeding time and 3 around 2:00. i also have six one month olds that have to grow before they can lay and 0ne of the one month olds is a roo and then an older roo whom is 5 yrs old
      three of the adults are amberlinks and one one month old is an amberlink, i have a one month old barred rock , three one month rhode islands one of which is a roo, three are a white and black dalmation like im not sure what they are, an adult black sex link , and a one month black sex link, and two of those austrailan ones the australorps where they are black but in the sun have a green shimmer. the rest are white leg horns.

  • matt

    I have just picked up 6 rescue hens, now 3 days ago, they are 13 months old and temporarily in a small run until they are let to peck around the yard free range, but yesterday I collected 11 eggs! I wasn’t aware that was possible.

  • brooke

    i have 4 hens and in 2 to 3 day I get about 11 to 12 eggs its GREAT! I feed mine all the left over scraps because when I feed them pellets they don’t lay, so if your chickens aren’t laying try and feed them scraps but know meat they can get really sick.

  • Sheri

    I have 9 hens. They laid all winter long. I was down to 3 to 5 eggs a day. But now they are a little over a year old. I now get 10 to 12 a day. We feed them layer crumbles and corn mixture. We also give them scraps but NO meat.

  • David Trueblood

    Thank you for that
    awesome article! I just bought new incubator because I have a few
    chicks six or seven months from winter and these young hens often
    will lay in winter when others don’t. Is there a chance to give me
    some more indications? I already checked a few web pages like this
    one http://incubatorsatilir.meximas.com/index.htm but I still need
    some help. Thank you!

  • Paul Ball

    After 45 years of farming and raising Chickens for Eggs .. Some of best Eggs you can eat seem to be from Rhode island reds feeding them diet of Green Alfalfa sprouts from bale hay. cracked corn, Ground up seashell. and plenty of fresh water .. Egg shell will be extra hard and yolks will be very thick and almost orange in color. That Is really helpful video clip, how to incubate corect – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o2JqjkB3pg

  • sally

    I have 7 hens 1 rooster they are free range during the day go into a pen during the night for there own protection.we live where there are predators,but I do enjoy my flowers in the summer, and was wondering what flowers were chicken resistant ?I’ve noticed they don’t bother my crocus, but they love petunias!! My favorite.

  • Dawn

    We have six hens we got as chicks in the early spring.We get six eggs every day.the other day we got our six in morning.I went next morning there were twelve.Isnt that impossible in a twentyfour hour cycle.

  • Mike Merena

    I have 20 hens, 4 are molting currently. Initially I had 12-13 eggs per day but now its down to 8-9 eggs per day.

    Thought it was heat stress and checked all suspected causes for the reduction but after going through the comments in this post its giving me a fair idea of what’s happening and what I will expect in the coming days and months……

  • Tracy

    We have 11 chickens all just turned 6 months old. We are only getting 1-3 eggs a day. They free range but have only found eggs in the hen box and none in the pasture. Is this a normal amount of eggs for this number if chickens at this age?

  • Abidoye jamiu

    Good morning, am so great to ready this your article. I have 80 hen and they are give me 56 some time 60. I don’t maybe is OK.

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