Having fresh eggs is wonderful, but figuring out how many chickens you need to have eggs all the time can be a bit trickier than it seems. If you have too many chickens you end up with a massive surplus of eggs, but if you have too few you’ll run out when you need them! Figuring out the right balance for your family depends on several factors ranging from your consumption to the type of chicken you get. Let’s untangle this mystery and figure out the basic math!
How Many Eggs Do You Need?
This may sound like a trivial matter, but knowing precisely how many eggs you need can save you a lot of heart ache. For example, our household eats about 10 eggs a week between two people. That’s a lot of eggs, but it makes up the majority of our protein on our homestead. At 10 eggs a week that’s 520 eggs a year. We also know that this is rough because we’re not just eating eggs for breakfast, this consumption also includes baking and other uses where eggs are a component.
When figuring this out for yourself it’s best to look at your average weeks consumption and time that out by 52. There will of course be some weeks when you eat more eggs and some when you eat less, but overall you want to get a general idea for a typical week.
From there we can start looking at the chickens themselves!
How Many Eggs Do Chickens Lay a Day?
Chickens, if well fed and healthy, can lay one egg a day in their prime egg laying years. This doesn’t mean that they will lay an egg everyday, they can lay eggs 8 to 12 days in a row, then they take a day or two off before the cycle starts again. Typically, there is 24-26 hours between eggs for a chicken, so when they lay an egg can vary, but overall will be rather consistent.
Over the course of the year, a prime health well fed bird can lay up to 250 eggs. We have also seen the average reported closer to 200 for your typical homestead chicken, so take that with a grain of salt. If we’re being conservative and use the 200 number, assuming you’re not breaking the bank trying to maximize egg production by carefully calibrating you chicken feed. With that you can simply add up your chickens and get a number of eggs you can expect.
Four chickens yields roughly 800 eggs a year. That’s enough for you to eat more than 2 eggs a day year round. These are round numbers though, and we need to consider the other factors that effect how many eggs you’ll get a year.
How Does Chicken Variety Affect Egg Production?
Egg laying quantity among chickens is a result of multiple factors, but the breed sets your standard. Depending on where you live and what kind of climate you’re in, you may have different chicken breeds available to you. Each of these different breeds will have similar egg production, but it can vary by as many as a hundred eggs, so be mindful that you pick the right breeds for your needs.
Here are the average yearly egg productions for various breeds of chickens, as reported by PBS Specialist Pet Travel:
- Goldline – 320 eggs per year
- White Leghorn – 300 egg per year
- Plymouth Rock – 280 eggs per year
- Golden Comet – 250-300 eggs per year
- Rhode Island Red – 250 eggs per year
- Ameraucana – 250 eggs per year
- Sussex – 250 eggs per year
- New Hampshire Red – 200 eggs per year
As you can see there is a wide range of average egg amounts between these chickens. We also want to caution you, don’t just choose a chicken based on how many eggs it lays! Make sure you’re choose a chicken that is right for your homestead, climate, and compatible with your needs.
Age of Chickens and Egg Production
As chickens get older they will lay few eggs. This is natural and should expected, but it’s important to know what the drop off could be. According to a study published by the University of Florida, chickens can loose around 10-15% of egg laying production each year. While chickens can lay eggs for well over 10 years (assuming they live that long) your oldest hens may only be laying at 20% of their original production.
What this really means is that you should probably overshoot on your chickens when trying to get enough eggs. It’s often easier to get rid of a few extra eggs your first year than it is to be short on eggs every subsequent year. Additionally, after a few years you will need to introduce new chickens to your flock to keep your egg production up.
The Simple Math on Chickens
Once you know how many eggs you need and what type of chickens you want, you simply have to work out the simple math. Rhode Island Reds for example, on our egg consumption of 520 eggs a year, could supply use with more than enough eggs with just three birds. We plan for an excess as well, so 3 birds could yield us 600-750 eggs a year which will gradually sink to over the years to better fit our consumption. At two birds we’d be short eggs for a couple weeks a year, but that problem would grow each following year.
For us, the goal is not to go without eggs, but for your family it might be fine to just buy eggs every now and then. The downside here is that once you taste fresh eggs off your own homestead, you’ll never want to eat store bought eggs again!
Other Factors That Effect Egg Laying
Chickens can under produce for a lot of other reasons too. We’ve only looked at breeds, age, and average numbers so far, but chicken nutrition plays a huge role too. If your chickens don’t have a proper diet they might not get enough nutrients to be able to produce eggs. This is obvious when you see chickens rushing to eat a freshly laid egg. It’s a sign they don’t have enough nutrition in their feed or that they don’t have enough space to graze.
Beyond nutrition chickens can have a host of other problems ranging from disease to parasites. Even stressful living conditions can cause them to stop producing eggs, so just remember, if you want good eggs you need to keep your chickens happy and healthy.
For more information on issues affecting egg production please see this UF study.
Plan Your Chickens Accordingly
Now you should know everything you need to get the right number of chickens for your household. While this is just the beginning of planning for chickens, you’re likely well on your way if you’re already reading this article. From here you’ll want to start planning for space, grazing, feed, and housing for your chickens. Good luck on your chicken raising adventure!