Chicken eggs

[samaturi]

How many eggs does a chicken lay a day?

[New Forester]

One. Though properly you mean a hen -- chicken ought to mean just young ones. Loose inside the hen on the left side, up against the ribs, is an ovary, which looks like a bunch of yolks of all different sizes. They grow slowly, and when each is full size, it passes into the top of the oviduct. Here it is coated in turn with egg-white, membrane, shell, ground colour, spots, and a little wax. Then it's laid. They usually lay one every 25 hours or so. The first will tend to be in the morning, then each day it gets later until she's laying at bedtime. Then she'll have a day off and start again in the morning. Occasionally when a hen is laying really well she may manage two eggs in a day, but this is most unusual -- I've only seen it once I think. Laying strains will lay every day for a couple of hundred days, then stop for a bit. Meat and show strains may just lay a nestful or so in the spring, then stop -- this is of course what most wild birds do. Except in the more extreme laying strains, you have to remove the eggs each day to avoid filling up the nest. If the nest has too many eggs, the hen may decide she wants to sit, and will then go broody. When she's laid her last egg, she'll warm all the eggs up and sit tight continuously (sometimes she'll not even eat or drink) for three weeks. The eggs'll develop together, the chicks all hatching (if fertile) about the 21st day of incubation. Ahhh!

[bernardo]

It varies - when they had chickens in the Big Brother House, they only laid one each every few days. The record is (I think) something like 450 per year, so the number they lay per day varies according to their food and conditions.

[Asraifizzies]

In battery hen conditions they can be conned into laying one every 8 hoursm- the lights are non for 4 hours and they lay, then the lights are off for four hours. Then when the lights are turned back on, they lay again. Terrible really.