There have been some great threads around here dealing with things that are in plain sight, but have complex, hidden layers and dimensions. For example, the Questions about bees thread from a few years ago.
One of my neighbors has a couple of chickens in their yard, which I assume are for eggs. I assume two, as local ordinances allows only that many (chickens or ducks) in our suburban neighborhood residences. The chickens are no problem at all, but occasionally we hear them clucking, which gets us talking about them. I think there are a few posters here that raise, or have raised chickens, so here are my questions:
How many eggs does one chicken lay in a day? I read anywhere from one to five – that seems too wide. Perhaps their diet, age, or environment has a bearing on production?
Related – many wild birds, such as our local turkeys, lay several eggs at a time, which makes sense as they would not be able to protect their young if they were always laying and incubating eggs. Why do domesticated chickens lay constantly? Is this due to selective breeding over time?
Do you need a rooster around in order to have the hens lay eggs? My wife thinks so, but what about those massive egg farms – do they employ roosters? Can hens lay eggs in the absence of a rooster? I don’t think my neighbor has a rooster (no crowing in the morning – or, is that part not true?). If there is a rooster around, wouldn’t the eggs get fertilized? That is not something you want, right?
I was surprised to learn you can purchase chicks and have them shipped via mail. How, exactly does this work? I have seen how bee queens are packaged and mailed, but baby chickens seems an order of magnitude more difficult.
Please enlighten me to these, and any other facts you care to mention (please be gentle – avian biology is not my strong suit).
No. 3-5 per week on average, up to one a day (7 per week) for heavy layers. As low as one a week or less for old hens at the end of their laying lifetime.
Yes. They were bred for this. I’m not sure exactly how.
No, you do not need a rooster. You only need a rooster if you want to breed chicks. Hens will lay eggs all on their own without being fertilized. In fact, it’s better to have no roosters unless you need them, because they’re loud, they fight, and they don’t provide anything in return for all the food you’re giving them. Backyard chickens in suburbia should all be hens or else someone made a mistake.
Probably express shipping in a cardboard box. I’ve never mail-ordered chicks, but I have picked them up from Rural King. They come in a little Happy Meal like box, with some air holes. When shipped they probably have some food included. Not sure how they’d get water, or if they’d even require it for a short trip.
Dr. Cube has covered it well. I would only add that you can go to almost any farm feed and supply store in the spring and find baby chicks for sale. Around my area, they sell them starting in mid-February. Just realize you’ll have to feed and care for them for 5 1/2 to 6 months before they start laying. If you want them to be easier to handle if/when you need to care for them, start handling them gently from the time you get them and be sure to do it at least once a day.
You’ll need a secure place to keep them at night and sometimes even during the day, depending on what flies overhead (hawks, eagles). Your housing must be dig-proof from varmints and snake-proof. Everything loves a chicken dinner and snakes love eggs.
They can get mites and worms, so be prepared to watch for and administer remedies for these things. They also like a nice spot to lay their eggs. A straw-filled milk crate tipped on its side is sufficient.
Roosters do crow, and not just in the morning. Some of them like to keep up at all times of the day or night. I just dispatched an unwanted rooster this morning. He took his third shot at giving me a flog and that was the last straw. Don’t have one, and if you accidentally get one from any source (happens fairly frequently), be prepared to get rid of it.
The fresh eggs are well worth it, and chickens are fun.
1: I suppose it’s conceivable that the world record chicken once laid five eggs in a single day, but that’s way out there. Practically speaking, one a day is usually the limit, and you usually won’t get that many. They reach maturity and start laying after a little less than a year, and as they age over the few years after that, the number tends to decline. Eventually, they dwindle to almost no eggs, close to the end of their natural life. Diet is of course also a factor, but one that’s pretty well understood, so anyone keeping chickens is going to feed them a diet conducive to laying.
2: Even the wild ancestors of chickens laid a lot of eggs by wild bird standards (no doubt why they were chosen for domestication), but selective breeding has increased the amount immensely. In the wild, it would be a few a month.
3: You only need a rooster if you’re planning on raising new chickens. Females by themselves will continue to lay unfertilized eggs. Most chicken operations will have only hens and buy new ones from the few who do breeding, because roosters are, in general, a royal nuisance to have around.
4: You put the chick in a box with air holes, stick a stamp on it, and the Post Office carries it in trucks, planes, and/or trains to its destination, just like any other package. They do need somewhat gentler handling than a letter or a book from Amazon, but nothing beyond the capability of the USPS.
Interesting. So, there must be some mechanism, hormonal?, that stops the egg laying when they are sitting on their eggs, but allows them to keep laying in the absence of eggs.
My wife will be delighted to hear that the male chickens serve no useful purpose other than procreation, and are considered a nuisance and a drain on resources. I can already hear the ‘mm-hmmm’ comments from she and my daughter.
Oh, and no, I am not looking to start keeping them in my yard. At least for now. My questions are just out of curiosity.
I’ve heard that other birds have the same instinct. This can be a problem if you’re trying to clear wild birds out of an area. If you remove a nest of eggs, the birds will just build a new nest and lay a new batch of eggs. So people take out the eggs and put fake eggs in the nest so the birds won’t replace them.
I have 3 young hens (a little over 1 year old) and they each lay 1 egg per day. Different breeds have different laying patterns–ours are good layers.
Yes
If you have a rooster, the hens will lay FERTILIZED eggs. You don’t want this unless you want more chicks. If you have hens for eggs to eat, you want them laying nonfertile eggs. Most suburban jurisdictions don’t allow residents to keep roosters because of the crowing.
We have never had chicks mailed to us, but I know that service exists. They overnight the chicks and usually most of them survive the trip.
Re: The mail-order chicks. You get these from a hatchery, where they can send you just the girls. The’re shipped the day they hatch, when they still have a little bit of yolk sac attached. They don’t need food or water for a couple of days, they just live off the yolk sac, but they have to be shipped to a place where they will arrive within 2 (IIRC) days of hatching.
Ordering chickens by mail is super fun. They’re all peeping and fluffy and adorable when they arrive, and the post office calls you to tell you to come get your babies…joy!
Also, while roosters aren’t required for egg laying, they can protect the flock if you free-range your birds, and fertilized eggs are just fine to eat as long as they’re gathered before anyone sits on them for an extended period of time.
My sister-in-law decided to raise some chickens in a disused part of her attic. After some time (weeks?), she found that they were getting bigger and bigger, until eventually their legs broke. Then somebody explained to her that she wasn’t supposed to keep the attic lit 24 hours a day. Apparently they eat whatever they see, so if they have constant light and ample feed they get really obese.
Not sure of the origins of the phrase, but a “flogging rooster” is a common way of referring to one who attacks you with his spurs. Just in the vernacular, I guess.
Just FTR, a fertilized egg is not Kosher, and the simple, older rule was “blood spot? Not Kosher.” Here’s a summary of the old-school decision, posted by the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Jewry, with a comment thread by all sorts of viewpoints.
“giving a flog?” Anglo?