How many chickens?

[Squirrelgirl315]

Hello,

I'm sorry if I posted this in a wrong section, I don't get on her very much. Darn life is getting in the way of my fun!

I'm moving to four acres in a couple years so I'll have lots of room for my future chickens to run around on. There are two people in my family, myself included, that eat eggs. I do a lot of cooking that include eggs as well.

My question is, how many chickens would I need to get to make sure I get at least six eggs a day? I understand that chickens don't lay eggs every day. I will, of course, work my way up to however many chickens since I will be a first time chicken owner. I'll start with one or two till I am confident on my chicken owning skills haha Is six eggs a day an unrealistic number? I don't want more then 10 chickens. I've never owned chickens before so I have no idea if this is anywhere close to realistic... I guess a better question might be how many eggs can I expect from 10 chickens in a week? Obviously the exact number of eggs per week will change but an educated guess would be great if you can.

My goal is to have them as pets and egg layers. I don't want to have to buy them from the store anymore. I keep seeing horrible things on the internet about chickens getting abused. Even the cage free ones.... I do not wish to support those people anymore and would like to know that my eggs are coming from happy chickens. The most important thing for me would be to have happy chickens over getting the amount of eggs I eat a week. I will stop rambling now, thanks for reading!

 

[Pork Pie]

Hi there - i guess the number of eggs you may get from 10 hens depends on the breed you choose. Some are laying machines, others are most certainly not. I'd check here on BYC and elsewhere on the characteristics of different breeds and select one or two different breeds. I have one hen, for example that is a commercially bred type ("Kenbro", for the record) who lays almost every day - she probably misses only 3-4 days per month. My others a broody little tinkers, so they lay for about 3 weeks and then go broody and don't lay until i break their broodiness.

If you just want eggs, then i would choose a consistent laying breed and one that doesn't go broody. I have just bought 4 more Kenbro chickens because of their egg production. I will be keeping one of my broody hens however as i normally use her to hatch eggs.

Whilst i understand your wanting to only get a couple of hens to begin with - introducing new flock members is something you will have to consider later. Be a devil and get 10 at once!

All the best

CT

 

[shodack]

From breeds that are known as good layers it seem like you reasonably expect 50 a week. That's from 6 months old to maybe 18 months old, when production would slow down for molting/winter.

 

[Squirrelgirl315]

haha thanks for your reply, that gave me a good idea of about how many eggs and chickens. I will go research more about the breeds. =]

Thanks again!

 

[Squirrelgirl315]

From breeds that are known as good layers it seem like you reasonably expect 50 a week. That's from 6 months old to maybe 18 months old, when production would slow down for molting/winter.

I'd rather have happy pets then lots of eggs so I'd be ok if I don"t get any or as much as I need every week. I know how many eggs I eat a week but saying it, wow my family eats a lot of eggs. haha Thanks for your reply.