Too many eggs?

[calebc311]

It's 21 weeks (nearing 22) for my two chickens I keep in my backyard. My Plymouth Rock has yet to lay (I think) but my Comet has been laying every day for one week. What's more is that I heard an egg takes a minimum of 25 hours to form inside a hen but my Comet has laid an egg within 20-21 hours! There are no problems with her eggs, they taste amazing. Could anything be wrong if she's laying too much? (or this egg could have come from my Rock, which I highly doubt)

 

[Ridgerunner]

It takes about 25 hours on average for an egg to go through the hen’s internal egg laying factory. That’s an average. Some take less, some take more.

Normally a hen starts the next egg about 20 minutes after the egg is laid, normally but not always. Sometimes those yolks get an early start.

People like to think chickens are like machinery, running the same no matter what. But they are living animals. They have differences. You might think about it this way, does every woman on the earth give birth exactly 9 months after conception or is there a bit of variance?

 

[JeanR]

Well, Comets were bred for being EGG MACHINES for a year or more, so while the development of the egg from ova to "in the nest" is described as taking over 24 hours--are Comets, Red Stars, etc, bred to speed up development? I don't know--certainly must, but if your Rock is "not laying yet", examine the eggs carefully, color of shell, shape of egg, texture of shell. If both are laying, there will be differences. If not, just be patient, there will suddenly be two eggs in the nest box. Rocks, lay brown eggs, your Comet, brown eggs? You cannot control her production if she is well fed, cared for--just enjoy every lovely egg, that is what she was bred for !

 

[evemfoster]

It's 21 weeks (nearing 22) for my two chickens I keep in my backyard. My Plymouth Rock has yet to lay (I think) but my Comet has been laying every day for one week. What's more is that I heard an egg takes a minimum of 25 hours to form inside a hen but my Comet has laid an egg within 20-21 hours! There are no problems with her eggs, they taste amazing. Could anything be wrong if she's laying too much? (or this egg could have come from my Rock, which I highly doubt)

The 25 hours to form an egg rule is more of an average and a little bit of a fallacy that keeps getting repeated all the time. It’s far more accurate to say that a chicken will take about 25 hours to form the ‘egg white to finished egg shell’ stage of development.

Laying hens that lay once a day at full production will have dozens of developing egg yolks inside the hen at any one time. Most are only pinhead sized but a good dozen will be new pea to full sized yolks. When a yolk reaches full size the hen starts covering it with egg white, membrane and then the shell. The faster a hen lays the more of the larger yokes there will be. Hens that lay only 3-4 eggs a week will have only about half dozen of the larger developing yokes.

Hens that lay once a day just produce yolks faster than most chickens. Sometimes a heavily producing hen will lay two eggs in a day. One in the early morning and another in the late evening. Other times they come out as a double yolkier. It doesn’t usually harm the chicken lay quickly and if the hen starts getting tired or hungry the yolk production will slow and she will get to skip a day.

You can look up the average number of eggs a breed of chickens should lay per week, but that’s just an average. How many eggs your individual hen will give you often depends on the particularities of your chicken. They will lay what and when they want to lay. It’s like waiting for a baby to be born they get here when they get here.

I suspect I would be in a lot of trouble if I post photos of butchered hens here so if you want to see photos of the number and sizes of developing egg yolks inside of a chicken; Google: egg yolk inside of butchered chicken

By the way; Chicken stew made with an old laying hen and its egg yolks is a old farm treat. Save the yolks pinhead to the largest size. Stir the cluster of egg yolks into the simmering stew taking care to not break the yolks about 5-8 minutes before serving. They will divide up into separate yolks and be cooked and still whole at the time the stew is served.