What time of day do your chickens lay?

[AudreyP]

I’m trying to find out if my chickens will only lay in the AM. So far, I have 2 layers out of my 10 chickens. Some will start laying any day now. I keep checking, but I don’t know if chickens lay any time of day, or are more likely to lay in the morning? Here’s a fun poll to see when we are getting most of our eggs. Mine hit at around 9am and 11:30am.

 

[MysteryChicken]

5 Am, thru 1-2:30pm most days.

 

[Fluffy Lambs]

All day

 

[Tonyroo]

Mine start at 9am go till 5 pm, depends when there ready.

 

[SilverBirds]

Mine normally lay from 7am-4pm.

 

[drdoct]

Mine are usually done by Noon. But sometimes rain will disturb them or something else and they'll spread it out until like 3pm. Most of the time they don't start until after 7am. But occasionally one will drop one from the roost. Unsure how or why that happens.

FWIW, I have a wyze cam on my laying box to know who is laying and who isn't.

 

[McPickle88]

Mine lay all day it seems like! I hear the Egg Song starting at 7 and sometimes I still have one lay at 4 or 5. I have 10 laying hens right now and they only want to use 2 of the 6 boxes I have available. I have 5 pullets that are about to start laying so it will have a longer line! lol

 

[Aunt Angus]

Mine lay in the morning primarily, though I'll get the occasional later eggs. My ducks lay overnight. And wherever they feel like. As a result, I know exactly which chicken lays which egg, and no clue which duck egg belongs to which duck.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I checked all four time frames because that is what I see.

There are certain triggers that tell a hen when to release a yolk to start her internal egg making factory to put an egg together. It takes around 25 hours from when the yolk is released until the egg is laid. Can be more, can be less, but around 25 hours.

One trigger is light. This should be daylight hours but if your coop is lit up at night, either by your lights or maybe by outside security or street lights, that could mess them up. Another one is when they lay an egg. If a hen is laying an egg the next day the yolk is generally released to start that next egg a few minutes after that day's egg is laid if other triggers agree. If she is not laying an egg the next day then this trigger doesn't work. Somehow they know when it will soon get dark so they don't release a yolk. I'm sure there are other triggers but I don't know what they are. The net result is that more eggs are laid in the morning than in the afternoon.

I've seen hens on the nest to lay an egg at bedtime. I had a hen (my only green egg layer at the time so that made it easy) that laid an egg by 9:00 every day for 6 or 7 days straight, then skipped a day. If her egg wasn't there by 9:00 AM she wasn't going to lay that day. I've had hens that laid their egg about an hour to an hour and a half later each day until she was too late to lay it in daylight so she's skip a day and start that cycle again in the morning. I never worked out a specific pattern for most of them, they laid whenever they laid.

 

[GravityWaves]

I had a hen (my only green egg layer at the time so that made it easy) that laid an egg by 9:00 every day for 6 or 7 days straight, then skipped a day. If her egg wasn't there by 9:00 AM she wasn't going to lay that day. I've had hens that laid their egg about an hour to an hour and a half later each day until she was too late to lay it in daylight so she's skip a day and start that cycle again in the morning.

My girls lay mostly in the morning, but I've had hens that lay a little later each day also. I had a White Leghorn that laid at the crack of dawn every single day. She'd have an egg in the box before any of the others even got off the roost most days.