Pick the Best laying Hens for your needs
The best laying hens depend
on whether they are primarily for eggs to eat or eggs
to hatch. If your main goal is to have eggs to sell or for your own
food supply, there are
many breeds available that will lay consistently, daily or nearly
daily. Brood hens, those that will “go broody” and set on a clutch of
fertilized eggs, hatch them and care for the chicks, still exist but
may be harder to find
as these traits have been bred out of the many hybrid chicken varieties
available commercially.
(Be sure to check out the Chicken
Coop Plans page to learn how to build coops with nesting
boxes and roosts for your laying hens.)
The best laying
hens for egg production:
Leghorns: These
hens lay very well, with an average of 300 (white) eggs per year.
However, they do not sit on their eggs and will not go broody. Most
modern laying breeds have some Leghorn in them.
Rhode Island Red:
One of the top breeds for egg production, they lay high quality brown
eggs. There is also a Rhode Island White that lays brown eggs (we have
six RIW hens).
Sex Links: Chickens
bred for egg production, sexed at birth by color. Commercial breeds
have been dubbed Black Star and Red Star, and are very good layers of
brown eggs. However, they are hybrids and thus do not maintain the
color characteristics through subsequent generations.
The best laying
hens for egg hatching:
Cuckoo Maran:
Not the most prolific layer, but a very good setting hen that lays
quality brown eggs.
Rhode Island Red:
Popular for backyard flocks as the females are good layers and the
males make good meat birds. They will set on their eggs. However, the
sex-link versions and other hybrid Rhode Island Red strains will not go
broody.
Light Sussex: A
bird originally from the UK, also dual-purpose (meat and eggs).
Plymouth Rock:
An American breed whose hens will go broody and whose males are good
for eating as well.
If
your best laying hens won't hatch their eggs, but lay a plentiful
amount and have had a rooster around long enough that the eggs they lay
are fertile, you can always hatch your own chicks using egg incubators.
It's not terribly hard, and then you just need a brooder house or, for
smaller operations, a good heat lamp and a box, to raise the baby
chicks until they can survive in an outdoor pen.
Once you've had a flock for some time and have tried many different breeds of chickens, your own best laying hens might surprise you. Enjoy them!
Go back to Laying Hens, home to Egg Laying Chickens, or check out other chicken-related resources online:
Best Coop Plans:
How to Build a Chicken Coop - detailed plans and construction guide for making backyard coops.
These chicken coop plans and building guide are the best I've found, and purchased them myself to build our first coops. There are five different chicken coops included, beginning with the most basic double-story ark and culminating with the largest design, the Chicken Barn with attached screened-in chicken yard. I want to use their plans again for their largest chicken coop, the chicken barn, when we are ready to upsize our chicken flock's habitat. The coop pictured here is a medium-sized all-in-one design.
Recommended Chicken Books:
- Homemade Living - Keeping Chickens: All You Need to Know to Care for a Happy, Healthy Flock by Ashley English
- Storey's Guide - Raising Chickens by Gail Damerow
- Barnyard in Your Backyard - A Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens, Ducks, Geese, Rabbits, Goats, Sheep, and Cattle
Favorite Chicken Quotes
“ A chicken you eat only once — eggs a hundred times." ~ Tajikistani Proverb
“ You cannot cook one half of the chicken and leave the other to lay eggs." ~ Sanskrit Proverb
“ You don’t have to kill the chicken to get eggs." ~ French Proverb
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Don't Miss
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Chicken Coops
A page with pictures of tried-and-true chicken coop structures as well as tips on building them and recommended plans to follow. Ultimately, your chicken coop and pen will be the main factor determining your success as a small scale flock owner.
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Hens for Sale
If you're eager to begin a backyard chicken flock, you might not want to wait for day-old chicks to grow into pullets and finally lay eggs. To that end, if you can find some healthy hens for sale locally, you may be able to have fresh eggs almost immediately. It's best to buy pullets that are just about to start laying, rather than older hens who have already laid eggs and may be upset by a change in environment and stop laying for a time after the move.
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