Is it true that chickens can lay more than 1 egg per day?
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Shoulda named her Betty Davis.
Question by Anne: Is it true that chickens can lay more than 1 egg per day?
We’ve got backyard chickens and they only ever lay 1 egg a day, or sometimes there is the occasional day where one of them won’t lay one.
I was watching this documentary on tv about battery hens and how they keep the lights on to trick them into eating more so they lay multiple eggs per day. Is this true, can they actually produce more than 1 egg a day?
Note: I am NOT wanting to do this, I abhor battery farming and we already have too many eggs! I was just curious.
Can you help? Leave your own answer in the comments!
5 Responses to Is it true that chickens can lay more than 1 egg per day?
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yes i have chickens and it is possible for them to lay a few at a time.
jacko
October 14, 2012 at 1:09 am
The average chicken fires off one egg every 22-27 hours depending on breed, season, personal metabolism of the chicken, etc.
So if we were to take a breed that can drop eggs once every 22 hours, if it were to lay at midnight, it could in theory drop another at 10pm and thus “Lay two in a day”…but that would only happen once in a while. This is much the same way we can have two full moons in a month.
The manipulation of the lights is to simulate the longer length of day you have in the summer months when chickens really ramp up production.
No commercially producing egg laying hen will drop more than one per day except very rarely and in the case mentioned above.
If you need at least 20,000 eggs per day, better have 25,000 birds.
Alex
October 14, 2012 at 1:15 am
You have heard of the battery caged hens. They had lights on 24 hours a day. They laid more than one egg a day. But apart from that I don’t know of any breeds. You could always google it.
Raven
October 14, 2012 at 1:38 am
ofcourse they can, and yes chickens will eat more if they think its daytime, but they may become stressed if this is done alot because they are not sleeping enough, it could cause the chicken to become unhealthy because its is screwing up their natural sleeping pattern. YES chicken suffer stress attacks and depression.
Rip_SouLjah
October 14, 2012 at 1:39 am
One egg is produced every 24 hours,two is possible but very rare even with more light added.
Billie
October 14, 2012 at 2:11 am