Egg-Laying Chickens for Beginners

Home-hatching chicken eggs is an idea many would love to do someday, but caring for and facilitating egg laying can be a seemingly daunting task at first. However, with some willpower and determination you, as a homeowner, can understand the basics for taking care of egg-laying chickens and have your own home-hatched eggs.

  1. Hutch

    • Egg-laying chickens come in a large variety of breeds and sizes that equals that of varying dog and cat breeds. Irregardless of your breed, most egg-laying chickens have similar and universal characteristics -- one of which is shelter and egg-laying substrate. Egg-laying chickens require a chicken hutch filled with straw (also called a coop) to lay their eggs safely away from predators. Chicken hutches can be purchased or homemade to fit your chicken breed's needs. Egg-laying chickens must have constant warm temperatures in the interiors of their hutches to help them preserve their heat as they incubate their eggs. Female chickens lay on their eggs after they have hatched, and will continue to do so irregardless if the egg is gone. Due to the immobility of the chicken, cold temperatures can pose a serious threat to their livelihood, and a heating lamp should be placed in the hutch to ensure sufficient temperatures. A temperature of 55 degrees Fahrenheit tends to be ideal.

    Food

    • Egg-laying chickens demand a large and expansive amount of food to be able to produce eggs regularly. Rather than being just fed mill bird seed, egg-laying chickens need to be fed whole grains and even some intact vegetables (like corn) to regularly produce healthy and sturdy eggs. Opting out and feeding them plain bird seed can result in weak eggshells and possible exhaustion from your egg-laying chickens laying too many eggs without enough vitamin and mineral intake.

    Hierarchy

    • Egg-laying chickens have a hierarchy like any other animal in the animal kingdom. They live in large groups of females with one male, a rooster, to watch over them and fertilize their eggs. When understanding the basics for egg-laying chickens, coupling your female egg-laying chickens with a male rooster to fertilize their eggs will result in dramatic losses in egg harvests due to your eggs being fertilized -- meaning a chick will hatch and you will be unable to eat the egg (the eggs we eat are unfertilized eggs). Introducing another male into your group will also result in bad effects, as the two roosters will battle to the death for dominance over the females.

    Health Concerns

    • Egg-laying chickens are a hardy group of animals as they have been bred for hundreds of years to be a primarily egg-laying breed. However, they are still susceptible to several health hazards that can be fatal. Rather than understand an entire list of diseases for your chickens, use common sense and monitor your egg-laying chickens' habits to find any out of the ordinary. For example, if your females are not incubating eggs and are laying in a corner all day, they may be sick and need to be brought to a farm vet. Common indicators of sickness are runny, cloudy eyes, motionless birds and no vocalization.