Learning how to raise chickens for eggs is a great step toward the homesteading lifestyle and more self-sufficiency. In this backyard chicken guide, we discuss everything you need to know about raising egg-laying chickens (including a FREE PDF on the most important things to know, and those things that maybe aren't so important).
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Quick Look at This Post
- ✅ Title: How to Raise Chickens for Eggs
- ✅ What You'll Learn:
- ✅ The real basics of healthy chicken keeping
- ✅ How to plan for eggs year-round
- ✅ Feeding and housing decisions that actually matter
- ✅Common beginner mistakes and how to avoid them
- ✅ Homesteading Hack: Download our FREE Quick-Start Chicken Keeping Checklist which walks you through the essentials. From coop setup and feeding to chick care and planning for egg production, all in a simple, easy-to-reference format.
We are fortunate to raise a year’s worth of meat, and we love raising meat chickens in the spring. They are some of the best homestead animals. But keeping a flock of backyard egg-laying chickens is a priority in our home because of the number of people we have to feed.
Our hens provide us with the best eggs, with deep orangy-yellow yolks and a flavor that far surpasses the grocery store. We make homemade eggnog, perfect hard-boiled eggs, pickled eggs, and homemade egg noodles to prevent any single egg from going to waste.
During the spring and summer months, we preserve our extra eggs in a number of different ways to be sure we have enough to feed our family throughout the winter months (our favorite methods are water-glassing eggs and freeze-drying eggs).
This post has been updated with more chicken-keeping tips we've learned over the years. You can watch or listen to both our recent and older videos below:
Listen and Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart | Google Podcasts
Quick-Start Chicken Keeping Checklist
Getting started with backyard chickens doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. This free one-page Quick-Start Chicken Keeping Checklist walks you through the essentials — from coop setup and feeding to chick care and planning for egg production — all in a simple, easy-to-reference format. Print it out, keep it in your coop or homestead binder, and use it as a steady guide as you build a healthy, happy flock.
Types of Backyard Chickens
Before you buy backyard chickens, you need to know what you're going to use them for. There are four different categories of chickens:
- Heritage Breeds - Can be both meat or egg-laying.
- Egg-Laying Breeds - Raised solely for laying eggs.
- Dual-Purpose Breeds - Generally raised for one to two years as egg-laying hens, then butchered for meat.
- Meat chickens - Raised solely for meat as they're butchered before they reach their egg-laying stage.
We recommend asking people around you who are raising chickens to see what breeds do well in your area. But you can always get a few different varieties and see which you prefer best.
Heritage Breeds
The Livestock Conservancy defines a Heritage chicken as a natural breeding chicken that has a slow growth rate and can live a long, productive outdoor life. As mentioned above, the breed must also conform to the American Poultry Association's standard for that breed.
Heritage breeds can be both egg-laying chickens or meat chickens. These can even fit into the other categories below.
Each heritage breed has pros and cons for raising them as backyard chickens, so be sure to do your research on each specific breed (and check egg count!) to make sure they're right for you.
Egg-Laying Breeds
Egg-laying breeds are going to be pretty small birds. They won't grow to a very large size or provide much meat if you end up butchering them.
Egg-laying breeds will lay an average of about 300 eggs per year in optimal conditions, which is why we really recommend birds in this class if you are primarily looking for eggs from your chickens.
These breeds include Australorp, Leghorn and Novogen Brown chickens (which we love).
Dual-Purpose Breeds
Dual-purpose chickens will lay eggs and grow to a decent size for butchering. Most often, people will buy dual-purpose birds as egg layers for 1-2 years, then after their egg-laying cycle is over, butcher them for meat.
We've raised dual-purpose birds in the past and personally don't recommend them. Although they make a fantastic backyard flock, they won't lay as many eggs as egg-laying breeds, and they won't grow as large as breeds meant for butchering.
It's our recommendation that if you want meat chickens, get meat chickens. If you want egg-layers, get egg-laying chickens.
Meat Chickens
Meat chickens are raised in a relatively short amount of time and are strictly for the purpose of filling your freezers. They won't be around long enough to get to the age where they'll start laying.
For more info on this variety, check out our post about raising meat chickens.
Buying Backyard Chickens
There are a few different options when it comes to getting egg-laying chickens. Some take much more hands-on time and care than others, and there are pros and cons to each.
- Hatch out your own eggs - it can be tricky for beginners.
- Buy day-old chicks - our personal recommendation for beginners.
- Buy pullets (our secondary recommendation) - a more expensive option, but gets you to the laying stage sooner and eliminates the need for a brooder.
- Buy year-old chickens - generally gets you hens that are laying now (or soon after their first molt).
Hatching Chicks
Hatching out your own eggs means you need to be set up with an incubator and the understanding of turning eggs and the care needed before they hatch.
This isn't something we recommend for first-time chicken owners. Though we think learning and experimenting with this is great for building resilience on your homestead, we recommend trying it once the newness of owning chickens has passed, or if you're starting a homestead business.
Buying Day-Old Chicks
Buying day-old chicks is probably the most common way to buy egg-laying chickens. It's our recommendation for those just beginning with egg-laying chickens. The downside is that you're still relying on an outside source, which decreases your resiliency. However, it's a great place to get started.
Buying day-old chicks is also the most cost-effective way to get started. You'll want to be sure you're ready before you bring them home. We cover everything you need to know about bringing home baby chicks in our post on raising meat chickens (the care for baby chicks is the same, whether egg-layers or meat chicks).
Always try to find your chicks locally, and if you can find a mother-raised chick, this is best. A chick that's had the experience of being hatched out and raised by a mother is going to be a better mother to their own chicks (this is especially important if you want your hens to hatch out your next batch of egg layers).
Buying Pullets
Pullets are chickens that are 4-6 months old and at "point of lay," which means they're about to start laying. The benefit to this is that you miss the entire chick period, where you have to baby the chicks and play mama hen.
These chickens are ready to go into the coop and are just about to start laying.
The downfall to pullets is that they're more expensive upfront. However, if you break down the costs of raising your own chicks between feed and time, you may find buying pullets is the right direction for you.
Buying Year-Old Hens
Finally, you can bring in year-old hens. Typically, they've already been laying and are at their first molt. This means they've stopped laying for a bit, might be losing some of their feathers, etc.
Buying year-old hens means you'll still get about 1-2 more laying years out of those chickens.
This doesn't have to be an expensive option if you shop around. Sometimes, there are people selling off some of their flock because they've accumulated too many. Or perhaps they started raising backyard chickens and realized it was not for them.
Where to Buy Chicks
If you're in the market for baby chicks, try to find a local hatchery. Not all cities will have hatcheries, but oftentimes, a feed and grain store or a farm and garden store will take pre-orders and have chicks delivered to the store for you to pick up.
If you can't find chicks locally, we recommend looking at Freedom Ranger Hatchery. This is where we've purchased chicks in the past.
How Often Do Chickens Lay Eggs?
Egg-laying breeds will lay about 4-5 eggs per week. There are certain times of the year when you won't be getting that many eggs and other times of the year when you will probably be getting more.
If it gets too hot, too cold, or too little light, then their egg production will slow down. You can read this post on why chickens stop laying eggs. It's good information if you think your chickens should be laying, but aren't.
We like to allow our chickens to slow down with the seasons, so we don't use artificial light to keep them laying during the winter months.
Instead, when egg production is at an all-time high, we preserve our eggs by water-glassing them or freeze-drying them. If water-glassed, they will last upwards of 18 months. If freeze-dried and stored correctly, they will last on the shelf for upwards of 20 years.
We generally only preserve enough eggs to get us through the winter until our flock starts laying again.
Chicken Feed - What to Feed Chickens by Age
There are many ways to feed your chickens, but there are some basic requirements that chickens need. Feeding chickens is not just about volume or quantity but also what makes up their feed. Their nutritional needs change as they age so you want to be prepared for this before bringing them home.
Feeding Baby Chicks (Up to 7 Weeks Old)
When your chicks are young, you need to feed them very high protein feed (usually 18-20% protein). If you're buying it, it's often called chick starter or chick crumbles.
A tip we found that helps with baby chicks is to add some grass, soil and sand to their feed. This helps get good grit into their gizzard and teaches them how to peck and scratch to search for food. This also gets them accustomed to actually eating the "green things."
Feeding Chicks 8-14 Weeks
At about eight weeks, chicks need a drop in protein. From 8-14 weeks old, they need a feed with only 16-18% protein.
This drop in protein is so the chicks don't grow and develop their egg-laying parts too quickly. Rapid growth in chicks can create permanent problems when it comes time for them to start laying.
Feeding Chickens 15-18 Weeks
At this age, chickens can be dropped down to a feed with about 15-16% protein. This is the ideal protein for chickens for the remainder of their life. If chicks are free-ranged with an adequate supply of bugs, you may find they don't need as much feed each day because they'll be supplementing with bugs.
If you're looking for ways to save money on chicken feed, listen to this podcast on feeding your chickens without buying chicken feed. Alternatively, you can give them kitchen scraps and even consider fermenting your own chicken feed for further cost savings.
We've practiced all these methods for many years with great success.
Shelter
Do not wait until you have your chickens to figure out where you will house them! It causes a lot of stress and could potentially affect the chicken's health and well-being.
There are two types of chicken shelters:
- Permanent shelters - this is also called a static coop. It's a coop that is permanent and cannot be moved daily or weekly. (See our static coop pictured below.)
- Moveable shelters - Also called chickshaws, chicken tractors, moveable chicken coops, or what we dubbed the Idaho A-Frame.
We use both a static coop and moveable coops for our chickens. Our meat chickens are solely in portable coops. But we provide a static coop for our laying hens during the winter months. We've even tried out the Happy Farmer Chicken Coop (you can read our review in that post).
A shelter, whether portable or permanent, needs to have certain elements:
- Protection from the elements
- Adequate size
- Temperature control
- Nesting boxes
- Roosts
- Security
Protection from the Elements
Your shelter must protect your chickens from the elements, be it sun, wind, rain or snow, heat, and cold. It's also a good idea to learn how to identify common poultry diseases so you can correct any issues quickly.
Adequate Size
You must have adequate space per chicken, or they can begin to get stressed and turn on each other, vying for their place in the coop. The minimum requirement is at least 2 square feet per bird inside the shelter and at least 2-3 square feet per bird in their outdoor area.
If chickens don't have access to the outdoors, then providing them with 3-5 square feet per bird inside the coop is ideal.
Portable coops can have less square footage per bird because you'll be moving the coop around. This provides them access to fresh grass and bugs on a regular basis. About 1-2 square feet per bird in a portable coop is adequate.
Temperature Control
When chickens are too hot or too cold, they get stressed. When chickens are stressed, they will slow down on their egg production. So, it's very beneficial to make sure your chickens are happy with consistently comfortable temperatures.
Don't worry about your chickens going out into the cold during the winter. They'll regulate their temperature as long as they have access to somewhere out of the elements.
Inside their shelter, you want to allow for the most stable temperature control possible. This is mostly done through ventilation in the summer and insulation during the winter.
It's a misnomer that temperature is what controls how many eggs a chicken lays. Sure, it can play a small part, but it's actually due to the number of daylight hours. Up where we live in the far north of Idaho, we have very short winter days. As mentioned above, we allow for that natural slow in egg production for our chickens because we preserve them during their peak laying season.
Nesting Boxes
Always provide your chickens with a place to lay their eggs. If you don't provide your chickens with nesting boxes, then they will find another place to lay, and you'll have to hunt for them all over the place!
Within the nest boxes, you want to be sure to keep clean, fluffy straw and some wood shavings so it's a comfortable place for the hens. This also keeps your eggs clean and keeps them from getting broken. Collecting clean eggs from the coop is much nicer than muddy or dirty eggs.
You need one nest box per 3-5 hens. You may find that your chickens tend to use one or just a few of your nest boxes. They like to do that, but it's good practice to have one box per 3-5 hens.
Roosts
Chickens prefer to roost while they sleep, where they can be up off the ground. They also like to be able to cluster together, so consider your size and spacing when setting up your coop. Having enough posts for your chickens is important.
Because chickens will spend a lot of time on their roosts, you'll want to think through methods of collecting manure from under the roosts, as this is where it will tend to collect.
Some people like to place pans underneath the roosts to collect the manure, allowing them to easily remove it and add it to a pile to use as compost. If you're using a mobile coop, you don't need to worry about this, as you'll be naturally fertilizing the grass as you move the coop daily.
Security & Protection
Getting backyard chickens is like putting up a sign for predators that says, "Free Food!" Even if you live in the suburbs, animals such as skunks, raccoons and dogs can become an issue.
If you live in a rural area, you need to consider the wildlife in your area. Where we live, we have a lot of coyotes, and even with all the noise of our kids, farm equipment, and animals, we've still had them come up, in plain sight, and snatch a chicken.
Permaculture & Raising Backyard Egg-Laying Chickens
Permaculture looks at the homestead as a whole and how it can work together. Implementing permaculture design on your homestead makes your chickens even more valuable (and accessible).
Using birds for permaculture means your chickens are providing you with more than one use (eggs or meat). Try implementing the deep litter bedding method in your permanent coop to create garden-ready compost.
Or, if you allow your chickens to go out to your pasture, whether free-ranging or in a portable chicken tractor, they can help control the fly population, fertilize the fields and still produce eggs for your family.
There are people who have full-on egg production systems that say the fertilization of their pastures is the higher value of what the chickens are producing, over and above the income of selling the eggs.
FAQs
Hens 4-6 months of age (otherwise known as pullets) will begin to lay eggs sporadically. They may not be up to speed with older hens, but you can expect to start getting eggs at about 4-6 months (depending on breed).
The average chicken will lay continuously for about 3-5 years, depending on the breed. Their best production will be in the first and second years. Then they will begin to slow down, and you'll find you spend more to feed them than the return on eggs they produce.
This is generally why people like to layer in new hens every year or two to keep a fresh, productive flock.
It depends! Because chickens slow down their egg production when the number of daylight hours is reduced, how much chickens slow down in the winter will depend on where you live. The closer to the equator you live, the more regular egg production you'll get.
Some people use artificial lights to keep winter egg production up, but we find the natural ebb and flow of egg production coinciding with the seasons is the most healthy for the birds.
The average egg-laying chicken will produce about 300 eggs in a year. So during the spring, summer and fall, you may get about one egg per day (usually about 5-6 eggs per week) if the conditions are right. Then, the chicken may stop producing completely or slow down to about one egg per week during the winter months.
Related Articles
If you're interested in raising backyard chickens, you may want to check out these posts:
- The Best Chicken Waterer for the Homestead
- Caring for Baby Chicks
- Chicken Tractor Basics
- Everything You Need to Know About Raising Meat Chickens
- Using Chickens to Restore the Land
- Broody Hen Management
- Butchering 1400 Pounds of Chickens
- How to Stock Your Barn for Winter
Podcast Links Mentioned:
- Sponsor: MadeOn Skin Care (Use code “homesteadingfamily” for 15% off!)
- Canning Safety & Canning: 101
- 5 Pressure Canning Mistakes
- The Abundant Pantry: Canning
