All About Egg Laying

All About Egg Laying

November 22, 2020

(A peek at Hamilton laying an egg!)

Have you ever wondered about how a hen lays an egg? Or what to feed you hens to help them lay better? Or how to make the eggs taste better? Well, in this blog post, I'm going tell you all about the egg-laying process of a hen!

As soon as a hen is 14 weeks old, you should switch them to layer feed. Layer feed doesn't necessarily make a chicken lay eggs, but rather give them stronger eggshells. To keep a hen's digestive system running smoothly, you should also occasionally mix grit (crushed oyster shells, dirt, crushed granite) into their feeder along with the feed.

Here's how the laying process works:

1. Fifteen minutes after a hen has laid her most recent egg, she releases a forming yolk in her oviduct.

2. After about 4 hours, she releases the egg white that forms around the yolk.

3. After another 21 hours, the shell will have formed around the white and yolk. The hen also applies a pigment to the shell as it forms, which is what gives most eggs their color.

4. After that, the hen coats the egg with an invisible substance called the bloom, passes the egg through her vent and lays it in the nesting box.

Note: You don't need a rooster for your hens to lay eggs. If you do have a rooster, then assume all the eggs are fertilized. To check whether an egg is fertilized, simply crack it open, and look for the white dot on top of the yolk. If you see just the white dot, then the egg is unfertilized. If you see a white bullseye, the egg is fertilized.

If you're wondering what to do to make the eggs taste better, or to make the yolks darker, then here are some ideas-

• Free-range your flock daily
• Feed your chickens scraps from leftovers
• Give them grubs

Sometimes a hen will lay an extremely tiny egg, or a double-yolker egg. These eggs are just "oopsies" in a hen's laying process. You should probably toss the tiny egg. However, you can eat a double-yolker egg. Consider it a worthy "oopsies"!