Whether you're looking to turn a profit from your farm or just getting serious about living that homestead life, your next step is to find out what the best egg laying chickens are. Continue reading and find out which chicken breeds will suit your egg production needs.
Top 10 Best Egg Laying Chickens
Chickens lay eggs all year round – with a highly productive hen, you're looking at 200 or more eggs per year. So choose your breeds wisely and you'll be a well-stocked homesteader, egg-wise, with only a couple of chickens in your flock. Let’s see these 10 well-known and productive egg layers with this impressive infographic
 Click here to enlarge
Top 10 Chicken Breeds
1. Plymouth Rock
Good To Know:
- Class: American
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy in winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
2. Rhode Island
Good To Know:
- Class: American
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Excellent (5/perweek)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: X-Large
3. Leghorn (White)
Good To Know:
- Class: Mediterranean
- Size: Medium
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: White
- Egg Size: X-Large
4. Wyandotte
Good To Know:
- Class: American
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
5. Sussex
Good To Know:
- Class: English
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: Light Brown
- Egg Size: Large
6. Australorp
Good To Know:
- Class: English
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Excellent (5/week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
7. Chantecler
Good To Know:
- Class: American
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
8. Minorca
Good To Know:
- Class: Mediterranean
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In Winter: No
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: White
- Egg Size: X-Large
9. Delaware
Good To Know:
- Class: American
- Size: Heavy
- Hardy In winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Very Good (4/week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
10. Star
Good To Know:
- Class: Not Recognized
- Size: Medium
- Hardy In Winter: Yes
Egg Facts:
- Egg Laying: Excellent (5/per week)
- Egg Color: Brown
- Egg Size: Large
Well, my fellow homesteaders, as you can see there is quite the selection of excellent egg-laying chickens. This list can be a good starting point to start a flock. From here, you can start narrowing down which breed or two will work best in your weather and suit your lifestyle. Enjoy chicken keeping!
Which egg laying chickens will you raise in your homestead? Let us know in the comments below.
Need the best chicken coop for your flock? Well, we've got 21 Chicken Coop Designs and Ideas Your Homestead Needs for you to choose from!
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I purchased 22 layers in the fall of last year. I got 2 Australorp, 2 Wyandotte, 2 Naked Necks, 2 Rhode Islands, and 2 Plymouth Rocks. The rest were a mix of Americauna and other layer breeds. My Australorp’s are my greatest layers with 4 to 6 eggs a week! My Rhode Island Red’s lay almost the same, and so do my Wyandotte’s. I have not quite figured out yet how many or for that matter which one’s lay the rest of the eggs, but total each day I collect between 17 and 21 eggs a day! I even get blue and green eggs!
I wish before I had ran out and just bought all the chickens I did that I would have done more research on each breed. I love your chart so I am gonna share this to hopefully help others too! Great information!
love to know that
We always had BUFF ORPINGTON HENS and found these to be great layers. We also had a few Rhode Island Reds.
I run a flock that consists of a bunch of different birds, mostly heavies. Then the usual barnyard bird crosses. The silver wyandottes are beautiful. I have a pair of buffs. They are very good layers I have a friend who refuses to raise anything but. Australorp’s are wonderful birds I have raised them for several years and have found them to be my Henny Penny birds. My Americauna’s are great, some are good layers some are not. I do get all kinds of different eggs though. Several shades of blue and green. When they crossbreed I tend to get really interesting eggs. I would have to say in this area the Amish run Isa Browns and sexlinks. They are really great egg layers. I would say in all reality they outlay the heavies, but up here in our winters my heavies lay the best for me through the winter. Road Island reds are another good breed and have been pretty popular.
I’m a Barred Rock breeder in central Va. I’ve had R.I.Reds, They (the males) can be QUITE aggressive. If you have kids, go with the Rocks.
The R. I. Reds hate for you to even come close to “their” girls. With that being said, when I have to treat a hen because ole roo has been too rough with her, I am forced to take her else where so he won’t see me. And even then, he will try to attack me when her bring her back. Talk about male protection…lol.
FYI: Your infographic says eggs per day (not week).
I was wondering what kind of mutant chickens those were that laid 5 eggs/day.
You wrote this comment in 2017 Hannah and here I am to say the same thing in May 2020. Since many people are getting into chickens and gardens these days I want all of you to understand NO CHICKEN LAYS 5 EGGS A DAY. NONE
Enjoyed the article, and would like to note the Buff Orpington chickens are gentle as well as good layers. I have 9 grandchildren, and some chicken breeds especially “roosters” are too aggressive.
I don’t know in what world you have chickens that lay more than one egg a day but your graphic says that you can get as many as five eggs in one day. Not happening.
This article and the infographic especially is complete nonsense. The number of eggs a hen lays has more to do with what stage of life it’s in and how much it’s fed.
To say nothing of the “Lays 5 Eggs a Day” claim, which is just buffoonery.
My first attempt at raising hens happened before most of you were born, It was in the late 1960’s. At the time sex linked birds were very popular… mine were a cross between a Rhode Island red and a barred rock. The females were the reddish hue and males had multicolored feathers… I stupidly let my ex-husband go to pick up my day old chicks. The breeder gave him “the greatest deal” for just a penny more per chick he got double the number of chickens.This meant I had to feed twice as many chickens. When they matured a bit the fights among the males were horrendous, but that was nothing to the mass rapes the huge number of males perpetrated on the poor females. The day finally came when I needed to harvest the males, or I would have actually lost pullets. Ever slaughtered twenty five young roosters when you’ve never even seen it done? My ex wasn’t much help and it was a long day.
A suggestion, when starting out with chickens you might put an ad in the local shopper for a low-cost poultry shed suitable for a 4-H project. I had three kids who wanted to learn along with me. A former 4-H agent who had recently retired offered me a FREE building if I hauled it away! I took my chain saw, a meter stick, and a few black markers. I marked off a line about 8 inches up from the floor and used the chain saw to “shorten” my prize. I burned the floorboards (which were rotting) and the lowest level of the walls (with the agent’s permission. I brought the shed home in wall-sized segments on top of my four door sedan as I didn’t have a truck. The fifth trip was for the roofing boards and a feed box the wonderful donor offered to me. I bought sufficient boards for a new floor, a bag of nails to reattach the floor, a number of cinder blocks for the “foundation” , and a roll of tar paper and roofing nails to reattach the ceiling.
It all worked out surprisingly well, and I soon had buyers for most of my eggs. An elderly farmer and his wife who had kept two Guernseys traded milk for the rest of my eggs. Enough milk that I bought a book on cheese making.The only problem there was that my two older kids kept raiding the larder and I had to hide at least some of my homemade cheeses to allow them to ripen enough to develop good flavor,
An interesting side-note, though I had grown up in Hartford Ct. with a population of nearly a half million I began my “project” when we had moved to Maine. I eventually enrolled at the University of New Hampshire (I lived one block from the NH state line) and I graduated with a degree in Animal Science and was one of the first female teachers of Agriculture in the Granite State.
Hello. Your info-graphic states HARD IN WINTER. Then below I see along with the chicken pics HARDY in winter. Should the info-graphic state HARDY instead of HARD? I was simply trying to understand.
Thank you. Great article!
The number of chickens in my garden is hundreds of chickens, so every day I collect a lot of eggs.
After this, about chickens laying multiple eggs in one day, I’m not much inclined to listen to more. That would, of course, be fabulous, but a great layer may lay 5 or 6 eggs per week, yet never more than one per day. And in winter they do taper off, unless you leave a light on in the coop–and then, sooner or later, they have to rest their production or quit early. This is pure imagination here.