The Chicken or the Egg?

I remember back when I was in high school in Agriculture class, when our teacher asked us an interesting question: how many eggs is a chicken hen supposed to lay? How would you respond to that question? I remember there were quite a number of guesses - some gave a specific number, but the most popular answer was 365 eggs a year - one per day. (That was the wrong answer by the way).

So then what is the correct answer? Let me explain it like this... A bird of any kind, chickens included, have the God-given ability to lay many eggs above what they were intended to lay. This is because the purpose for eggs in the first place is to produce offspring. In the wild a bird builds a nest, lays a clutch of eggs, sits on them to incubate them and hatch their chicks. In the event that their nest is destroyed they can produce another clutch of eggs and try again. Some birds have the ability to lay repeated clutches of eggs to replace those that have been destroyed as God designed this into birds to preserve their species.

So the answer to how many eggs a chicken is supposed to lay is this: they are supposed to lay only enough eggs that they can sit on and incubate to hatch. We human folks actually trick chickens into laying lots of eggs by continuously removing the eggs as they are laid so the chickens instinctively lay more eggs to replace the missing ones. Even with domestic chickens, if the eggs are left to accumulate, the hens will eventually stop laying eggs a ...