Tell it what you want from a hen, or put two breeds side by side. Every figure is labelled with the hatchery or society that published it, because they do not agree — one hatchery’s “excellent layer” is another’s “good”, and the same breed can be “extremely likely” to go broody on one page and “not very likely” on the next.
Every breed
26 breeds
Hatchery figures checked 2026-09-22. They are each hatchery’s own estimates for its own strain, and they change with a catalogue.
Quick answer: for the most eggs, the hatcheries put the White Leghorn and the sex-link crosses (Red Star, Black Star, Golden Buff) at the top, with the Rhode Island Red and Black Australorp close behind. For a calm, cold-hardy family flock, Buff Orpington, Australorp, Delaware, Speckled Sussex and Brahma come up again and again. For blue eggs it is the Ameraucana or an Easter Egger; for chocolate-brown ones, Marans or Welsummer. But the numbers behind “the most eggs” depend on which hatchery you ask — this finder shows all of them.
How to use it
Pick what matters to you — an egg colour, a heavy layer, a bird that copes with your winters or your summers, a calm temperament, and whether you want hens that go broody. The list narrows to the breeds a named source vouches for, and each card says who vouched and on what figure. Tap Compare this breed to put it next to another one, row by row.
Why the egg counts do not agree
Ask three hatcheries how many eggs a Rhode Island Red lays and you get three kinds of answer: Cackle Hatchery says 200 to 280 a year, McMurray Hatchery says 238 on average, and Meyer Hatchery says 4 to 6 a week and first eggs at 16 to 20 weeks. None of them is wrong. Each is describing its own birds — and a breed is a standard for how a bird looks, not a guarantee of how it lays. A line bred for exhibition and a line bred for production can share a name and differ by a hundred eggs a year.
So this tool never averages them into a house number. An average of three hatcheries’ estimates is a figure none of them published, about a bird none of them sells. You see each one, labelled, and the gaps between them are information: a wide spread means the name tells you less than you think.
Broody or not — the question hatcheries disagree on most
Broodiness is where the sources contradict each other outright. Meyer Hatchery says its Barred Rocks go broody; McMurray says theirs are “not very likely” to. The same happens with Australorps, Ameraucanas and Wyandottes. The finder marks every breed where that happens, because if you want to hatch your own chicks — or very much do not — that disagreement is the most useful thing it can tell you. The hen in front of you will settle it.
Breeds, crosses and heritage status
Red Stars, Black Stars, Golden Buffs, Easter Eggers and Olive Eggers are crosses, not breeds: bred for laying or for egg colour, and not bred true — their chicks will not look like them. They are marked as crosses. For the heritage breeds, the finder also shows The Livestock Conservancy’s own rating and conservation status — the one source here that is not selling chicks, and the reason some old American breeds like the Buckeye and the Dominique are worth keeping at all.
What the finder does not know
It does not know your hens. Individual birds vary more than breeds do, a first-year hen lays more than a four-year-old, and short winter days will slow almost any of them. For what your own flock will actually give you, try the egg production calculator, which uses the same figures and says how age and daylight change them.