Egg Production per Hen, Month by Month

Nobody publishes eggs per hen per month. Not Hy-Line, not Lohmann, not PSA, not the DA. Every page that hands you a monthly figure has taken an annual total and divided it by twelve, and the division is where the answer stops being true.

The whole laying year, in 28-day months

Both breeder standards publish a cumulative column: how many eggs a hen has laid in total from the start of lay to a given week. Take two rows four weeks apart, subtract, and you have a month. That is the entire method here, and it is the only way to get a monthly figure out of a document that does not contain one.

Every row is a subtraction of two published rows in the cumulative hen-day column of the Hy-Line Brown performance standards, December 2025. Hen-day counts against the birds still alive that morning, which is the count a backyard keeper actually takes. Cage housing, controlled environment, and both facts matter later.

Look at what the first two rows do. 16.7 eggs, then 26.0. Nearly ten eggs between one month of a hen’s life and the next, with nothing changed by the person feeding her. Walang binago ang nag-aalaga. Ibang bahagi lang ng curve.

Then look at how slowly the rest of it falls. Her monthly output drops by less than six eggs in total between month 3 and month 20, which is seventeen months of decline at about a third of an egg each. Far too gradual to be what anybody notices. A basket that emptied last week did not empty because of the curve, and the page on what actually stops a hen ranks the causes by how long each one takes to reverse.

Where “20 eggs a month” comes from, and why it has two parents

The monthly figure you will find quoted for the Philippines is twenty. It has a real source, which is more than most repeated numbers have, and the source contradicts itself.

The DA-BAI Philippine Poultry Layer Industry Roadmap 2022-2040 carries two eggs-per-hen figures, and they are nineteen pages apart.

Ang 19.6 ang nagiging “20 eggs a month” sa lahat ng page na nababasa mo. It is a whole-calendar average that already has the ten non-laying weeks folded into it, which is a perfectly sensible thing for a cost model to do and a completely wrong thing to hand a keeper who wants to know what to expect from a hen who is laying.

The other one is worse. 292 is exactly 80% of 365, which means Table 10 arrives at its annual figure by assuming a bird in lay every single day of the calendar year, hatch to cull, with no rearing period and no down time at all. Hindi po iyon posible sa kahit anong manukan. It is a benchmarking convention, not a production forecast, and dividing it by twelve to get 24.33 carries the convention forward without saying so.

So the folk number is real, Philippine, and cited to a government roadmap, and it still is not the answer to the question. Iyan ang dahilan kung bakit may table sa itaas.

A hen has to lay about sixteen eggs a month before she is worth feeding

Here is the arithmetic that decides whether a laying month was worth having, and it is short enough to do in your head at the palengke.

Hy-Line publishes average daily feed consumption of 109.1 to 116.9 grams across weeks 19 to 100. Over 28 days the top of that band is 3.27 kilos. Nobody in this country publishes a finished feed sack price, which is gap G-15, so take an illustrative ₱1,800 for a 50 kg sack and substitute your dealer’s quote this week. That puts one hen’s monthly feed at ₱117.84.

At the June 2026 household egg farmgate of ₱6.74 a piece, it takes 16.32 to 17.48 eggs to pay for that. Iyan ang linya. Below it, the itlog you sell do not cover the feeds that made them, and no amount of care with the rest of the budget repairs it, because feed is the largest line and it has already been spent by the time you count.

Now put the table at the top against that line. Month 1 lands at 16.7 to 17.6 eggs, which sits inside the break-even band rather than above it.

That comparison is slightly unfair to the pullet and the correction is worth making. A hen in weeks 19 to 22 is not eating the laying-period average yet: Hy-Line gives her 86, 91, 96 and 101 grams a day across those four weeks at the low bound, which is ₱94.25 of feed instead of ₱117.84. Her ₱112.56 of eggs clears it. Barely, by about three eggs, in a cage house at 20°C with a controlled ration. Sa bakuran, hindi ako sigurado, at walang makapagsasabi.

There is one Philippine assumption worth running the same sum against. The roadmap’s own Table 10 footnote assumes 100 grams a day for a small Philippine farm rather than Hy-Line’s band. At the same sack price that drops the break-even month to 14.96 eggs. Mas mababa ang bar, pero mas mababa rin ang kinakain, at hindi iyon libreng pabor: a hen eating 100 grams in an open-sided coop in April is not a hen on a controlled ration.

The last row of the table clears the line comfortably. Even at 98 weeks old, 20.3 to 22.1 eggs a month is above 17.48. On the standard, a Hy-Line Brown never stops paying for her own feed inside the published two years. What ends a flock is everything the standard does not charge her for.

What one month is actually worth, and where the money is not

A peak month of 26.1 eggs at the June 2026 farmgate is ₱175.91. Take off ₱117.84 of feed and the best month a Hy-Line Brown has leaves ₱58.08.

That is feed only. It has not paid for the pullet, the kulungan, the tubig, the bakuna, the litter, the tray, or the eggs that break on the way to the palengke. Ang ₱58.08 ay hindi kita. It is what is left before the costing starts.

Now change one thing. Value the same 26.1 eggs at the June 2026 retail price of ₱9.07 a piece and the month becomes ₱236.73, leaving ₱118.89 over feed. Doble ang laki, at hindi dahil sa manok.

Nothing about the hen changed. What changed is who sold the egg. The gap between the farmgate and the retail shelf belongs to hakot, to the stall, and to the trader, and the one advantage a bakuran flock has over the Layer line of the national laying flock, 52,103,982 birds (the whole laying flock is 80,525,475) is that twenty hens is a volume you can sell yourself, kada piraso, sa kapitbahay. Walang viajero na kailangang kunin ang parte niya.

The DA roadmap says the same thing from the other end. Its own analysis of the value chain puts the retailer’s profit share highest, and it notes the case where the farmer sells directly to the consumer as the exception to that ordering. Sa dalawampung inahin, ikaw na ang parehong farmer at retailer, at iyon ang tanging bahagi ng chain na hindi mo kailangang ipamigay.

Scale it to a flock and the two ends of the table stop being an abstraction. Twenty inahin in a peak month lay 522 eggs; the same twenty in their first month of lay give you 334. That is 188 eggs of difference in one kulungan, from birds nobody did anything differently to, and it is the readiest reason a first-time keeper decides the flock has gone wrong in month one.

At the June 2026 farmgate, that peak month on twenty hens is ₱1,161.58 over feed. That reads well for a backyard until you notice it is one month out of twenty, and that only three or four of those twenty sit anywhere near the peak.

Her first eggs are also her smallest

The count is only half of what leaves the coop, and the other half moves in the same direction at the same time.

Hy-Line publishes average egg weight week by week alongside the production column. At week 22, the end of the first month of lay, it is 50.6 to 53.7 g. At week 30 it is 58.0 to 61.6 g. At week 70 it is 61.2 to 65.0 g, and at week 100 it is 62.2 to 66.1 g. The egg grows for most of the hen’s life and then stops.

Put that against the count and the first month looks thinner than the egg tally suggested. Sixteen point seven eggs at 50.6 g is 0.85 kilos of egg. The peak month, 26.1 eggs at 58.0 g, is 1.51 kilos. That is 1.79 times, where the count alone put them 1.56 times apart. Mas malayo pa pala ang unang buwan sa peak kaysa sa inakala mo.

Which way that matters depends entirely on who buys from you. A stall that prices by the piece pays the same for a light itlog and a heavy one, so the weight costs you nothing there. A buyer working in trays or a baker buying volume is a different conversation, because what they are paying for is the contents rather than the count.

There is a practical consequence for a new flock either way. The eggs of month one are small, and small eggs are the ones a buyer haggles over first. Do not set your price in that month, kasi hindi pa iyon ang itlog na ibebenta mo sa buong taon.

The five months before the first egg, and how many good months repay them

The month-by-month table starts at week 19 and the hen starts at day one. Everything in between is a bill.

Hy-Line publishes 5.99 kilos of feed consumed in the rearing period to 17 weeks, and 139 days from hatch to 50% production. Lohmann gets to 50% at 140 to 145 days. So a pullet eats for roughly twenty weeks before she produces a single itlog worth selling.

At the same illustrative ₱1,800 sack, those 5.99 kilos are ₱215.64 per bird, and that figure excludes the chick, the brooder, the vaccines and every bird that dies before she lays. Feed alone.

Divide it by what a peak month leaves over feed and you get 3.71. Halos apat na buwan ng pinakamagandang buwan niya bago mabawi ang feeds pa lang ng pag-aalaga sa kanya. And those are peak months, in a cage house, on the standard. A bakuran flock does not run at the standard and nobody has published what it does run at.

That is the shape of the layer decision, and it is why it is not the broiler decision. The layers pillar works the whole flock costing through, including what the spent hen is worth at the end and what a point-of-lay pullet costs instead. What the monthly table adds to it is where in the year the repayment happens: not evenly, and not early.

Lohmann was measured differently and lands in the same place

One standard agreeing with itself is not evidence. Two standards built by different companies from different columns is closer.

Lohmann Brown-Classic publishes only four points on its curve: 50% production at 140 to 145 days, then 320 eggs per hen housed at 72 weeks, 360 at 80 weeks, and 430 at 95 weeks. Difference the last three and you get 20 eggs per 28 days across weeks 72 to 80, and 18.67 across weeks 80 to 95.

Hold those against Hy-Line’s months 14 to 20, which run 23.2 down to 20.3. Lohmann sits one to three eggs lower, and it should: hen housed counts against the birds placed rather than the birds alive, so the deaths are already inside the number, and Lohmann puts laying-period liveability at 93 to 95%. Correct for that and the two curves are close.

Lohmann matters here for a reason beyond the cross-check. De Castro’s survey of 100 commercial layer farms in Batangas reports that Dekalb and Lohmann were the most commonly raised strains, and that 87% of those farms ran intensive open-sided housing. So the standard that describes most Philippine layer birds is the one written for a cage house, and the houses those birds are actually in are open to the weather. One limit on that survey, stated so nobody stretches it: it counted commercial farms, hindi bakuran.

Lohmann is blunt about the condition its own numbers were measured under. Its feed table assumes “a house temperature of 20 °C and good plumage”, and under those conditions expects 110 to 120 g/day. Walang araw sa buong taon na 20°C ang loob ng isang open sided na kulungan dito sa atin. The intake figure that the entire break-even sum above rests on was measured in a room a Philippine coop never becomes.

The native hen does not have months, she has clutches

Ibang tanong ito, at ibang sagot, kahit pareho ang unit.

DOST-PCAARRD’s breed information system publishes eggs per hen per year for four Philippine native lines: Darag 110, ZamPen 105, Camarines 62, Boholano 62, all reaching point of lay at 20 to 22 weeks. Divide the best of them and Darag is 9.17 eggs a month.

Then there is the one Philippine backyard measurement anybody has published. Naldo et al. (2021) surveyed 80 native-chicken farmers in the mountain barangays of Ayungon, Negros Oriental, all of them free-ranging their birds by day with bought feed as supplement, mean flock 27.57 chickens. Table 5 records 38.13 eggs per hen per year. Divided by twelve, 3.18.

That is 2.88 times below the published Darag potential, and the two figures are not measuring the same thing at all. One is a breed potential recorded under research conditions. The other is what 80 farmers remembered about their own bakuran.

Two caveats belong to the 38.13 and both are the paper’s own. Table 5 carries the footnote “Based on historical account of farmer, no written records”, so it is recall rather than measurement, and the range runs from 20 to 54 eggs a year across the same 80 farms. And the eggs do not arrive monthly: 15.24 per clutch, 2.49 clutches a year, with the paper stating outright that a broody native hen does not lay while hatching a clutch and rearing chicks to about seven weeks. Sabay sabay ang dating, tapos wala.

Now the arithmetic that survey makes possible and that nobody seems to have run. The same paper reports that farmers spend a mean of ₱199.18 a month on supplemental feed, with 86.3% of them buying it. Across a 27.57-bird flock that is ₱7.22 per bird per month, against ₱117.84 for the Hy-Line hen. Ang kaibahan ay kung saan galing ang pagkain: sa sako ang isa, sa bakuran ang isa.

At the June 2026 native egg farmgate of ₱8.61 a piece and the measured 3.18 eggs a hen a month, an Ayungon flock needs 7.28 laying inahin before its eggs cover the money spent on feed. That is 26.41% of the average flock. A quarter of every bird standing has to be a hen in lay, hindi sisiw at hindi tandang, before the itlog pays the feed bill.

The survey answers whether that happens, and the answer is that it was never the point. Only 4.7% of those farmers sold eggs at all, and 60.9% sold live birds. The 15.24 eggs of a clutch were not going into a basket. Napipisa iyon, at sisiw ang lumalabas. Which means the monthly question is the wrong question for most native flocks, and the pages on the gaps in Philippine poultry data explain why the right one has no series behind it either.

How many hens does a household actually need?

The one place the monthly unit earns its keep is on the kitchen side, because that is how eating works.

The DA roadmap quotes the PSA February 2017 Consumption of Selected Agricultural Commodities Report at 84 chicken eggs a person a year nationally, which is 7 a month. NCR eats 123 a head a year, Region 3 eats 109, Region 4A eats 106.

One Hy-Line Brown at her peak lays 26.1 eggs in 28 days, so she covers 3.73 people at the national rate. Isang inahin, isang maliit na pamilya, sa pinakamagandang buwan niya lang.

Read that with the table above rather than on its own. She only has three or four months near 26. By month 12 she is at 23.9 to 25.6 and by month 20 she is at 20.3, and each of those is still a cage-house figure. For a household of three that is not selling anything, the honest answer is two or three inahin rather than one, because not every month is a peak month and not every hen is a Hy-Line.

A native hen at 3.18 eggs a month does not feed one person. Iyon ang buong kuwento ng native sa panig ng itlog, at hindi iyon ang dahilan kung bakit siya inaalagaan.

What usually goes wrong

1. The mistake: Dividing an annual egg total by twelve and using the answer as a monthly expectation.

   Do this instead: Find out how many weeks the hen has been laying, then read the matching row in the table above. For a native hen, ask how many clutches she has had this year instead.

   The first month of lay and the peak month are 16.7 and 26.1 eggs in the same bird. An average taken across a spread that wide describes no month she ever has.

2. The mistake: Treating 20 eggs a month as the Philippine standard because several pages say so.

   Do this instead: Trace it. It is 19.6, from the DA-BAI roadmap cost model, and it already includes the ten weeks a year the bird is not in lay.

   Table 10 of the same roadmap says 292 eggs a year, which is 24.33 a month, and 292 is simply 80% of 365. One government document, two figures 19.45% apart, neither of them a laying month.

3. The mistake: Judging a backyard flock against the breeder curve and concluding something is wrong.

   Do this instead: Compare this month against your own last month. Count hens, count eggs, divide, write the date.

   Hy-Line and Lohmann both measure cage housing, and Lohmann states its feed figures assume a house at 20°C. No published Philippine backyard lay rate exists at all, which is gap G-1, so the breeder month is a ceiling from another climate.

4. The mistake: Counting the eggs and forgetting that the feed bill arrives whether or not she lays.

   Do this instead: Work out your own break-even month once. At ₱1,800 a sack and the June 2026 farmgate it is 16.32 to 17.48 eggs, and it moves with your dealer quote more than with anything else.

   A hen eats 3.27 kilos in a 28-day month at the top of the Hy-Line band regardless of what she produces. A low month does not shrink the bill in proportion; it divides the same bill over fewer eggs.

5. The mistake: Assuming the eggs are the product on a native flock.

   Do this instead: Decide first whether you are harvesting itlog or sisiw, because the two want different birds, different housing and different arithmetic.

   In the one Philippine backyard survey published, 4.7% of farmers sold eggs and 60.9% sold live chickens. The clutch was going under the hen, not into a basket, and 38.13 eggs a year is the count before that happens.

What would change every number on this page

One published Philippine hen-day series, read monthly, in open-sided backyard housing. That is the whole of it, and it does not exist. It is G-1 in the gaps register, it covers lay rate along with FCR and mortality, and it has been open since this archive started.

Until it exists, the honest position is the one this page takes: publish the cage-house curve because it is the only curve anybody publishes, say plainly what it was measured on, and never present it as a target a bakuran missed. The note on where the numbers on this site come from sets out the same rule for every other series here.

Two smaller things would help almost as much and are cheaper to get. A finished feed sack price series would turn the break-even month from an illustration into a figure, and that is gap G-15; the feeds pillar works around it by pricing what dealers quote. And a second clutch study, in a different region, would say whether 15.24 eggs is what a native hen does or what Ayungon does.

Meanwhile there is one measurement nobody has to wait for. Bilangin mo ang inahin, bilangin mo ang itlog, hatiin, isulat ang petsa. A month of that and you have a monthly figure for your own kulungan, sourced better than anything on this page, because it was taken in the coop you are asking about. Ang tanging bakuran na nasukat na sa Pilipinas ay hindi sa iyo, at hindi na kailangang manatiling ganoon.

Questions people actually ask

How many eggs does a hen lay per month?

It depends entirely on how long she has been laying, and the spread inside one hen is about ten eggs. On the Hy-Line Brown standards published in December 2025, a hen lays 16.7 to 17.6 eggs in her first 28 days of production, 26.1 to 27.5 in the four weeks around her peak, and 20.3 to 22.1 in the last 28 days the guide publishes at 98 weeks. Those are cage-house figures from a controlled environment. A Philippine native hen in a bakuran was measured at 38.13 eggs a year across 80 farms in Ayungon, Negros Oriental, which is 3.18 a month if you divide it, and it does not arrive that way.

Is 20 eggs per hen per month right for the Philippines? Show the answer

It is a real Philippine figure and it is not a monthly lay rate. The DA-BAI layer roadmap cost model assumes about 80% of pullets lay for 42 weeks in a year, which works out to 235.2 eggs a year, or 19.6 a month averaged across the whole calendar including the weeks the bird is not in lay. Table 10 of the same document puts Philippine farms at a laying rate of 80% and 292 eggs per bird per year, which is 24.33 a month. Two figures 19.45% apart in one government roadmap, and neither is what a hen lays in a month she is actually laying.

How many eggs must a hen lay to pay for her feed? Show the answer

Around sixteen to seventeen in a 28-day month, on the inputs a Philippine keeper can actually check. Hy-Line publishes average daily feed of 109.1 to 116.9 g across weeks 19 to 100. At a 50 kg sack costing ₱1,800, that is ₱109.97 to ₱117.84 of feed a month, and at the June 2026 PSA household egg farmgate of ₱6.74 a piece it takes 16.32 to 17.48 eggs to cover it. Substitute your own dealer quote, because nobody in the Philippines publishes a finished feed sack price and that is gap G-15 in this archive.

How many hens does a family need for its own eggs? Show the answer

About one, if the household is small and the hen is a commercial layer at her peak. PSA consumption figures quoted in the DA-BAI layer roadmap put average annual chicken egg consumption at 84 pieces a head nationally, which is 7 a month. A hen laying 26.1 eggs in a peak month covers 3.73 people at that rate. NCR eats 123 eggs a head a year and Region 3 eats 109, so a Manila household needs more hen than the national average suggests, and a native hen at 3.18 eggs a month does not feed one person.

Why does my hen lay in bursts instead of every month? Show the answer

Because she is probably a native hen and the clutch is her unit, not the month. Naldo et al. (2021) recorded a mean of 15.24 eggs per clutch and 2.49 clutches a year across 80 backyard flocks in Ayungon, and the paper states plainly that a broody native hen does not lay while she is hatching a clutch and rearing chicks to about seven weeks of age. So the eggs arrive in one heap and then stop for months. That is the cycle working, not a fault, and it is the reason an annual figure divided by twelve describes no month she ever has.