EggBasket presents

The Field Guide

Everything here runs in your browser or reads in five minutes. No sign-up, nothing saved, nothing sent anywhere. Written by the person behind EggBasket, because these are the questions every keeper ends up asking a forum at 10pm.

Guides

Chapter 1 · GuideHow many eggs do chickens lay?Per day, week and year, by breed — and why no hen lays two a day. Chapter 2 · GuideWhy did my hens stop laying?Daylight, moult, age, broodiness, stress, health — or hidden eggs. The checklist, in order. Chapter 3 · TemplateEgg tracker spreadsheetTwo free CSVs and four formulas: daily log, costs, lay rate, cost per egg.

Calculators & charts

CalculatorCost per eggFeed price, bag weight and weekly egg count in — cost per egg, cost per dozen, and how many eggs a week you need to beat the supermarket. CalculatorFlock size plannerHow many hens your household actually needs, discounted for the winter slowdown, with a breed-by-breed table. ChartWhen will they start laying?Breed and hatch date give you a first-egg window, plus egg production by hen age.

Why "field guide"? It's the same name as the built-in manual inside the EggBasket app — six short chapters on how the app thinks about flocks, costs and streaks. The web chapters are the husbandry arithmetic; the app chapters are the record-keeping. Same barn, two shelves.

Why these, and what's next

Backyard keeping generates a small set of recurring questions, and every forum thread eventually circles back to one of them: how many eggs should I expect, why did they stop, what does this actually cost me, and how many birds do I need. Each page answers one, shows the working, and doesn't ask for your email to do it.

They're also honest about their limits. Breed figures are published averages for healthy hens in their first laying year; your birds haven't read the averages. Treat every output as a planning estimate, not a promise. A moult-timing guide and a feed-conversion chart are next on the bench.