A typical egg-laying hen can lay as many as 250 eggs a year.  Egg-laying hens, call pullets, begin laying eggs when they are about five months old.  On a small farm, a chicken might lay eight to ten eggs in a nest and spend three weeks hatching them.

But on a large commercial egg farm, the eggs are taken away as soon as they are laid, and the chicken jus keeps laying.  Chickens produce the most eggs during their first laying year.  After a year or so, they are usually sold as stewing chickens, and the egg farmer buys a new flock of pullets.–Dick Rogers