Eli5: Why do [most] chickens lay eggs everyday?
In: Biology
So the simple answer is that we have selectively bred chickens to lay eggs, and those breeds that are the best at laying eggs have become the most common and widely available.
However, there is another thing to consider. Chickens biilitically lay pretty large eggs, and it takes over a day on average to produce an egg. However, despite this, a chicken want to have a clutch (group) of eggs to lay on and hatch into a brood. So instead of laying 10 egga at once, chickens have evolved to lay one egg a day until they have the number they want, and then they will stop laying eggs and let the ones hatch like a normal bird.
However, in most farms, eggs are collected everyday, so a hen never has enough eggs at any one time to actually hatch. So each day, she sees her nest, sees that there are no eggs and lays one. We take the egg, and the chicken is back at square one.
In nature, or with wild chickens, they would not lay an egg every single day because no one would be taking the eggs.
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