Egg producers

What's the best hen for producing eggs?

you might need to clarify your context.

the "best" egg layers are proprietary breeds, generally stemming from the white leghorn.

the best foraging chicken, that also lays eggs on our farm is a buckeye, shortly followed by australorps.

I was going to say, I think the "best" layer is the one that comes with a minimal feed bill and lives a long healthy life while providing a consistent stream of eggs. For our setup, anyway, we've got lots of room for an industrious chicken to feed itself, so we've gravitated towards proven foragers with some good street smarts. We've had pretty good luck with our mixed up flock of barnyard crosses, but we're getting into Icelandics now for a variety of reasons. Primarily: good egg production through the low-light months, excellent foraging, and more wild-type self defense impulses.

Thanks for the responses. I have a family of 6 and we go through a lot of eggs. It's been years since I had chickens and have forgot a lot of things. I am building a 4 x 8 coop with a 12 x 12 run. I've read that I could keep up to 10 chickens in this setup. What do you think?