While I was out at the coop one morning, my daughter, MaryKate, decided to try her hand at the fine art of egg cracking. I inspected the semi-scrambled eggs, which revealed that the eggs were not fertile. He must have read the book. I encourage anyone with pet chickens to acquire this book as soon as possible. It is that valuable a resource. It's nice to hear from a fellow hatch a holic! Though it takes all the strength I can muster, I do moderate. In the 3 years I have had chickens I have only hatched out a little over 1, eggs so I am not a totally hopeless addict!
Search My Site. Four of the Fab Five. She may not give in straight away, but she will remember the positive move that the rooster made. The Rooster Dance : The rooster may also perform a dance to attract the female. The rooster drops one wing to the floor and then dances around it. As he approaches the rear of the hen, he will try to hop on board and mate. In some cases, there is no courtship or ritual, and mating between the rooster and a hen can be aggressive, leaving the female with injuries.
Roosters have a pecking order, and it is usually the youngest and fittest rooster that is at the front of the queue. He will fend off interest from other roosters, and this may lead to aggression and fighting. The more submissive of the two roosters will usually run away and bide his time.
The dominant rooster will have to contend with this for two years or so, but by the time he reaches three years of age, he will normally find that younger and fitter roosters will take his position and he will become a secondary rooster.
The hens assess roosters according to their ability to look after the flock, provide food, and stave off other roosters. Colorful and large combs and wattles are also considered highly attractive to females. If a hen does not like a rooster, she will not always mate with him, even if he is the only rooster in the coop. Secondary roosters do still mate with hens, but it takes more effort and they do not usually get the pick of the flock. Secondary roosters will have to rely on tricks like tidbitting to pick up a hen.
A single rooster will usually service around 10 hens. Any more than this and he can become stressed trying to manage the hens. Any fewer and the hens can become battered and overworked. Even with the ideal ratio of males to females, it is not unusual for a rooster to have one or two favorite hens: ones that he returns to in preference to others in the flock.
These hens can become over-used. They may have damaged skin and show a loss of feathers around the back and neck. Hen saddles can be placed on the favorites to prevent this damage from occurring. The actual process of mating is relatively quick. If the female is compliant, she will squat and drop her head and body. By also spreading her wings, she is showing her willingness. The male will tread to help him get balance and will usually grab the comb to further steady his balance.
For that reason many backyard chicken owners decide not to keep a male in their flock. If you decide you do want a male in your flock, consider buying a " hen saddle " which will help protect the hen from the worst excesses of a rooster's advances. Not necessarily. Generally speaking, a hen who has mated will be fertile between 7 and 10 days after.
It takes that long for the sperm to reach the oviduct where eggs are made. But it's worth the wait: her eggs will remain fertile even if she does not mate again for around two to three weeks after mating, although fertility will drop after 2 weeks. But not all roosters have fertile sperm.
I had a very kind, very handsome golden laced Wyandotte rooster called Spartacus. Sadly, not one of the Wyandotte hens who mated with Sparty laid a single fertile egg. Spartacus, despite his good looks and his constant attempts to be a daddy, was infertile sadly, Sparty is no more - he died of old age.
Why was he infertile? Who knows. It's just something in his genes not working as it should. Again, very like the human condition. There's not always a rhyme or reason. Despite what you might read on the internet about swinging needles and brown or blue, or green, depending where you look eggs hatching more often or hatching more males than females , there is no way of knowing an egg is fertile before it's incubated - unless you crack it open.
Which, of course, is a problem when it comes to hatching , when you want to incubate as many eggs as possible that have a good chance of being fertile. You'll need to sacrifice a few eggs, crack them open and look for fertility. If the majority are fertile, the chances are that any you put in the incubator will be, too.
But it's never a foregone conclusion. When a hen mates, the rooster's sperm penetrates the egg and the blastodisc, a tiny white spot which carries the chick's DNA, becomes fertilised. It's then called the blasto derm. The blastoderm is what becomes the chick, if the egg is incubated at the right temperature and humidity levels.
Cracking the egg into a dish, look at the yolk. If the egg is fertile, you'll see a distinctive "bulls-eye" shape, like the one below I love my little chicken dishes, don't you?! The bulls-eye is the first cluster of cells which, if i ncubated , will become a chick. If the egg is not incubated, nothing happens. The potential for a chick is there, but at this point it's simply a collection of cells.
If it is incubated, the cells will start to divide and after even 24 hours you'll be able to see a definite growth in the bullseye. This development is very obvious in an egg that's been cracked open, but won't be clearly visible in candling until about Day 5 of incubation. Which is why, especially if you have roosters and you don't want to hatch chicks, it's so important to remove eggs from the coop at least once a day. Fertility is generally lower in the winter, starts to increase as days become longer and warmer, is at its peak sometime between Easter and early summer and begins to fall again as the darker, cooler days of autumn and winter approach.
It's very common and simply means that a blood vessel has ruptured a little as the egg passes through the hen's oviduct. Eggs with blood spots are perfectly safe to eat.
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