How can you know if your hen eggs are fertile?

Question

I have 9 rosters with 9 hens they lay eggs daily, I just bought an incubator,But how do i know which eggs are fertile?

Yes all my roosters are in a seperate pen or else they would fight, some roosters are alone and i have two roosters with two hens, a trio,all my hens have their feathers in the back except on eof them shes bald because of the spurs should i trim the spurs or change mates?

Answer 1

If you're breeding your sweaters, then you need to keep the "show roosters" separate. Keep only two roosters with the hens, or you can end up with some fighting, and you can end up with dead hens too.

If you've got them paired up in pens, you'd do better with trios, with one rooster and two hens per pen. It's less stress on the hens.

As for fertile? If there's a rooster and a hen, you have fertile eggs. You can tell as early as four days after incubation wether or not the egg is likely to develope.

If you're going to incubate, please remember to start incubation all at once. Collect eggs for up to eight days, keeping the collected eggs in cartons, pointy end down, in a cool dry spot. When you've got eight days worth, then start incubating. Then all the eggs will hatch together, rather than having a few hatch per day.

Edit: By all means, trim the spurs or switch males. However, if the female is already laying, she no longer needs a male. The entire clutch will be fertile (hens don't need to inseminate each egg individually). It's sometimes best to separate the female from the male once she starts laying.

Answer 2

If you keep that many roosters with that many hens, then all the hens will end up with no feathers on their backs, and eventually the skin will get torn up by the spurs when they hold onto them during sex. You need about 1 rooster to 6 hens, and that's a maximum number of roosters. I'd say either get rid of 8 roosters or get 48 more hens!

To see if they are fertile or not, then you need to incubate for a few days. Then take them out of the incubator and shine a light through them to see if you can see a sort of web of veins coming out from the centre of the egg. If you can then the chick is developing. If you can't then throw that egg away.

Answer 3

Candle them. If you do have that many roosters and hens more then likely they are fertile. However often times the embryo will die during the incubation process at different stages so put in more then eggs then you want to hatch and follow the incubator instructions carefully. The 1st time i used an incubator all the eggs grew and developed but in the last 2-3 days they all died because of the last stage of incubation where you stop the rotating and water part. I have had better luck with my broody silky hen.

Answer 4

The easiest way to candle eggs is to get a flash light and shine it through a toilet paper tube and stick the egg over the other end after it has been in the incubator for 3 or 4 days. The veins of the chick will show clearly. If there are no veins, throw the egg away. For those of you that have smaller birds, candle in the same fashion but use tin foil to cover the end but leave a hole that the light will shine through. Good luck.

Answer 5

YOu have to put them all in the incubator and candle the eggs. At some point you'll be able to see the embryo growing larger in the egg. Hold the egg up to a bright light source and look through the egg. After a couple of weeks if you still see nothing i would say it's infertile

Answer 6

9 roosters is too many for 9 hens.

The ratio should be approximately 1 rooster to 6 hens.

If your hen sits on the eggs for 21 days and they hatch, they were fertile!

Otherwise, you can put a strong light behind them after a few days and see if there are veins and / or a shadow (embryo).

Don't allow the eggs to get cold AT ALL or they will not hatch.

The hen will know how long she can leave the nest for to eat and drink without them going cold.

Answer 7

After a few days, fertile eggs start forming veins that can be seen if you use a flashlight shone directly through the side. With time, the blob will become larger and when the chick is about to hatch the air space (what the chick uses to breathe as it begins to hatch) will become larger. I'll post a site under sources that shows examples of what you're looking for.

Answer 8

If the eggs were produced through natural means, meaning there's copulation, then you have to assume that they are fertile. Because you can also produce eggs by feeding them laying mass. Sometimes you can see some signs if you view the eggs through the sun rays. Just like an x-rays or you may use a candle or even a flashlight.

Answer 9

You need a light to "candle" the eggs, to see if there is a chick growing inside the egg, or not. The ones that have the chick, go in the incubator, the others, are ok to eat.

Answer 10

hi im waine general poultryman at a very large breeding loft.
I can pretty well promice you that if the hens and rosters are together, the eggs are fertile. your # alarm me though, it needs to be a ratio of 1 roster to every 3 hens, a breding set. The other way is to build a candeling box, yyou can look online at directions on hw to build one. with candeling you can tell: age of the egg, fertility, and embryo development. .