Hens will lay eggs with or without a rooster. Without a rooster, your hens' eggs are infertile, so won't develop into chicks. If you do have a rooster, eggs need to be collected daily and kept in a cool place before being used so that they won't develop into chicks.
The next question is perhaps, "Why do chickens lay unfertilized eggs at all?" The reason is that the egg is mostly developed before being fertilized. The chicken cannot know in advance whether the egg will end up fertilized or not, so it just has to go ahead and grow the egg in the hopes that it will be fertilized.
The rooster must dip his tail down to the side of the hen's tail and spread his tail feathers. He will then press his cloaca to the hen's cloaca and release sperm into her. Once this has happened, mating is complete. Mating is a very quick process that lasts only a few seconds.
Fresh eggs can be consumed whether or not they are fertilized. If you are collecting the eggs every day or two, then there is no chance of finding a developed chick in an egg when you crack it open.
So while the answer to the question of "Do you need a Rooster to lay eggs?" is no, you can certainly have a happier flock with a rooster. Although uncrowded hens generally get along with each other, a flock with a rooster is usually more peaceful. There is less fighting for the top spot by the hens.
A rooster often has his favorite girl, with whom he spends most of his time. She is not necessarily at the top of the pecking order, but he will treat her like a queen. It's possible that other hens might be envious of her role, because when the rooster is removed, his favorite hen is sometimes picked on by the others.
You need a rooster if you want to naturally hatch baby chicks. The male chicken fertilizes the eggs, which allows them to develop into baby chicks. Roosters will protect the rest of the flock.
Did you know you can determine if an egg is fertile or not by looking at the germ spot? The germ spot is the white spot on the yolk. The non-fertile germ spot contains only the female's cells and looks like a solid white spot. In a fertile egg the germ spot contains both the female and male cells.
Most eggs sold commercially in the grocery store are from poultry farms and have not been fertilized. In fact, laying hens at most commercial farms have never even seen a rooster. Given the right nutrients, hens will lay eggs with or without having been in the presence of a rooster.
Many modern breeds and commercial hybrid hens will do nothing with their eggs other than lay them and walk away. Many have had the instinct to brood [sit on their eggs to hatch them] bred out of them over generations.
If the egg is fertile, then you should see a dark spot around the middle of the egg, with some spider-like veins beginning to form around it. If its not, you should just be able to see the shape of the yellow yolk inside the egg, without any signs of an embryo or veins.
No. Roosters cannot lay eggs. They simply do not have the same reproductive anatomy as a hen. While roosters have the ability to fertilize a hen's egg, their lack of ovaries and oviduct along with numerous other biological features make it impossible for your rooster to ever lay an egg.
They've got two bean-shaped testes located against their backbone in front of the kidneys. Rooster testicles vary in size based on their age and time of year. If you butcher a rooster in the winter his testicles will be smaller than during the spring mating season, when they swell up considerably.
Just as human females are born with all their eggs, female chicks are born with all the yolks (called “ova”) in their ovaries.
Roosters will start to crow before sunrise and he will be one of the first out of the coop in the morning to check the area for predators and sound the all clear for the rest of the flock. This early morning call encourages the flock to get moving and start foraging for food.
Chickens are busy sleeping at night, and they will not wake up to lay an egg, but gather the strength and energy they need to lay the egg first thing in the morning. With an average production cycle of 26 hours, you can see that your hen will not lay at the exact same time from one day to the next.
For a supermarket egg to hatch it must have been fertilised. And the vast majority of eggs on supermarkets' shelves, whether they are from ducks or chickens, will not be fertilised. This is because in commercial egg production male and female chicks are separated at about a day old.
Will candling tell me whether an egg is fertile or not before incubation? No. The only way of knowing whether it's fertile, short of breaking the shell open, is by incubating it for six or seven days. If you candle then, a fertile egg will have a small embryo forming together with some spider-like veins.
The answer to both of these questions is no. The eggs that you get in a grocery are not fertile eggs. To produce a fertile egg, a rooster (male chicken) must be present and in grocery store production facilities this is simply not the case.
Sure, it looks weird, but you should actually appreciate the chalaza: It's a sign that an egg is fresh and safe to eat. The visibility of chalazae makes it easy to test the freshness of eggs.
The incubation period for chicken eggs is 20 to 21 days, and increases up to 30 days for other poultry. After sitting for some days, a broody hen can be given some newly hatched chicks and, if they are accepted, the original eggs can be removed and replaced with more chicks.
Can you eat a fertilised egg? Yes, it's completely safe. Unless the egg is incubated, that tiny cluster of cells will not develop and, despite what you may read on some internet sites, you are not eating a baby chick!
How many hens per rooster for fertile eggs? To make fertile eggs a rooster should be kept with no more than 12 hens. Any more than this and he will struggle to fertilize the eggs. If you are having problems with fertility there are a couple of things to check on.
Eggs have existed in nature for more than a billion years, long before any chicken was on the scene. Technically, an egg is just a container bound by membrane which allows an embryo to grow and develop. Almost all sexually reproducing species make eggs, which are the specialized female sex cells.