As her hormones shift and she gets ready to start laying eggs, her combs, wattles, and face will change from light pink to brighter red in color. They will also swell and become larger.
When your hen is ready to lay an egg, she will sit on her nest and may be seen straining slightly. Some hens will also become vocal, crowing, cackling or otherwise calling out to the other members of the flock as they lay their eggs.
See how a hen makes an egg. A rooster is needed, however, if your goal is to produce chicks. Roosters needs to mate with a hen two or three times a week in order for the hen to lay fertile eggs. You can then incubate the eggs to hatch out chicks.
They can take up to nine months (40 weeks) before they decide to lay. Overall it is an individual thing that is beyond the hen's control and they will start laying eggs when they are good and ready. It is unwise to try and push your hens to lay sooner than they are ready for.
To tell if the hen is laying eggs, feel gently around the vent, as Mike explains. The area will feel inflated when the hen is in lay. If the area feels taut or the bird looks unwell, she may not be laying and may have an illness such as egg peritonitis.
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.
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.
Examine the egg for the germinal disc, a white spot floating above the surface of the yolk. The germinal disk of a sterile egg contains only the hen's cells and is fully white in color. In a fertilized egg, the germinal disk contains the merged female and male cells.
If you have a rooster or two in your flock, the first sign I've often noticed is that the rooster is suddenly interested in breeding with the pullets. If you don't have a rooster, you may still notice that your pullets begin to squat when you approach them.
If the egg has a pointed tip, it's a rooster. Hold them upside down by their feet and the rooster will spring back up quickly. A threaded needle held over the bird's head will swing back and forth over a rooster and in a circular motion over a hen.
A rooster may mate from 10 to 30 or more times per day, depending on the availability of hens and competition from other roosters. However, the number of sperm per ejaculate is seldom less than 100 million which is the minimum required to maintain high fertility.
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 will mate with most or all of the hens in the flock. Once you have fertilized eggs, all you need is a safe place for the hens to nest and you can have chicks in no time. Another positive is that you can eat fertilized eggs the same way you can eat unfertilized eggs.
Consistent egg production is a sign of happy, healthy hens. Most hens will lay their first egg around 18 weeks of age and then lay an egg almost daily thereafter.
Chickens stop laying eggs for a variety of reasons. Hens may lay fewer eggs due to light, stress, poor nutrition, molt or age. Some of these reasons are natural responses, while others can be fixed with simple changes and egg laying can return to normal.
Once they're out of the coop and free of any of the feathers and poop that came with them, eggs should be refrigerated. Although unwashed eggs with cuticles intact can safely be stored at room temperature, refrigerating your eggs will help them last longer; about 5-6 weeks.
Normally, roosters will mate without causing any injury to the hen. However, there are certain roosters who may be aggressive during mating or overmate with certain hens. There are also certain breeds of roosters who are known for being more aggressive then others.
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.
Roosters will often pick out a few hens that are his “favorite”. During mating, a rooster uses his claws to hold onto the hen's back, and this can cause the feathers on her back to break and be worn off. Sometimes, a hen is mated so much that a rooster can actually cause abrasions to the skin of a hen's back area.
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 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.
How The Chicken Incubates Eggs Naturally. In nature, the female bird selects the nest site and lays a clutch of eggs (usually 8 to 13 eggs), one egg per day. Once she has a clutch of eggs, she begins sitting on the eggs full time, leaving only for food and water.
Left to her own devices, a broody will lay a clutch of eggs, then stop egg-laying and sit on them for 21 days (more or less) until they hatch. Not every hen will become broody in her lifetime, but those that do are fiercely protective of their nests.
A hen's eggs may be fertilized or unfertilized when you keep chickens. A broody hen is a term given to a dedicated mother bird that has begun to sit on and incubate the eggs day and night, leaving only once daily to eat, drink, and poop. She may hiss and peck at you if you remove the hen from her eggs.