A hen doesn't need to mate every day in order to lay fertile eggs. She stores sperm in her body and her eggs will be fertile for at least a couple of weeks and sometimes much longer before she needs to re-mate. One rooster will easily keep eight to a dozen hens fertile.
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.
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.
Correct ratio of hens to roosters:
A good ratio is 10 hens for every 1 rooster. Roosters are very protective of “their” hens, and if there are too many roosters in your flock this can cause fighting over another rooster mounting a hen that is not “his” hen.
Have plenty of hens for each rooster. If you only have a flock of five or seven birds, you don't want two (or more!) of them to be roosters. Generally---and especially when you want to keep multiple roosters---there should be 10 or 12 hens for each male in your flock.
A rooster in his prime can 'cover' 1-16 hens. As he ages, he can successfully cover fewer hens, at age 3 years he is considered 'beyond prime'. A rooster's job is to ensure the success of his kind so mating with the hens looms large in his mind for many of his waking hours.
When you have both a rooster flock and a hen flock, you will want to make sure they stay completely separate from each other. Each sex should have their own coop and enclosure. If you free-range your chickens, allow the roosters to free-range separate from the hens.
Many roosters can co-exsist peacefully in one pen as long as there are no hens to fight over. Don't separate the boys from each other or they might forget that they know each other and start fighting when they are re-introduced.
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.
Ideally you should have at least 10 hens for each rooster in your flock. Having a proper hen to rooster ratio in your flock will prevent rooster fights and keep the hens from becoming stressed out by too much rooster attention.
The average duration of fertility is about 10 days.
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. What is this?
You don't need a rooster for your hens to lay eggs, as hens will lay just as many eggs whether there's a rooster around or not. However, a rooster is needed to fertilize the eggs to hatch them into baby chicks.
A hen does not know if her eggs are fertilised or not. In fact (much like a human) a rooster can be infertile, so a hen's eggs might not be fertilised even if she is in a flock with a rooster. Many modern breeds and commercial hybrid hens will do nothing with their eggs other than lay them and walk away.
A hen to rooster transformation is most definitely possible no matter how impossible it may seem. This occurrence usually occurs due to a genetic condition where the chickens only functioning ovary is damaged. The non-functioning ovary can then start to develop into a structure known as an avo-testis.
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.
Chickens have their own battle of the sexes, and scientists have discovered a secret strategy used by hens to control who fertilizes their eggs: After mating, hens can eject the sperm of less desirable, low-status roosters.
They will also do this in preparation to mate. If you watch a rooster preparing to mount a hen, he will first grab her neck feathers to secure her.
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.
On average, roosters can live between 5-8 years. However, in captivity when they are properly cared for, their average lifespan increases to 10-15 years. Unlike hens, roosters are less tame and spend the majority of their life on high alert to defend the other birds.
Chickens have about a 50/50 gender ratio, meaning about 50% of fertile eggs will hatch as roosters and 50% will be hens. In general, when baby chicks first hatch, there are few ways to accurately identify their sex–and no 100%, fail-proof accurate assessment method.
You have a few options to protect your hens. You can buy chicken saddles, which are pieces of cloth, generally made from a durable, waterproof canvas, that is strapped to the hen's back. If you use chicken saddles, be sure to regularly check underneath the saddle for external parasites.
Two roosters however can coexist, provided there is plenty of space within the roost, otherwise they will fight each other until they kill each other, as not all roosters accept the subordinate position.
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.
How long does a rooster need to be with a hen for fertilisation to happen? It can range from a once off meeting to around 3-7 days on average.