Egg question??

[TNBielefelder]

I put a 2 year old rooster in with my 1yr old girls 6 days ago. My question is how many days should I wait before I start collecting eggs to incubate? They stay in a run together most of the day while I'm working and then they free range 3 or 4 hours in the afternoon till around dark. How many days would you give them to make sure your not wasting eggs that are not fertile? Thanks Stephen

 

[Ridgerunner]

You should be good to go. You can always crack a few eggs and look for the bull’s eye. If the ones you open have the bull’s eye the ones you don’t open should too. Sometimes I have to gently turn the egg over with a spoon to find what I’m looking for. This might help.

Fertile Egg Photos
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures

It takes about 25 hours for an egg to go through the hen’s internal egg making factory. That egg can be fertilized only in the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a mating took place on a Sunday, Sunday’s egg will not be fertile. Monday’s egg might or might not, depending on what time the mating took place and when the egg started its journey. I would not count on it. Tuesday’s egg should be fertile.

Of course this as after a mating. A rooster doesn’t always mate with every hen in the flock every day. But the last part of the mating ritual is when the rooster hops off the hen stands up, fluffs, and shakes. This fluffy shake moves the sperm to a special container near where the egg starts its journey. The sperm can stay viable for quite a while, sometimes even as long as more than three seeks, though most of us only count on the sperm staying viable for two weeks. This way the rooster only has to mate a hen once every two weeks for the hen to lay fertile eggs.

 

[TNBielefelder]

Thank you for the information will start setting them aside to incubate. Got another question how many days can I keep the eggs I save for the incubator? Would like to put around 20 in but I average 4 eggs a day with my small flock. That would make the first eggs I collect 5 days old when they go in. Is that ok? I'm new to the incubator world.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Read this. It has a lot of information in it about storing eggs for incubation. I think it goes overboard. I don’t stress trying to get everything perfect but get as close as you reasonably can.

http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/...e-Cartwright-Incubating-and-hatching-eggs.pdf

As long as you keep them in a relatively cool area without a bunch of temperature swings, they should be real good for 5 days.

 

[TNBielefelder]

There was a lot of good information in that article thanks for the link ridgerunner !! I think I will play it safe and go with the 5 days,