If multiple roosters mate with the same hen which determines who fertilized it?

[thebirdguy]

Just a couple other things to consider if you are rotating roosters... A hen can remain fertilized from a single rooster up to and in excess of 3 weeks. Combine this with the fact that a hen can reject sperm from a mating and there is no way to tell or guarantee which rooster would be the father if you were rotating them every week.

If you want to be sure of what you get... I would recommend either separating your hens into however many groups you have roosters and then play musical roosters after gathering enough eggs for hatching from that match up.. then wait a month to start gathering eggs from the new match up..

Alternatively, you could leave all the hens in one pen.. rotate the roosters and wait a month in between..

good luck!!

 

[Georgia Boy 1970]

If you rotate the roos in every week- the first week will be ok all chicks from the 1st roo, assuming no roo has mated with the hens in a month

second week will be first roo + second roo offspring mostly second roo

third week will be second roo + third roo offspring mostly third roo (small number of 1st roo possible)

Tim

Thanks Tim for the info.

 

[geebs]

I agree with past post regarding thanks... I do like your wordsmithing... I know what I see and what I record..your words fall in line with what I "see" so it's really cool to have someone validate my notes for me.

Side note: It is my understanding that a female can reject a suitor entirely and I read a paper somewhere that was done regarding roosters and hens.. I believe the article was called "She knows what she wants" or something along that line... anyway the experiment lasted for many years (in China I believe) and was tightly controlled using just a couple of birds of very different type on a hen... End of the experiment show traits from more than one suitor in the offspring though the genetic material was only from one... So the offspring was genotypically one thing and phenotypically something else... It is a really interesting shift in the paradigm right??? I will see if I can find the article.. It was so interesting I saved it somewhere...

 

[diornisextant]

would the paternity of mixed matings also have to do with the viability of the sperm? say rooster2 had weak mutant lazy sperm and roo1 had crazy motivated sperm individual moility could factor in ??
and re genetics: you do not have to know genetics but it will save you a lot of time and money and effort and produce less wastage if you make an effort to understand at least basic genetics if you are selecting for specific traits and conformation (or for that matter temperament) goals as long as the genetics of these traits are understood .

and much of the time offspring are genotypically different from phenotype, Phenotype shows visually, genotype lists all the components completely.