Roo not doing his job!!!!

[groovimum]

I have a rooster quite young, about 18mths old, he is in with 16 hens. We recently incubated about 22 egs but got a poor result. Can anyone tell me why this may have happened. We did have another rooster but they were always fighting with red leading the attack on the other poor animal. I only got 6 chicks..

 

[ThePigeonKid]

I think that it is too many hens for one rooster, three to five hens per rooster is the usual number.

Hope this helps!

 

[FireTigeris]

Quote:
No its closer to 8-10 per rooster, when I had three with any rooster he bred them too much.

I had 72% hatch on mixed shipped eggs and my eggs, all of mine were fertile- some of them quit.

My raito was 1 rooster to 12 pullets- but not all of the pullets were laying yet so they really didn't count- 9 were laying.

 

[Judy]

I'd say the first step is to crack a bunch of eggs to be sure they are all, or mostly, fertile.



https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=16008

in case you haven't found this.

Agreed, 1:10 is the ratio usually recommended for the good of the hens, but fewer hens to a roo are usually used for a breeding program, even 1:2, so maybe he doesn't cover that many very well. I really don't know.

 

[rearrolled]

3-5 hens is plenty

 

[FireTigeris]

ok- every time I tried that the hens got treded to blood.

 

[geebs]

add light... if that doesn't work... ad tumeric to his diet and some cat food.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ddawn's suggestion to see if they are fertile, which is a good one, is for eggs you have not yet tried to incubate. Once they have gone through incubation, the yolk pretty much falls apart if you crack the egg, so just try it on fresh eggs to see if they are fertile. That bull's eye might be on the bottom of the yolk when you crack it, so you might need to gently turn the egg over with a spoon to find it.

You can crack open the eggs that did not hatch after incubation to get an idea what might have happened. These sites tell you what to look for and what they might mean. As you can see, there are a lot of problems that can cause poor hatches, not just fertilization.

Mississippi State Incubation Troubleshooting
http://www.poultry.msstate.edu/extension/pdf/troubleshooting_incubation.pdf

Florida Incubation Troubleshooting
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa204

The ratio of roosters to hens in hatcheries to produce fertile eggs is about 1 to 10. This is for full sized breeds. In bantams, they use a bigger ratio but I'm not sure what it is, somewhere around 1 to 12 or 15.

Not all roosters are created equal. Some are more active than others. It's just their personality. Younger ones are more active than older ones. In the commercial hatcheries, they replace older roosters with younger ones when the fertility rates drop.

Many roosters are able to keep a flock of 16 hens fertile, but not all can do it. Fertility is a possible problem with your hatch, but is not the only possible reason, especially with that young a rooster.

Good luck!

 

[Mervin]

Quote:
Tumeric? Are you able to elaborate? I'm curious about what tumeric does to stimulate virility.

 

[ranchhand]

Quote:
All that and be sure to examine your incubation process and the functioning of your incubator. It may have nothing to do with the rooster.