A few questions about getting fertile eggs

[12321]

I may be getting a hen that I would like to get bread. If I find someone willing, I'll need a rooster stud service.
1, How long do I have to wait for a hen to become unfertile/clean since she is curently in with a mixed rooster?
2. If I do manage to find a rooster to bread her to, how long do I have to leave them together or how many times do I have to let them mate before I take her back home?
3. How long till she will lay the fertile eggs? Will the next egg be fertile, egg #3, #6?
4. How long will she lay the fertile eggs? I'm guessing the answer to #1 is also the answer to #4

Any knowledge you can give will be greatly apreciated. Pretty new to this.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It takes about 25 hours for an egg to make its way through the hen’s internal egg laying factory. It can only be fertilized in the first 15 minutes or so of that journey.

That means if a mating takes place on a Sunday, Sunday’s egg is not fertile. Monday’s egg might be depending on when the mating took place and it started its journey. Tuesday’s egg should be fertile.

Those numbers are pretty straightforward. You other question is harder to be precise.

Most hens will stay fertile for two weeks after a mating. Some may lose it a few days earlier but you can usually count of about two weeks. It’s possible a hen may stay fertile for over three weeks, so wait four weeks if you want to be absolutely sure. A lot of people use three weeks and that usually works out.

Of course this is after a successful mating. It’s not a question of how many times, it’s whether he hits the target or not.

 

[12321]

Thanks. Can you usually just throw a hen and rooster together in a small pen by themselves or do they have to get to know each other for a while, like when you bring new birds into a flock?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You should be able to just put them together. One way a rooster shows his dominance when he is added to a flock of hens is to immediately mate one or more of them. The mating ritual is not just about sex. It’s also a dominance thing. The one on bottom is accepting the dominance of the one on top.

I've had a flock without a mature dominant rooster where the dominant hen would go through the mating ritual with other hens. She'd even knock the young immature rooster off a pullet if he tried to mate just to show that she was the dominant one.

The reason I mention this is that age of the hen and rooster can make a difference. Some hens will squat for anything in spurs but often an older mature hen will reject a young immature rooster. I’ve had mature hens accept a rooster younger than 5 months and I’ve had mature hens reject a young rooster until he was about 10 months old.

It’s usually best if the rooster is at least a year old.

 

[12321]

Thanks RR