At what age were your Hens and Roosters to give fertile eggs????

[clayhillcouple]

At what age was everybody's Hen's/ Rooster's to give fertile eggs??? To candle and put in Bator?? My Pullets are about 11 months and roosters about the same.

 

[clayhillcouple]

We bought a Bator last week. So We started putting aside eggs starting on Feb 5th to hopefully candle this week.

 

[Akane]

I was getting fertile eggs from the bantams at 5months. The EEs laid a few random eggs at 4months and the odd one was fertile. Now at 6months 1 lays consistently while the other 2 alternate about half their eggs fertile. I think that's because my bantam roo is having problems with or ignoring the EEs for his favorite bantam hen.

 

[crooked stripe]

When candling a fertile egg what do you see? I wouldn't think you could see anything. The fertile spot is so small. After placing an egg in the bator they tell you to wait 7 days before candling. At that time I could just make out veins and things.

 

[clayhillcouple]

Yes -I'm impatiently waiting until the 12th( opps that's today) to candle.Hoping for some good results. Does anybody have training books for the Rooster's to read????

 

[ella]

Eggs may be fertile early, but it's not a great idea to set pullet eggs.

They tend to be small and have very hard shells, plus there's greater chance of those little glitches that would result in a poor hatch and/or small chicks.

It's better to wait until the girls mature a little and eggs reach full size.

Eleven months is not too young but make sure the eggs you set are a good size and in good shape.

Far as I know you can't tell a fertile undeveloped egg from candleing. You have to incubate it.

 

[azelgin]

We just hatched out a batch from some 9 month and 11 month old pullets. Set 37, 34 were viable at 10 days and 28 hatched. The failure rate was about the same for both ages. The 9 mo. BOs had the most vigirious of the chicks that hatched and the best hatch rate, 10/11. We will do another set when the girls are older. It seems some of the chicks had a tough time getting through the hard shells and trouble turning in the small shells to zip. Had to try it anyway.

 

[clayhillcouple]

We candled some of our eggs from Feb 5th. The RiR's appeared to have donut look that I've seen on threads. So are putting our new eggs directly into the Bator.