Chicken Age and Hatchability

[bigredfeather]

I was wondering if a hens age has any thing to do with the percentage of eggs that hatch if incubated. My RIR are about 7 months old, and I am wanting to hatch some of their eggs soon.

 

[TaLani]

Not that I am any sort of expert, but I've read on the forum that it's not always a good idea to hatch pullet eggs. It's best to wait until they're at least 1 yr old before trying to hatch the eggs. I suppose this is because the eggs will then be large enough in size to allow the chick to grow enough inside the egg, hatch & live. Mine started laying the 8th of this month and most of them are still very small pullet eggs, not the normal size that they will become in time as the hens age. Hope all that made sense.

 

[Southernbelle]

If the girls are laying large enough eggs, you might be okay. It's just hard for a standard-size chick to get out of a tiny pullet egg - sometimes they run out of room and die in the shell.

All my birds are purebred, but they're all together in one pen, so anything I hatch is bound to be a mutt. My first broody caught me by surprise and I was afraid to buy hatching eggs for her because I wasn't sure she'd go the distance, so I gave her some of my mutt eggs. All of my girls are between 8 months and 1 year old; I just chose full-sized eggs and no one appeared to have any problems.