Does a rooster need to service a hen every day?

[newchickonblock]

Thank you for asking one of the questions I had about fertilization and "servicing". My other question is a little more embarassing...and it is.... how do they service? We have 9 chickens that are 3 months old (2 of the 9 are bantams) and only 1 bantam rooster. Will he do the job for all 9? Even the regular size (leghorn & ambers) hens? How will we know when they have done what they need to do?

 

[Over Easy in Adna]

Quote:
I wish someone would tell my Roo about this.

 

[OrpingtonManor]

It depends on whose needs we are talking about, yours, the hens, or the roosters.

 

[patandchickens]

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1 roo can certainly cover 9 hens just fine, no worries there, that's a pretty good ratio. A banty rooster may have a lower fertility rate on large hens (or may not - it depends how agile he is and how cooperative the hens are - if nothing else he will improve over time as all parties get more adept and mature)

You don't really NEED the roo 'servicing' hens unless you want to hatch chicks out of those eggs, though, right? So unless you have some particular *reason* to want chicks that are sired by the banty out of the large-fowl hens, it should not really MATTER whether his fertility rate with them is very high...? The hens will lay eggs no matter whether they've been mated/fertilized or not.

If you spend a reasonable amount of time noticing the chickens during the day, you will probably get to see a lot of the roo's mating endeavors. The hen squats down, sort of flattens herself against teh ground, and the roo hops aboard (often grabbing her neck feathers in his beak for balance). YOu'd notice, believe me.

Just because he's mating hens doesn't necessarily mean they're getting inseminated, of course. To tell whether eggs are fertile, look when you break them open to cook with -- there will be a small round whitish spot that will be just a plain whitish disk if the egg is infertile, but will have a sort of 'bullseye' appearance if the egg was fertilized. There are good pics on a stickied thread on one of the other sections of BYC that you might want to look at. Unfortunately you cannot tell whether a given egg is fertile without breaking it open, so it is impossible to set *only* fertile eggs - if you want to set eggs (under a broody or in an incubator) you just have to go with percentages.

Hope this helps, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[kissingrk]

wow thank you everyone I have been wondering about this.. I had 3 hens and 1 roo and added 5 more hens.. the person I got them from had several roos. A week after I brought the new hens home I checked the eggs and they were fertile so I put 9 in the bator. Now from what I read my roo may not be the father

It could be a mystery roo..hee-hee. I love this site everyone has so much info. Thanks!

 

[OccamsTazer]

I am far too old to be giggling uncontrollably about "services"