Eggs are not fertile and I'm frustrated!!

[enola]

The fan will help move air to cool them off.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Some things that might affect an egg’s fertility. Could be a combination. Since you opened some and confirmed poor fertility some things aren’t all that likely.

How thick are the feathers? Some really thick feathered roosters or hens have trouble breeding. The feathers are so thick it’s hard to hit the target. Show quality orpington or cochin with their really nice feathers have this problem often enough that some people trim the feathers around the vent. Since none developed this probably isn’t it but I’ll mention it.

I’ve heard that molting can cause a drop in a rooster’s fertility. That’s not been my experience though. Disease can also cause this, either hens or rooster. Does he have an injured foot or wing that might give him trouble mounting a hen?

Nutrition can play a part. Unless you are feeding a weird diet don’t think too hard on this one. While hatcheries and breeders will often enhance certain vitamins or minerals that improve fertility and hatchability, if you are feeding a fairly balanced diet poor nutrition won’t cause that big of a drop.

Have you checked for parasites? Lice or some types of mites can congregate in the vent area making it hard for the rooster to make contact. Mites, lice or worms can weaken them to the point that fertility drops or they just don’t have the energy.

Flock dynamics can go many different ways, sometimes pretty mysterious. Adding new flock members or young chickens going through puberty can change flock dynamics. That cockerel is going through puberty and some people will say that may be distracting to the older rooster but I don’t think so. A trick hatcheries use to reinvigorate older roosters is to put in some younger rivals. That usually causes the older ones to become more active.

Those younger pullets are not going to be a total distraction to the rooster either. Most mature roosters should ignore them until they are ready to lay, but all a rooster has to do to keep a hen fertile is to mate her once every two weeks. Even if your mature rooster is a pedophile, he should not be totally ignoring his regular ladies. I really don’t think the cockerel or the pullets are distracting him. Separating them is not a bad idea though.

It sounds like you set some pullet eggs, probably pretty small eggs. Pullet eggs are less likely to hatch than eggs from more mature hens for many different reasons. There are a lot of different things that have to be right for a pullet egg to hatch and sometimes it takes a while for a pullet to get all the different parts together right. But I’ve hatched pullet eggs. Most pullets get these things right to start with or really soon after they start to lay. On occasion I’ve had pretty good hatches with pullet eggs. I’ve also had some pretty bad hatches plus they tend to die after hatch more than chicks from larger eggs. I think that is because they are so small compared to their siblings that they are a bit more delicate. But if the rooster is mating them the eggs are generally fertile and they normally develop at least some. I’ve raised some nice chickens from hatching pullet eggs.

When a fertile egg is laid the embryo is alive. They have to remain alive for the egg to develop. I know you said you cracked some and had low fertility but at least you had some fertility by the bull’s eye if I read your post right. Those embryos are really tough but think back on how you handled them. Did they go through temperature extremes? Cycling from hot to cold a few times can be hard on them as well as hitting extremes. Did you shake them up pretty bad? I once had a horrible hatch rate because I shook eggs up bringing them home on a rough country dirt road without proper cushioning. The longer you store them the less likely they are to develop too, but unless your storage conditions are really bad we are talking about more than a week at least.

I don’t know how experienced you are at candling your eggs. Some eggs are a lot harder to see inside of than others and different candling techniques can vary in effectiveness. With some of my eggs I can’t see much more than the air cell even later in incubation. I know you said you had low fertility but I suggest you don’t do anything drastic too early in incubation unless you are really confident in your candling.

I’ve run out of ideas. Since those silkie eggs are developing and I assume you started them the same time, it has to do with your eggs, not the incubator.

I wish you luck on figuring it out. This sounds like a tough one.

 

[kuchchicks]

My rooster did just recently molt. I just commented on this to my husband because he lost all of his beautiful tail feathers. So maybe that did contribute to it. As far as any injury, no... he just tried to kick the crap out of me the other day, LOL!! As far as him actually mounting the hens... well I know he has done it in the past because we got great fertility in the spring. He was the only roo at the time. BUT I have never seen seen him do it.

Parasites I have not checked for. I have had chickens for 7 years and to be honest I have never looked. Gosh, now I feel bad. I will do that first thing tomorrow. Will it be very noticeable or will I have to know what I am looking for? I had recently heard pumpkin is good for worms and have been waiting for them to become available in my area. If there are parasites or mites/lice and I see them, how do I treat it? Should I just treat anyway?

I did hear that you should be cautious with pullet eggs but mine have been laying for about 2 months and the eggs are the same size as my older hens. I am getting almost an egg a day per hen at this point. It is worth noting the only eggs at this point that are fertile are the ones from my 2 year old hen (the roo has been with this hen since they were hatched).

Our temps lately here have been in the mid to high 80s. I do collect my eggs at least 2 if not 3 times a day. I handle them gingerly and keep them on my counter in an egg carton until I use them. None of them were older than 4 days old.

NOW the only thing that is noteworthy about the temps (and I totally did not even think about this when I originally posted this... why? I don't know) but we did have a power loss on day 2 or 3 for about 4 hours. We tried to get our generator started but could not. By the time the power came back on the temp in the bator had dropped down to 83*. It took a couple of hours for the temp to regulate again. So it was a total of about 6 hours that temps were off. I am now wondering if that length of time so early on caused death of the embryos? I do have 2 blood rings on my silkie eggs right now. But the rest of the silkies (13 total) have beautiful vessels. So this of course may have contributed to the issues but there is still a fertility issue on top of it since new eggs that I have cracked open are not fertile.

I do feel pretty comfortable with my candling. However, as a personal rule I rarely toss eggs until lock down unless it is obvious that there is nothing inside or it has died. I usually mark the eggs that I feel are quitters or empty with an X but hand on to them - just in case! I have always been right with those that I felt were not growing (I usually open them up when I remove them), but I would feel guilty if I took one out and found that it was alive. It's better for me to just leave them. With that said I still have all of my eggs in the bator. I plan on candling again on Wednesday. By that time I will be on day 8 so it should be obvious.

Thanks for all of your help. This has been very informative and helped me out a lot. Best line though of your post...
...had me in tears laughing!!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

There are several different kinds of worms, some you can maybe see in the poop but some you cannot. Some cause more problems than others. Usually having a few worms doesn’t hurt them, it’s when the numbers get out of hand that you see the problems. Some general signs are they are lethargic, maybe watery poop, poor growth or they get really skinny, or maybe egg production drops. You can take a fecal sample to a vet so they can check under a microscope for worms.

There are two major kinds of mites plus lice. The fowl mites and lice pretty much spend their life on the chickens. Look in the vent area (they like the moisture) for fowl mites or lice or the eggs attached to the feathers. Sometimes you see tiny black dots. That’s their poop. Roost mites hide in the coop in cracks by day and only come out at night. Mite eggs are laid in those cracks, not on the chickens. To check for them you need to look after dark in the dark. Use a flashlight. They will run from the light but you can see them scurrying away from the light. Mites and lice suck the blood from the chickens and can leave them anemic when the numbers get out of hand. If they are infected the numbers will probably get out of hand.

Some people treat regularly for worms, mites, and lice. I’ve never had either so I don’t treat at all. If they are in your environment they are hard to get rid of so regular treatment makes more sense.

If the pullets have been laying two months the eggs are probably OK to hatch. By then the pullet should have debugged her internal egg making factory and should be putting the eggs together right. The eggs probably have grown dramatically in size so there is more room and more nutrients for the chick to grow bigger and stronger before hatch.

I doubt if that power failure caused any problems. The eggs are fairly tough as to temperature changes when developing plus what you saw was air temperature in the incubator, not the temperature at the center of the eggs. The eggs are a lot denser than air and lose heat a lot slower. Losing power like that is not good but a short time like that is seldom fatal.

Thanks for the reminder to test crank my generator. I don’t do that often enough and it makes it easier to start when you need it.

I candle much the same way, usually once around 7 or 8 days where I use a red sharpie to make an x on what I think are quitters and a black check if I think they are developing. I leave them all in until I go into lockdown when I candle again and remove the clears to give more room in the incubator. I’m getting better at it but with some of my dark green eggs especially I can’t see a thing at 7 days and can only see the air cell with a dark blob underneath at day 18.

I don’t know what is going on with your rooster. Some just have less vitality to start with and that vitality drops as they age, but two years old is still pretty young. The molt may have something to do with it.

I just thought of a trick you can use that might get him to mate more if that is the problem. Try separating the rooster from the flock for a while, 15 to 20 minutes should be enough. Take him where he cannot see the flock. Usually when you put him back with the flock he will immediately mate with a hen to show that he is still in charge and that this is his flock. Or if you have a specific hen you want fertile eggs from, separate her for a while and see if he welcomes her back by mating. These are behaviors so I can’t give you a guarantee but this would probably work with mine. Not all matings are successful but all he has to do is successfully mate with a hen every two weeks or so to keep her fertile.

 

[enola]

I have had my incubator accidentally unplugged, the eggs were COLD when I found the incubator unplugged. I still got 90% hatch. A day late maybe, but they still hatched.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I found a broody hen on the wrong nest. Her eggs were really cold to the touch. I’m pretty sure she was off the nest all day. I put her back on the right nest and she hatched 11 out of 11 eggs. And she was a full day early. About half the time mine are a day or two early anyway, even under a broody. I think that’s hereditary.