Fertilised egg?? No rooster..

Since all three of your birds are clearly female, you've had them for 18 months and they've not been with a rooster for at least that long, and they have no way to get out and have a date with a rooster, then if the egg is really fertile, it would have been parthenogenesis.

Now, that's not really common, but reptiles can do it, turkeys can do it, and some chickens can too - namely the dark cornish breed is known for being able to do this. So, even though there is no way your hens mated with a rooster, there IS a slight chance that the eggs are actually fertile.

Might be fun if you could get an incubator and set some and see what happens :) However, with parthenogenesis, most eggs will not make it to hatch and do die before hatching.
I agree, it's probably the beginning stages of parthenogenesis. I could not find many records of chicken embryos developing beyond the very early stages. There were several studies done in the late 1950s to mid 1960s... one study from 1966 https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article-abstract/57/1/23/835787?redirectedFrom=PDF
"found nucleated cells in 15-18 percent of the blastodiscs of infertile Barred Plymouth Rock and White Leghorn chicken eggs. The process was of extremely brief duration, and development did not resume when eggs were incubated."
I didn't read the whole thing, but most likely that's what happened in the OP's egg.

The egg is considered infertile, because it was never fertilized.
Chicken eggs developing through parthenogenesis are almost never viable, meaning the embryo does not survive to adulthood. (there was one reference about the Cornish Cross, but not sure that any embryos successfully developed or hatched.) Most embryos stop growing early on, like the OP's egg, regardless of whether they are incubated.


parthenogenetic+chick.jpg
 
Someone was asking if parthenogenesis is real, if there is any proof. The answer is yes.

(By the way, I think skepticism and asking for proof is valuable to healthy critical thinking, especially in this internet age where anyone can self publish online without knowing anything about what they write. Respectful discourse, an open mind, and lots of research are important to keep the knowledge and ideas flowing.)

So, parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction, meaning offspring are produced without the need for fertilization (where male and female gametes unite to produce a fertilized egg). It's most common in plants and certain types of insects, a few reptiles, and very rarely in vertebrate animals - like turkeys. When an embryo is growing, it creates new cells by dividing each cell into 2. The DNA inside the cell is replicated so each new cell formed has its own copy of the DNA. In parthenogenesis, all of the necessary DNA comes from a single parent. It is not the same thing as cloning.
 
Is parthenogenesis possible if there is a male present? I mean, not every egg a hen lays is fertilized by the male. So for those of us that hatch alot of eggs, I wonder if some of the quitters during incubation were actually parthenogentically forming, but quit before hatch.
:confused:
 
Is parthenogenesis possible if there is a male present? I mean, not every egg a hen lays is fertilized by the male. So for those of us that hatch alot of eggs, I wonder if some of the quitters during incubation were actually parthenogentically forming, but quit before hatch.
:confused:
Yes! Based on what I was reading, that's very likely. And we always blame the poor rooster. :D

edit- I don't know, but doubt if it's even possible to fertilize a parthenogenic egg. If the sperm could get through the membrane, there would be extra DNA and probably wouldn't be viable.
 
That's a 1 and a million chance but hens being sick and having tissue in egg and other things is more likely which this lady my have a sick girl cuz these eggs are fresh from today not incubated or weeks old that's all I was thinking her hen my need something but I understand if people with more experience think otherwise I'm probably wrong sorry
Those are good ideas to consider, that something caused it to look like it was fertile, but it was damaged instead. I was thinking that too. However, it seems there is a good chance that the egg started to develop without being fertilized. It does happen in other plants and animals.
No need to be sorry. Learning is a journey.
 
As far as I have read Parthenogenesis occurs in Turkeys 99 percent dont develop past a certain point and only one percent of the rest have a chance to hatch.

A bunch of research has and is being done on the subject. There are whole strains of reptiles that are completely parthenogenic.... But when a male is introduced that stops......

Very interesting subject.
 

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