Hatching 50% of eggs

[bardos]

Hello all chicken people,

I have 6 hens, no idea of race or anything and one rooster. The rooster is an Ameraucana. Recently someone gave me 2 Ameraucana hens. As is their wont they went broody. I placed 6 eggs from the normal chickens under each one. Each chicken hatched 3 of the six. That's 50% (the math is easy). I was wondering whether this percentage is good, bad or ugly. Comments appreciated. Maybe the rooster has trouble mounting normal chickens?

 

[sumi]

That is not a very good hatch rate, but then you could've done a lot worse! You can check fertility by cracking some eggs open on a plate and looking for the little "bullseye" on the yolk. There are some great examples here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures/0_30

If that is not the problem it may be your hens are not producing good hatching eggs, due to advanced age, nutritional deficiencies etc.

 

[bardos]

Well, it's not advanced age, they're young. They're also free range, supplemented by greens from the garden: lettuce, kale, collard greens...