Hatching Eggs

silkie1472

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I have some white leghorn hens of which I would like to hatch some of their eggs. I have two white leghorn roosters in the flock, but there are also several Cochin bantams as well (roosters included). I really don’t want any mixed chickens, but I do have a broody Cochin bantam at the moment — and what better opportunity to hatch eggs?

I’ve seen both types of roosters breed the hens, but I’m not 100% sure how it works. Do y’all think they’d be mixed or not? Some of them?
 
Some of them would almost certainly be mixed. Breeds are a man-made thing, the chickens don't know or care. If you want pure leghorn eggs you need to separate the hens from the Cochin. Now, how it works.

It takes an egg about 25 hours to go through the hens internal egg-making factory. It can only be fertilized during the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a successful mating takes place on a Tuesday, Tuesday's egg is not fertile. Wednesday's egg might or might not be, don't count on it. Thursday's egg will be fertile.

A rooster does not mate every hen in the flock every day, but he doesn't have to. After the rooster is finished and hops off, the hen stands up, fluffs up, and shakes. This fluffy shake gets the sperm into a container near where the egg starts its internal journey so it can fertilize the egg. That sperm can stay viable in that container at body temperature for 9 days or as long as over three weeks. Most of us count on two weeks.

This means if you want pure eggs you need to keep the hens isolated from the roosters you don't want for at least thee weeks. A lot of people use three weeks and it usually works really well. Some people go four weeks to be absolutely certain.

My suggestion if you want pure chicks is to break that Cochin from being broody, there is a good chance he will go broody again later. And isolate the hens you want eggs from from the roosters you don't so you have eggs ready for the next time. That isolation may involve more pens or removing the Cochin roosters from your flock.
 
Thank you for the response. I will be separating the Cochins from the leghorns soon.

They are just pullets right now anyways, so it’s not much of a loss.
 
Okay, so the Cochins are separated from the other chickens, but all 6 of them are broody. What is the best way to break them? They are sitting on no eggs.
 
Okay, so the Cochins are separated from the other chickens, but all 6 of them are broody. What is the best way to break them? They are sitting on no eggs.
place them in a cage (dog kennel works well) with a wire floor. Lift that off the ground by a couple of feet to get some air flow under the bird. Make sure they have food and water. I think 3 days should be enough, but I'm only going off of things I've seen other people post.
 
So I’ve been letting them sit on some infertile eggs, and I just received some baby chicks. I’ve spent most of tonight trying to get them to “adopt” them, but the hens want no part of them. It’s completely dark, but the chicks are so lively that 1) they won’t stay under the hens and 2) the hens peck at them aimlessly non stop. Any advice?
 

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