How long, after the roo is gone, will the subsequent eggs laid not be fertile?

[frostbite]

Rooster Stew two weeks ago. The happy hens are laying without him of course, and eating his rations quite happily. How long though, before their fertile eggs have all been spent, and only non-fertile eggs remain?

 

[katsdar]

about 10 days to 2 weeks.

 

[frostbite]

Thank you!

 

[wolftracks]

Depends how many hens you have sometimes or how fertile your roo was. I've had eggs hatch over 3 weeks later. Not as many hatched, but they were fertile. I also had a hen hide a nest almost a month after I removed her from a roo and she hatched out almost all of them.

Two weeks you still have a pretty good chance of hatching them though, if that's what you are wanting to do.

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

If you want to hatch some and don't want to wait until they're far enough along to candle, you can always crack a couple and look for fertility first.


(But don't try to hatch the cracked ones even if they are fertile...

)

 

[frostbite]

Depends how many hens you have sometimes or how fertile your roo was. I've had eggs hatch over 3 weeks later. Not as many hatched, but they were fertile. I also had a hen hide a nest almost a month after I removed her from a roo and she hatched out almost all of them.

Two weeks you still have a pretty good chance of hatching them though, if that's what you are wanting to do.

No place for them to hide eggs here, 25 below zero (farhenheit) and they don't go outside much, and not far from the coop. And the brown eggs would show up too well in the white snow, and they'd be rock hard frozen with cracked shells! Inside the coop it's pretty cold too, if I don't get to the eggs within a couple hours of them getting laid, they freeze up.

Mostly I was just curious. I cracked open an egg for breakfast a week ago and there was a developing embryo there. The egg was fresh, out of the hen and into the deep freeze, then into the fridge before it froze solid, but clearly a fertile egg. I was surprised at the embryo, clearly they start developing in the hen before the egg even sees the daylight. It didn't bother me, but I don't want to surprise my friends when I give them eggs!

 

[wolftracks]

Are you sure it was fresh? It could have been a meat spot, but never heard of a hen holding an egg to incubation. If nothing else the hen would have become eggbound. I'm betting meat spot and those can even be found in an egg where a hen has never even heard a rooster, let alone seen or been near one.

 

[donrae]

It wasn't an embryo. They don't start developing inside the hen, otherwise the whole laying an egg a day for a week or two THEN setting them method of survival wouldn't work. Meat spots or ovarian tissue fool lots of folks into thinking they're embryonic tissue.

 

[frostbite]

Okay then, I have been fooled!

Wouldn't be the first time....

Thanks for the education. So, what's a "meat spot"?

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

No place for them to hide eggs here, 25 below zero (farhenheit) and they don't go outside much, and not far from the coop. And the brown eggs would show up too well in the white snow, and they'd be rock hard frozen with cracked shells! Inside the coop it's pretty cold too, if I don't get to the eggs within a couple hours of them getting laid, they freeze up.

Mostly I was just curious. I cracked open an egg for breakfast a week ago and there was a developing embryo there. The egg was fresh, out of the hen and into the deep freeze, then into the fridge before it froze solid, but clearly a fertile egg. I was surprised at the embryo, clearly they start developing in the hen before the egg even sees the daylight. It didn't bother me, but I don't want to surprise my friends when I give them eggs!

No possible way that was an embryo. Chicken eggs don't start developing until they've been at 99-102 degrees F for 24 hours. That's how a clutch of eggs all hatches at the same time even though they were laid over a week or so. Until the hen goes broody and actually sits on her clutch and warms them up, they don't start developing at all. She lays all her eggs, then sits on them, then they all start developing at the same time.

You probably have a meat spot or a blood spot. Both are "errors" in the production of that egg. Meat spots are excess bits of reproductive organs sloughing off (gross, I know). Brown eggs tend to have more meat spots, as do eggs from older hens. Blood spots are caused by the rupture of a blood vessel on the yolk surface when it’s being formed or by a similar accident in the wall of the oviduct. Meat spots are usually in the white, and blood spots are usually in the yolk. Neither will hurt you.

Here's a fabulous thread that will show you what a fertile egg vs. an infertile egg looks like. https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/16008/how-to-tell-a-fertile-vs-infertile-egg-pictures