How long/often to keep roosters with hens for fertile eggs?

[teamcarp33]

I'm just learning about breeding and had a few questions about the, ahem, technicalities. I've read that hens can produce fertile eggs for several weeks after being bred by a rooster. But how long would you need to keep a rooster in with a hen to achieve that? For example, if you had one rooster and you were rotating him with more than one group of hens, how long would you need to keep him in with each set of hens before you could move him out and still have good fertility? Could you just have him with one group for a couple days, then the next for a couple days, and keep rotating so that he's back with each group once every 2 weeks or so?

 

[sdm111]

Once initially bred a hen will lay fertile eggs from that specific mating 36hrs later and lay fertile eggs for approx and up to around 12-14 days. I put a cock with a hen watch at least two mounts then take out and repeat every 3-5 days just to make sure. Now if you're trying to flush a hen out from a previous mating I wouldn't mate her for 3 weeks just to make sure. That's what I do but others will have their own ways

 

[teamcarp33]

Interesting. I really love marans and easter eggers, and I'm also really fascinated by egg color. I'm wondering how feasible it would be to keep just one FBCM rooster to be able to produce purebred chicks as well as olive eggers

 

[teamcarp33]

Oh and because I live in a sort of suburban area (no HOA or legal restrictions, just don't want to tick off my neighbors with night
Crowing) I was thinking of bringing to rooster into the garage at night to muffle sound and give the hens a break). Anyway, just trying to figure out if this idea is worth a tey

 

[sdm111]

Unless u have really cranky neighbors I don't think one rooster will be too noisy. Especially if u pay them off with eggs

 

[donrae]

If you're concerned about rooster noise, you're probably only going to have one, correct? Why not just leave him with the flock and only collect eggs from the hens you're going to hatch? From the sound of your set-up, you're not going to be incubating tons of eggs. If I'm wrong please correct, and give us a more specific idea of your set-up.

 

[teamcarp33]

So just leaving him out with all during the day, and bringing him in if needed t night? Yes, maybe I am making this too complicated I just started thinking of potentials and realized I wasn't really sure how fertilization worked...

 

[teamcarp33]

And yes, it would only be one rooster. 10 to 15 tops hens total.

 

[donrae]

Not being sure what your're planning, I'm just going off what you've posted....

So if you have marans and EE hens....and a marans rooster.....he's with all the hens all the time....when you want marans chicks you only save the dark brown eggs for incubation....when you want olive eggers you just save the green or blue eggs....I agree it's easy to overcomplicate things! If you had other layers in the flock, it shouldn't be a problem either unless they lay the same color egg, but it's more likely other breeds are going to lay regular brown eggs.

 

[teamcarp33]

Yea that's the basic situation. EE hens currently, marans and OE chicks. I've got severals weeks/ months to decide whether to keep a marans boy or not.