I have several chickens all running together, several different kinds of standard chickens and silkies. Since the silkies are the only bantams I have, I can easily tell their eggs apart from the standard sized eggs. I am going to take the standard Roo out and leave the silkie roosters in, so the silkie's eggs will be purebred. How long until I can safely consider the silkie's eggs purebred, and be sure that they aren't still going to be mixed with the standard roo? Thanks!
Safely... A month. They say that a hen can stay fertilized for up to a month after being exposed to a roo... So I imagine that it would take that long for a new roo's 'progeny' to be pure. Hope that helps.
Who is "they"? From what I've seen & heard, a roosters seed is stored by the hen and good for up to 14 days. Three weeks is a safe bet. God Bless,
Guess it depends on how "safe" you want to be and how much you really want to be sure. I have always felt safe after a month. I have friends who breed gamefowl that wait until their hen has been broody and started to lay again. That`s a little paranoid for me, but I feel pretty good about a month. Three weeks has always been iffy in my mind........Pop
Three weeks is likely enough, but a full month would be best. Have hatched eggs from a hen 3 weeks after the rooster was gone and still got chicks.
Quote:Here are some links from a quick search on Google that I did: http://msucares.com/pubs/infosheets/is1610.pdf (Notice in this article that it says the semen can remain alive and fertilize an egg for "up to 3 weeks" but then in the very next sentence it says "A hen will stay fertile for only about 3 to 4 days after one mating." That's from a university professor. It doesn't make sense to me how to two can both be true but I'm sure it does to the professor.) http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/pou3551?opendocument Also, I'd have to go find it and get the Page # but Storey's Guide To Raising Chickens says semen remains fertile for up to 10 days. Now, having said that, here's what I do. I put a rooster on a hen for a weekend and then take her off so he don't beat her up. When I'm ready to change the rooster out and put the hen under another rooster, I collect eggs for a full two weeks. After that I used to wait a week before putting another rooster in but I found that I was getting unfertilized eggs before the third week so I now put a rooster over than hen after the second week and then wait on week to start collecting eggs again. Doing this has reduced my turnaround time significantly and I've have no problems to date. If someone wants to spend more time researching this, I'm sure they can find more on the topic and if anyone finds something different from the above, please let us all know. God Bless,
I was told 21 days when I bought some hens but I only got fertile eggs for 4-5 days after I brought them home. The rest of the eggs never developed. That was when I first got into chickens though and I'm not sure how reliable the person who told me this was. I have waited 21 days before incubating any eggs from hens when I put them back into their breeding pens after they had been running around all winter with all the other breeds together for to help keep them warmer since I only have trios of some breeds.
Thats funny because i had 2 standard smeraucana hens and a golden laced wyandotte roo who mated with them. I rehomed the roo and decided to stick with bantams. over 3 weeks later i gathered eggs for hatching from the ameraucana girls thinking my bantam cochin roo was gonna be the daddy, one chick turned out exactly like the golden laced wyandotte except with a muff like the ameraucanas
When I bought my silkie hen from the breeder I collected her eggs daily. I thought I would incubate all the eggs she laid to get some nice babies.I put them in the bator and dated them. The eggs collected after day 10 were clear. So my hen didn't even stay fertile for 2 weeks.
