I just don't get it!??!

[229Mick]

So I'm still relatively new to back yard chickens, i'm BRAND new to having a rooster, and hatching chicks. So here's my question:

I have a chicken that 'disappeared' while we were on vacation. the person letting them in and out in the evening and morning, noticed on the first day she was here. On day 8, we got back and I noticed that we were in fact missing one, but as it turned out, she was in the bushes in the 'outer back yard' (outside the chicken area) sitting on eggs.

So the chickens will lay an egg every day, if the rooster has access to the chicken, it'll fertilize that days egg. So it would seem to me, best case scenario would be that she has 12 chicks over the course of 12 days. 21 days after the first fertile egg was laid, you get chick 1, 21 days after the second fertile egg was laid (whether that was the next day or whenever she got with the rooster again) we'd get chick 2 etc... And since she was in the outer yard, the rooster didn't have access to her most of those days.

So the question is, how in the world did we get 12 chicks hatch in one day (day 20)??? There must be something I'm missing, or some critical point I missed that day (semester) that I cut health class...?

 

[ronott1]

So I'm still relatively new to back yard chickens, i'm BRAND new to having a rooster, and hatching chicks. So here's my question:

I have a chicken that 'disappeared' while we were on vacation. the person letting them in and out in the evening and morning, noticed on the first day she was here. On day 8, we got back and I noticed that we were in fact missing one, but as it turned out, she was in the bushes in the 'outer back yard' (outside the chicken area) sitting on eggs.

So the chickens will lay an egg every day, if the rooster has access to the chicken, it'll fertilize that days egg. So it would seem to me, best case scenario would be that she has 12 chicks over the course of 12 days. 21 days after the first fertile egg was laid, you get chick 1, 21 days after the second fertile egg was laid (whether that was the next day or whenever she got with the rooster again) we'd get chick 2 etc... And since she was in the outer yard, the rooster didn't have access to her most of those days.

So the question is, how in the world did we get 12 chicks hatch in one day (day 20)??? There must be something I'm missing, or some critical point I missed that day (semester) that I cut health class...?

More than one hen lays the eggs and when there are enough, the hen will go broody and sit on the eggs. There were likely more than 12 egg in the nest.

Basically, she did not start incubating the eggs until the last egg was laid. Until then, the eggs go into a suspended state. Incubation starts as soon as the eggs get up to incubation temperature and then 21 days later the chicks hatch.

A hen will stop sitting on the eggs after about two days from the start of hatching, so the 12 day hatch will never happen.

 

[Ridgerunner]

It probably didn’t happen the day you cut health class, you were probably napping. Actually birds that incubate their eggs were probably never discussed unless you took a really advanced class.

The sperm can stay viable inside the hen for two weeks or so, sometimes longer, after a mating. The rooster only needs to mate with her every two week or so to keep her laying fertile eggs.

A hen will lay an egg a day, possibly occasionally skipping a day, until her hormones kick in and make her broody. The technical stuff of what is going on with the embryo inside each egg can get pretty detailed but in general, development doesn’t really start until the eggs are incubated. The day the incubation starts is the critical time, not when the egg was laid.

While 21 days is the target for when the eggs should hatch after incubation starts, it’s just a target. There are many different things that affect exactly when an egg will hatch. They can easily hatch a couple of days before or after that target 21 days.

Another thing that affects how many days after incubation starts that they hatch is that people don’t count right. You didn’t sleep through math class too did you? Actually it is a very common mistake. An egg does not have 24 hours of incubational development two seconds after incubation starts. It takes a full day for an egg to have a day’s worth of development so you should say “one” 24 hours after incubation starts. An easy way to check your counting is the day of the week incubation starts is the day of the week they should hatch. If they started on Thursday, they should hatch on a Thursday. Well, at least that is the target.

 

[229Mick]

Thanks Ron, She was the only one outside the fence, so she must have laid them all, but the fact that she can lay them and let them wait clears up the real question. I thought they just started the clock as soon as they were laid.

Thanks a lot for the explanation!

 

[229Mick]

Thanks to you too RidgeRunner! That makes a lot of sense!

One question then, is it at all unusual to get 12 in one shot like this? It seems a lot to me, even with this new information, but maybe not??

 

[ronott1]

Thanks to you too RidgeRunner! That makes a lot of sense!

One question then, is it at all unusual to get 12 in one shot like this? It seems a lot to me, even with this new information, but maybe not??

A big hen can lay on a lot of eggs!

It is not unusual.

Congratulations on a good surprise hatch!

 

[junebuggena]

A hen can only lay one egg every 24-32 hours. If you were only gone 8 days, and she's sitting on 12 eggs, then other hens must have been adding to her clutch.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know how many days she was laying in that hidden nest before someone noticed. Probably a lot longer than 8 days. It’s possible other hens laid in that nest, it’s possible she laid them all herself. Lots of things are possible.

I’ve seen a hen return from a hidden nest that I never found with 18 chicks. That’s a lot. Twelve is more normal from what I’ve seen but each chicken is an individual. Each hatch is unique. Here we are talking about one hatch. One hatch is not enough for averages to mean anything. Some hens may come back with only one or two chicks, not 12 or 18.