Is the Rooster doing his JOB?

[Darlagips]

I have a very nice Lavender Ameraucana Rooster in with 4 Easter Egger hens (I'm assuming as they are from Ideal Poultry and were called Ameraucanas) that I got from the feedstore. They've been laying for a month or more now, and I'm wondering whether or not the Rooster is doing his job. I have not seen him top the hens - ever. Well, that's not totally true. A while back one of my doxies managed to get through my legs and get to one of the hens and injured it quite severely. While the hen was just sitting there, I saw the Rooster run, jump on her, do his business and then get off. So I know he knows how, I just haven't seen him top any of the other hens in the pen. There is no chasing - loud cackling or anything. I decided to go ahead and put a batch of the eggs into the incubator and see if after 10 days or so any of them show to be fertile.

Anybody else ever had a rooster that just doesn't seem to be interested in the other sex - unless the hen is totally imobile? What do you do about that?

 

[RoostersCrow HensDeliver!]

Just because you dont see it happening, doesn't mean that it's not. I'm sure an active young roo like that is more than capable of covering 4 hens. My EE roo has 20 some wo men and I have excelent fertility. Search for "fertilized egg picture" in the search engine up in the top left side, you'll be able to see pictures of fertilized (and not) eggs. Good luck with your soon to be babies!

 

[AllisonD]

I used to have a rooster who would only mount the hens when I wasn't there... I guess it was a dominance issue. I was top bird and he didn't want to challenge me. ANYWAY, I found out from a friend that the rooster was MOST CERTAINLY interested in the hens, and then when our pullets started laying (at this point we had given the poor sweet beautiful rooster away due to noise complaints) I noticed the eggs were fertile. So yeah, just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. Good luck with your eggs!

 

[Darlagips]

Okay - I'm going to keep my fingers crossed then. We will see at the end of this week whether any of the eggs were fertile!