Refrigerated eggs experiment complete!

[Minky]

Hill Minky. I am a very new chook owner, I only have one hen and a rooster and 5 youngsters which should start laying end of February. Thing is,...I was going to supply friends and family with some eggs, but hearing what you have said about putting eggs in the fridge and they still hatch, what if I put my eggs in the fridge until I have say a dozen and friend cracks one of these eggs open for breakfast, is there bound to be a little chick in there??

I think the possibility of that is zero, unless a broody hen is living in your fridge!

 

[Minky]

• My silkie recently went broody. She was sitting on 5 fresh eggs and I pulled 10 of her eggs out of the fridge,marked them, and put them under her. 5 of the fridge eggs had been in the fridge for at least 2 weeks- And 5 for at least a week. Candeling on day 12 showed 13 developing eggs. They started hatching on day 21( 1/26/21) and the last hatched thursday(1/28) we had to help that last one just a little bit. Unfortunately,there were still 2 unhatched eggs Further inspection showed no signs of life, so we waited a bit longer, checked again then discarded them so, out of 15 eggs, 11 hatched. The last one is a little wimpy, but we've got him inside and are keeping him warm and feeding electrolyte water with a dropped. The other 10 are thriving and doing so well!

so 6 refrigerated eggs hatched out of 10. Possibly 5 that were a week old and 1 that was 2 weeks old. Thats pretty good. I wonder if they will be more female than male. My experiment was supposed to test gender not see if refrigerated eggs can hatch. It was a colossal failure, but thats ok. I learned I'm better off storing them like I normally do, turning 3 x a day like I normally do, and incubating properly. LOL and then just eating the roosters like usual...

 

[Drummondchick]

I think the possibility of that is zero, unless a broody hen is living in your fridge!

 

[Victinag]

so 6 refrigerated eggs hatched out of 10. Possibly 5 that were a week old and 1 that was 2 weeks old. Thats pretty good. I wonder if they will be more female than male. My experiment was supposed to test gender not see if refrigerated eggs can hatch. It was a colossal failure, but thats ok. I learned I'm better off storing them like I normally do, turning 3 x a day like I normally do, and incubating properly. LOL and then just eating the roosters like usual...

I wish I knew an instant sure-fire way to know their gender. But i'll def update when I do know!

 

[Kglassmo]

For mass production of broiler chicks, they just semi-starve both genders through their entire growth period so they do not develop the big breast.

You can download the "parent stock management guide" for several lines of broilers (or layers) as a .pdf. Some of them have charts showing what breast shape is desired for the breeders, and indicating how much to increase or decrease feed if it's not right.

Some companies even make special feeders for only the males (taller birds) or females (smaller head/comb/wattles) so they can give them different diets! Here's a link to one example:
https://www.bigdutchmanusa.com/en/p...breeder-management/feeding-systems/malechain/

The selective breeding of broilers (to develop better lines of birds) MIGHT require artificial insemination, but mass-producing broiler chicks certainly does not. And the companies have thoroughly separated those two parts--develop several good parent lines, then raise lots of the parent stock to cross in specific combinations, then raise enormous quantities of chicks from them to actually butcher (broilers) or produce eggs (layers.) They are all using 2-way or even 4-way hybrids, so they never pick a bird that was actually raised as a meat bird and expect it to reproduce.

And if they're not using AI for broilers, they're certainly not using it for the layer types.



Not a problem in a breeding program that is carefully developing new traits: one rooster per pen, with some number of hens.

Not a problem when producing thousands and millions of chicks: every rooster is an acceptable father for this purpose, and no chick from this pen will be used for breeding.

And the sperm CAN survive for up to 3 weeks--good fertility for the first week, then declining for the next 2 weeks or so. That matters any time someone switches roosters in a breeding pen, so it's pretty well known.

Broilers are not used for egg laying purposes, I’m not sure why that was confused on this thread. The issue of ‘excess roosters’ only happens in egg laying industry. Both male & female broilers are consumed. But not so for egg-laying variety, those little roos meet a sad demise. I can only discuss what I’ve witnessed in real life.
Broilers are meat chickens, selectively bred to be heavy breeds. Plymouth Rock crossed with Cornish, as an example; color and feather patterns were selectively bred out of them too, because people don’t want to see dark feather shafts stuck in skin on their roast chickens. So feathers must be white/clear. Mother Nature did not intend for chickens and turkeys to be white/clear feathered, that’s human influence of selectively breeding over centuries. There’s no camouflage with white feathering in natural habitats of wild game fowl. Its a rarity to see white/albino wild game animals. Anyway, adult broilers at around 22 weeks maturity are still quite heavy regardless if they are put on special feed. Yes, broiler industries do select a few for breeding purposes, but it depends on the facility. After visiting various breeding and hatching facilities in late 90s, the reality was sadness. Not very robust broiler adults being displayed, hopefully things have changed since I last visited one. Broilers are put on finishing feed before market and some farmers even implemented’feed withdrawal’. I don’t raise broilers, I only worked as a scientist in the industry for several years. I’m a poultry hobbyist now. I love my chickens and treat them as pets. I wish you all the best with your endeavors.

 

[LaurEliz]

I recently successfully incubated 4 washed and refrigerated eggs. Not sure if they’re girls or not though.