I am very new to chickens so I am uncertain as to when to expect eggs after our hens have mated with our rooster. We are willing to allow some of the eggs to be hatched by one of our hens. I look forward to hearing from you.
Pullets (female chicken under a year old) will lay eggs when their bodies are mature enough to do so. It has nothing to do with whether they are mated or not.....tho if they are submitting to being mated, she should start laying soon as the mating is another sign of physical maturity. Whether a pullet or hen will want hatch out eggs (go broody) is another matter all together. It a hormonal thing, some hens will never go broody, some can't seem to stop being broody.
I’m not exactly sure of your question. As Aart said, you do not need a rooster for a hen to lay an egg. They will lay eggs whether a rooster is around or not. But you do need a rooster to have fertile eggs. If your question is when are the eggs fertile, it takes about 25 hours for an egg to go through the hen’s internal egg-making factory. It can only be fertilized in the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a successful mating takes place on Monday, Monday’s egg cannot be fertile. Tuesday’s might but I would not count on it. Wednesday’s egg should be fertile. A rooster does not necessarily mate with every hen in his flock every day, but the hen can store his sperm for two weeks or maybe even three weeks in a container near the start of her egg-making factory. So a rooster just needs to mate a hen once every two weeks for her to produce fertile eggs. You do not need a rooster around for a hen to go broody. A lot of hens will never go broody and you cannot control when they do, but having a rooster around will not have any effect on that. Either they go broody or they do not. If I misunderstood your question please try asking again.
