What are the signs that a grown rooster isn't fertile?

[Lungrover]

If there can be gay roosters, then how often is it and what are some visual signs of that?

 

[Mrs. K]

You are not getting bullseyes in your eggs.

 

[Lungrover]

You are not getting bullseyes in your eggs.

I'm interested in visual signs in the rooster itself if one can even tell

 

[Mrs. K]

Well, I would start with a late developing rooster, and I would watch how the hens act around him. If they show no interest, he is not sending off the right visual and smells that attract hens to him.

Once I will admit, I had a cockerel that I (an experienced poultry keeper) thought was a pullet, until long after I should have. He never crowed. I was not getting bullseyes in the eggs. He did not show any rooster traits such as the tail, and saddle feathers until about 4.5 months.

But the really strange thing was that he was an outcast in the flock, none of the hens liked him, and while they didn't run from him or avoid him, it was more like he was a different species and they ignored him. They just didn't really see him.

I have heard, that if you casterate cockerels at a very young age, they just become fat pullets. But I wonder if they too are ignored by the hens. I have never had them.

If you have a good flock interaction, the girls tend to dote on the rooster, his every call is taken seriously, and he is just so wonderful, they seem to hang on his every notion.

Now not all roosters are great roosters, and a lot of them are rotten, but there is a huge number of mediocre roosters too. Still in all, the hens tend to like them.

Look to your hens, if they don't like him, I would cull him. That is what I did with that cockerel. As to how many, in my own experience and personal reading, it occurs very rarely. The animal species that survives are born to breed.

Mrs K