Who’s the daddy?

[Jtaranc]

I have a weird question, hopefully I can phrase it correctly.

My hens free range with a BCM rooster. I also have 2 other roos but they’re in a “bachelor pad” separately.

I want to cross my BCM girls to my olive egger rooster, but she’s been with the BCM roo for months.

How long do I have to wait after putting her with the olive egger for him to be the one who’s fathering the eggs?

 

[BoundlessLove]

I’d keep her separated from the other roos at all times and wait at least six weeks.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Nothing weird about that at all. This is a forum where we can have pretty serious discussions about chicken poop. What is strange about chicken sex?

Not your question, but it is related. It takes about 25 hours for an egg to go through the hen's internal egg making factory. That egg can only be fertilized during the first few minutes of that journey. That means that if a mating takes place on a Wednesday, Wednesday's egg will not be fertilized from that mating. Thursday's egg might or might not be fertile, depending in timing. Friday's egg will be fertile from that mating.

A rooster does not necessarily mate every hen in his flock every day. But he doesn't have too. When they mate the sperm is stored in a special "compartment" near where that egg starts its internal journey. That sperm can stay viable anywhere from a week and a half to over three weeks so one mating can last a long time. The problem is knowing how long it will really last. Many breeders use a cut-off of three weeks before they start saving eggs to hatch. That's usually enough. But there have been cases that a hen continued laying fertile eggs for over four weeks. Those cases are very rare but possible. So some people use four weeks to be very sure. So while it is possible over four weeks it happens so rarely that it is not worth considering.