photo of the Rosevine Cottage Girls with their animals goats,
Menu
  • Start Here
    • About Us
    • Work With Us
  • Home
  • Blog
    • Devotionals
      • Keep The Faith
      • Spiritual Battles
      • Dry Season Devotional
      • Hope In The Storm
      • Knowing God
      • Godly Parenting
      • Christian Relationships
    • Recipes
    • Home and Garden
      • Animal Care
      • Celebrations
      • DIY Projects
        • Kitchen Remodel
      • Farmhouse Decor
      • Garden Resources
      • Orchard Care
      • Household Hacks
    • Reviews
    • Travel
  • Podcast
  • Books
    • Downpour Learning From Life’s Storms
    • The Garden Journal
    • Christmas Planner
    • The Herb Garden Handbook
  • Shop
    • Our Store
    • The Mercantile
  • Courses
Menu

Hatching Eggs: Are My Eggs Fertilized?

Posted on August 28, 2019September 16, 2020 by Rosevine Cottage Girls
Spread the love

One of the best parts of having your own backyard chickens is fresh eggs, but another is hatching eggs! It’s such an amazing experience hatching eggs for the first time- or the 30th who am I kidding. But how do you know if your backyard flock’s eggs are fertile? We’re going to answer all your questions.

 

There is a lot of information on the web about “raising chickens“, a quick search brings up 30,000,000 results. In this sheer volume, it can be overwhelming trying to find exactly what you are looking for. The same is true when it comes to knowing if you have fertilized chicken eggs.

 

How to tell if your chickens are laying fertile eggs #RosevineCottageGirls #HatchingEggs #RaisingChickens

 

Raising Chickens For Hatching Eggs

Contents hide
1 Raising Chickens For Hatching Eggs
2 Hatching Eggs: How To Tell If A Chicken Egg Is Fertile
3 How Long Are Chicken Eggs Fertile?
3.1 Related posts:

 

One of the greatest joys of a chicken keeper is holding a tiny ball of downy feathers in your hands. Whether you’ve just bought started chickens from the local feed store, had them arrive at your door, but the greatest treasure is getting to watch new life burst from the hatching eggs you carefully tended.

 

Raising chickens for hatching eggs is super easy!

 

  • Check and make sure that raising chickens is legal in your area.
  • Ensure you have room for more chickens (check out our article on keeping chickens to familiarize yourself with their needs)
  • Start with healthy chickens, depending on how many hens you plan on hatching eggs from you’ll need one rooster for every ten hens. Your chickens should be from good breeding stock without deformities, and the rooster’s comb should look like a standard comb for his breed.
  • You can breed your chickens all year round, but chickens breed in the spring tend to be stronger and begin laying in the autumn.
  • If you are breeding a second or third generation of chickens lookout for inbreeding issues. Try tagging your birds so you know which ones are related to the rooster. A good way to prevent these issues is by getting a new rooster every year.
  • Get an incubator and learn how to hatch chicken eggs.

 

Hatching Eggs: How To Tell If A Chicken Egg Is Fertile

 

Fertile chicken eggs with a "bullseye"

 

Checking your eggs to see if they are fertile is a really easy process. Crack a hatching egg into a bowl, unfertile eggs will have a single dot while fertilized eggs will have a “bullseye” shape or a small white circle with another circle inside of it.

 

How Long Are Chicken Eggs Fertile?

 

Maybe you’re like us and have multiple roosters in your flock, and want to have hatching eggs from a certain breed.  The average length of fertility from a single mating is 10-14 days, to ensure that you have pure bread, or the mix you want your hens will need to be away from all the other roosters for a minimum of 10 days. After that, you can begin saving your hatching eggs.

 

If you want to be 100% sure of the right breeding remove your hens to a pen away from all of your roosters. After ten days begin checking the eggs for fertility. When you’ve found infertile eggs, put your rooster in the pen with the hens and begin collecting hatching eggs.

 

Check out our Amazon Storefront for all of your chicken keeping needs!

 

This post contains affiliate links.

 


 

Before you go, check these out!

  • Caring For Chicks
  • Caring For Laying Hens
  • How To Introduce New Chickens To Your Flock

Need more chicken advice? Check out the rest of our articles on chicken keeping!

 

Connect with the Rosevine Cottage Girls, claim you copy, sign up for our mailing list

 

[yikes-mailchimp form=”2″]

Related posts:

How To Grow Pole Beans On A Trellis
The Best Tips For Desert Gardening
Our Homey Fall Dining Room

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Meet The Rosevine Cottage Girls

Hi we’re the Rosevine Cottage Girls, Brianna, Cheyenne, and Tracy. A Mother and twin daughters living in beautiful middle Tennessee with our veteran dad and husband Mr. Cottage. We’re always up to something here at Rosevine Cottage whether that is redecorating some space in the house, working in the garden, or playing with the animals. Read more…

Connect With Us!

The Latest

  • The Best Homemade Citrus Cleaner Recipe
  • Making Butter In A Jar In 7 Easy Steps
  • How To Wean A Nigerian Dwarf Goat
  • The Best Homemade Ketchup Recipe
  • Does God Care? A Lesson From The Woman Who Touched Jesus’s Hem
Shop Now!

Legal Stuff

  • Privacy Policy
  • Affiliate Disclosure
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Sponsored Content Disclosure
AntiqueFarmHouse
©2021 | Design by Superb