Breeding and incubation
Fertility, incubation, hatching, the rooster's role: Elsanor's answers, backed by the rates measured on our farm.
32 perguntas
It depends on the age of the breeding birds, on the season, on feeding and on health status. It falls naturally with the age of the cockerel as well as the hens, at the end of the season, or after stress or a deficiency. Build plays a part too, and is often overlooked: a very full tail, a heavy crest or abundant feathering around the vent physically hinder mating. Some breeds finally have a more marked libido than others. Our fertility rates are published breed by breed and season by season.
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It is a hormonal behaviour and entirely natural: the hen stops laying, stays on the nest, fluffs up when approached and leaves it only briefly. Nothing is wrong, she wants to hatch. The old, hardy breeds have kept that instinct — here Galinha sedosa barbuda, Galinha sedosa de cabeça branca, Pekin are rated excellent sitters; others, heavily selected for laying, have all but lost it. Broodiness is shown on each breed page, and the listing can be filtered by it.
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A good breeding cockerel conforms to the standard of his breed, is vigorous, in good health, and comes from a line whose results are known. Consistency across several traits is preferred to one spectacular feature: a magnificent but poorly fertile or delicate bird will not advance a line. And you look at what he passes on as much as at what he is — in the end it is the offspring that judges the sire.
A good line is judged over time, never on a single bird. Conformity to the standard steady from one generation to the next, good fertility, good hatchability, sound health: it is consistency that marks real work. The history of the flock and its show results remain the best indicators available. We publish our fertility and hatch rates breed by breed and season by season, precisely so that this can be checked.
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It is a line worked over several generations to fix particular qualities — type, laying, health — by choosing each mating carefully rather than leaving matters to chance. It is the heart of our trade. Our breeding rests on conformity to the standard of each breed, and showing birds allows that work to be confirmed by an outside judgement.
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Genetics plays a part, but so does management: age of the breeding birds, feeding, season, cockerel-to-hen ratio. Under equal conditions some lines pass on better fertility. Add to that build, which is often underestimated — a very full tail, a heavy crest or abundant feathering around the vent physically hinder mating — and a libido that is more or less marked depending on the breed. Our fertility rates are published breed by breed.
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Because the brooding instinct has been kept to varying degrees depending on the breed. Old, hardy breeds often sit well; those heavily selected for laying have largely lost it, and logically so: a hen that sits does not lay, so selection for laying has pushed that behaviour aside generation after generation. It remains a genetic aptitude, with individual exceptions. We show it on each breed page.
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The breeds rated excellent sitters in our catalogue are Galinha sedosa barbuda, Galinha sedosa de cabeça branca, Pekin. The Silkie is the benchmark, including as a foster mother for eggs that are not her own. Take care, however, with large feather-legged breeds: they sit willingly but handle the eggs clumsily, and more so still in the first hours after hatching.
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Between eight and twenty depending on the breed, a large fowl logically covering more than a bantam — whose eggs are smaller in any case. The guide is simple: she must cover them all without any protruding from the nest. And above all, start incubation at the same moment for every egg: as soon as the first chicks hatch, the hen leaves the nest without waiting for the others.
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You keep clean eggs of normal size and shape, with an intact shell, from healthy breeding birds. Cracked, dirty, misshapen, too small or too large eggs are set aside. One piece of advice that saves much disappointment: never add eggs whose age you do not know. A rotten egg bursting in an incubator contaminates all the others, and a whole setting is lost for the sake of one egg too many.
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Point downwards, in a cool room, and for as short a time as possible. The temperature is set according to that duration: around 19 °C for under two days, 16 °C up to a week, 12 °C beyond — with 15 °C the usual compromise where all eggs are stored in one place. Contrary to a widespread belief, the air must stay humid: from 75 % for a few days up to 90 % beyond a week. As for turning, it is overrated: over a short, well-managed storage it adds nothing.
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About 21 days in the hen, under a natural broody as in an incubator. In the very last days you stop turning the eggs so the chicks can position themselves, and you raise the humidity to make pipping easier. Those two closing steps weigh heavily on the outcome: many failures are decided in the final 48 hours.
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The causes fall into three groups: the egg was not fertilised, it was stored badly or too long, or the incubation conditions drifted — temperature, humidity, insufficient turning. Add to that the inherent weakness of certain embryos. Candling allows clear eggs to be removed early, which also prevents a dead egg from contaminating the others.
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By attending to every stage rather than looking for a miracle setting: healthy, well-fed breeding birds, fresh clean eggs, short storage at the right temperature and humidity, and stable incubation. One step still little practised makes a great difference: pre-warming the eggs on arrival at the hatchery, which gains several points of hatchability on eggs stored a week or more. It is overall rigour that makes the difference — and that is why we publish our hatch rates.
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Sooner than people think: a cockerel can be fertile from his first months. And he can remain so for several years — the length depends greatly on the breed, since a heavy breed that gains weight with age becomes progressively less effective. As always these are living creatures: from one cockerel to the next, and depending on conditions, the differences are real. It is the fertility observed that decides, never the age on the ring.
A pullet is fertile from her first eggs, but those eggs are not suited to incubation: too small, often irregular, with poor hatchability. Allow one or two months after point of lay. The best compromise generally lies in the first and second seasons, before fertility begins to decline.
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It depends chiefly on how lively the breed is: here the ratio runs from four to ten hens per cockerel. Too few hens and the cockerel exhausts them, damaging the back feathering; too many and fertility falls away on the last of them. It is a balance to watch closely: the ratio is one of the first settings to review when the fertility of a run drops off.
A mated hen lays fertile eggs for two to three weeks. In practice, eggs laid in the days following a change of cockerel may therefore still be from the previous one. That is why, in breeding, three weeks are always allowed after a new pen is set up before hatching eggs are collected: without that precaution a whole line of descent becomes doubtful.
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Before incubation, not reliably by eye. The practical method is candling, by transparency: on a pale shell a network of vessels can be made out from the fifth day. But the most informative examination comes later, around the seventeenth or eighteenth day — it then distinguishes an egg that was never fertilised from an embryo that stopped along the way, and those two cases do not have the same causes.
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The same criteria as for the cockerel, with particular weight on consistency: conformity to the standard, vigour, good health, steady laying, eggs of normal size and shape. A hen that lays heavily but produces misshapen eggs is not a good breeder. And as with the male, it is the offspring that decides: an average hen producing excellent chicks is worth more than a handsome hen that passes on nothing.
Technically yes, and the chicks will be viable and often vigorous. But they will no longer be purebred birds: neither identifiable, nor showable, nor usable to carry a line forward. Crossing makes sense within a clear project — creating a variety, introducing a trait — and that work takes generations of breeding back to type. Done at random, it undoes in one season what breeding has taken years to fix.
Yes, with no difficulty: the incubation period is the same for all breeds of hen. The only constraint is organisation — mark the eggs in pencil so as not to mix them up, and plan to separate the chicks at hatching if the parentage matters to you. Do not, on the other hand, mix different species: their incubation periods do not coincide.
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No. Hens lay without a cockerel, and many keepers manage perfectly well without one — particularly in built-up areas, where crowing sometimes causes trouble with the neighbours. A cockerel becomes essential as soon as you want chicks. He also brings a measure of watchfulness to the flock and settles certain tensions, but he is in no way a necessity.
It is the examination of an egg by transparency, using a light source, during incubation. Development can already be made out from the fifth day on pale-shelled eggs, but the most instructive moment falls around the seventeenth or eighteenth day: at that point you can identify not only the clear eggs, but also the germs that began to develop before stopping. That is the stage at which we candle, according to our incubation schedules.
It all depends on your aim. For a private keeper the simplest course is to follow the rhythm of the seasons: in spring fertility is at its highest and the chicks grow through the fine weather, reaching their frame before winter. Breeders who exhibit, by contrast, calculate their breeding so as to present birds at the right age on show day — which means mastering lighting and insulation, and that is not within everyone's reach.
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Three weeks, without exception wherever parentage matters. It is the time needed for the previous cockerel's sperm store to be used up. Ignoring it means no longer knowing which male the chicks came from — and in breeding, a doubt over parentage amounts to an error: the bird becomes unusable for carrying the work forward.
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Because it is the only way to guarantee parentage. One run per breed, or per line, allows you to know exactly which pair each chick came from. Without that separation you end up with birds about which nothing can be said, and the breeding work stops dead. It is the main constraint that limits in practice the number of breeds a flock can genuinely work with.
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Candling helps to settle the matter, without resolving everything. An egg that stayed clear was never fertilised: the cause lies with the breeding birds — age of the cockerel, ratio in the pen, condition of the birds. An embryo that stopped along the way is more ambiguous: the running of the incubation and the storage of the eggs are implicated, but so are the breeding birds, and often. That is why we candle late, around the seventeenth or eighteenth day: at that stage the reading is richest.
The principle is to stay within the breed average rather than aim at a precise weight. We do not grade hatching eggs, but any egg clearly outside the average — noticeably smaller or noticeably larger than the others from the same pen — is removed and does not go in. An egg outside the norm often signals something else: a pullet right at point of lay, a double yolk, a fault in formation. The consistency of the setting counts for more than the weight itself.
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Around the eighteenth day, when they move to the hatcher. Turning serves the embryo's development during incubation; at the end of the process the chick positions itself to pip the shell and must be left undisturbed. Not to be confused with turning during storage before incubation: that is widely overrated and has demonstrable effect only over long periods, beyond three weeks, or with old breeding birds.
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The causes are many and overlapping: incubation or hatching conditions that drifted, bacteria in the machine, or the knock-on effect of a problem in the breeding birds themselves. One point deserves saying plainly: helping a chick out most often merely puts off the outcome. A bird that cannot manage on its own stands a strong chance of proving weaker and more fragile afterwards. It is better to look for the cause upstream — running of the hatchery, hygiene, condition of the breeding birds — than to intervene on the shell.
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Fewer than the eggs she can cover. A hen covers eight to twenty eggs depending on her frame, but raising them calls for something else: she must be able to shelter the whole brood beneath her through the cool nights of the first weeks. A large fowl manages that with a numerous brood, a bantam far less so. The practical guide is the same as for sitting: if chicks are left outside when she settles, there are too many. Watch the first days above all, when a chick that falls behind rarely catches up.
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