So How are Chicken Eggs Fertilized?

So exactly how are chicken eggs fertilized?

If you have not grown up with chickens, this is a perfectly legitimate, and common question. Even experienced flock owners may not witness their rooster mating the hen as it is a very quick event, usually less than 30 seconds.

Courtesy of jametiks

The rooster and hen have what is called a cloaca, which is a receptacle for the the urinary, intestinal and reproductive systems. These are located under the tail feathers of both hen and rooster.

The rooster must jump on the hen and make contact with both cloaca receptacles, and when he accomplished this, the sperm travels rapidly up the hens oviduct and remain in the pullets sex organs for up to a week.

What? How are chicken eggs fertilized? This seems a bit strange until you get used to the idea!

Courtesy of Oquendo

The hen will produce eggs that week, as usual, but these ones often become fertilized chicken eggs. All the eggs produced by the hen at that time can be fertilized by that one mating.

The egg forms in the beginning as the white and the membrane material that attaches to the shell, which forms last, just before the hen lays the egg.

Courtesy of jametiks

How are chicken eggs fertilized is a common question. You only need a rooster if you want to have live chicks born. Otherwise, your hens will lay eggs that you may collect to eat, even without a rooster ever setting foot on the place. You can order baby chicks from online Baby Chicken Hatcheries if you don't want to or cannot keep a rooster.

The eggs you buy at the store are unfertilized as they come from baby chicken hatcheries and breeding farms that the keep thousands of hens, or pullets, for egg production.

They also keep hens and roosters together to make eggs that hatch, in huge incubators by the hundred thousands. Roosters, or cockerels, are kept to reproduce the breeding stock as the hens get too old for good egg production.

If not needed they are butchered for the pet food market, or in the case of the larger meat birds, they are sent on to portals for human consumption.

How to Hatch Chicken Eggs

Courtesy of jametiks

If you want live chicks to replace your older hens, and want to hatch chicken eggs without an incubator, you are going to need your rooster to produce fertilized chicken eggs first.

Incubating Chicken Eggs can be done by the hen, or by artificially incubating chicken eggs in an egg incubator.

Then you are going to need your hen to answer the call of mother nature, and "go broody" on you, which is an instinct she has to "set" on a clutch of eggs. If you leave the eggs in the nest in sufficient numbers, the hen will stop laying eggs and start brooding them, or setting on the eggs.

When she leaves the nest after laying eggs it cools them slightly. If the surrounding temperature remains between 45 F-65F, the fertilized chicken eggs will stay viable for up to two weeks. When she sits on the eggs for 21 days, the chicks will all hatch at the same time.

Candling Chicken Eggs

You don't need anything fancy to candle chicken eggs. Choose eggs that are about four days old from the nest. Get a super bright LED flashlight and hold it under your egg.

Check once per day for a healthy network of tiny spider like blood vessels. By day 12 if you have a viable egg you be able to see an air sac and one end, a live embryo and well formed vessels!

Your fertilized chicken eggs will begin Hatching Chicken Eggs by day 21.

Congratulations! So now you can answer confidently, when your kids ask, "so how are chicken eggs fertilized?"

---

Broody hens know all about hatching chicken eggs without an incubator, but for the rest of us, we won't be incubating chicken eggs without fertilized chicken eggs and a good chicken incubator. Let's continue the journey by visiting our Raising Chickens pages. Enjoy!

Courtesy of missnoma

Off we go to Raising Chickens