Can I incubate and hatch eggs with 1 rooster and 10 hens?

[speng5]

Will this provide enough fertility to hatch eggs? I am thinking of expanding and doing another pen, and its really been a turnoff dealing with the roosters I originally started my current flock with. What is the bare minimum ratio I can have and also ensure some fertility?

 

[NatJ]

Oh, oops. This is the QUAIL section. I answered for CHICKENS. I do not know the answer for quail.

Will this provide enough fertility to hatch eggs? I am thinking of expanding and doing another pen, and its really been a turnoff dealing with the roosters I originally started my current flock with. What is the bare minimum ratio I can have and also ensure some fertility?

One rooster with ten hens is a fairly common ratio. I would expect most or all of your eggs to be fertile.

With a flock up to about 20 hens, some roosters will mate with all the hens frequently enough, but some other roosters will skip some hens. So if you get that many hens with just one rooster, you should definitely get some fertile eggs, but you might also get some infertile ones.

In any size flock, if you have at least one rooster, you should get at least some fertile eggs. In a very large flock (20+ chickens), the rooster will probably end up with some favorite hens (who always lay fertile eggs because he mates with them regularly) and some hens that he ignores (who do not lay fertile eggs, because he does not bother to mate with them.) If you can recognize which hens are his favorites, you can just use their eggs for hatching, because they are the most likely to be fertile.

Commercial hatcheries have flocks of hundreds or thousands of chickens, and they often use about one rooster per ten hens (the ratio you have now.) Some breeds need a few more roosters than that, some can get by with less, but 1:10 is a good starting point for many breeds.

Depending on your goals with chickens, you can have one pen with one rooster and a group of hens to provide eggs for hatching, and other pens with groups of hens but no rooster (the eggs from those hens will not be fertile, so they will not hatch, but they will be just fine for eating.)

 

[muddy75]

I would try to see what fertility rate is

 

[Nabiki]

The ideal number is 5 hens to 1 roo, but that doesn't mean that you *have* to have that number for best fertility. I would do a test and see. You might have as much as a 70-80% fertility rate, which wouldn't be bad.

 

[CovidtimeQuail]

Depends if your roo is an equal-opportunity mounter. Sometimes you get a roo with the hots for just one hen and no matter what you do, your ratio is just 1:1. Sometimes you get one that makes his rounds several times a day and wonders where the rest of the hens are.

I have one roo well past his prime (he's about 2 years old) and all five of his hens lay fertile eggs.

Of course, testing fertility is also a good idea. At some point, maybe he's shooting blanks. In that case though, you'd have to have a back-up roo. Come to think of it, I think I'd keep two roos minimum, just in case.

 

[FatherFalcon]

2 males 8 females or 1:4 For the First weeks of mating my Roos were doing just fine until they hit around 17 ounces. daily breakfast checking for the blastoderm. when the roos and hens got too big to mate assisted insemination helped the fertility rate stay up.
the size of the containment will determine the comfortable ratio.
the old saying "For Hens Sake!"
in a small cage 1;1
larger cage 1;4

 

[scyllarus]

I've had good luck with even 1:7, but it does depend on the roo. I've had roos that don't breed almost at all, roos that breed whatever is nearby, and roos who prefer certain hens. Personally, I find that multiple roos sort of "encourage" each other, so I end up doing a higher number of hens per roo.