Fertilizing eggs for Red Sex Link

[jthor88]

Weird question. So I am raising some red sex link hen for the first time and dang, those girls can lay eggs. Anyways , recently I was gifted 3 roosters and I introduced them to my flock, currently only consisting of my 11 red sex link hens. They all get along well, and I notice them getting "it" on the other day. Which made me wonder, would the eggs the next days be fertilized, should I wait another day before I start collecting eggs to incubate? How many eggs do I expect to be fertilize before they start laying unfertilized eggs again?

 

[Grind Hard Farm]

I have 1 rooster (that is fully grown) and 6 hens (grown also). Usually, for me, when they first get "it," I find fertilized eggs the next day. So, I would say take a couple and incubate them

 

[Ridgerunner]

It takes an egg about 25 hours to go through the hen's internal egg making factory. It can only be fertilized in the first few minutes of that journey. That means if a mating takes place on a Friday, Friday's egg is not fertile from that mating. It simply cannot be. Saturday's egg might or might not be, depending on timing of mating and egg laying. I don't count on it. Sunday's egg should be fertile from Friday's mating.

A rooster does not necessarily mate with every hen every day but he doesn't have to. The hen has a special container near where the egg starts its internal journey where the sperm can stay viable anywhere from nine days to possibly three weeks. I count on two weeks, after that your odds drop off fairly quickly but some have lasted over three weeks. A few even last four weeks but that is rare.

Hopefully you can figure it out from that. Any questions please ask.

On this forum that question is not weird at all. It gets asked a lot.