Gamma rooster

[Still Amateur]

There was an interesting conversation on this forum a few years back between breeders breeding mature chickens for show talking about this. Some of the breeders noticed that their roosters were less active during fall and winter while others said they did not slow down at all, even during molt. They agreed, the roosters would be active in spring when it warmed up. To me this is further confirmation that each chicken is an individual and they are not all going to act exactly the same way even in similar situations. For some, spring is breeding season. For others every day of the year is.


Some are slower to mature than others. Some are just less active. Some roosters have no problems keeping over 20 hens laying fertile eggs while others are good to handle no more than 4 or 5. Some are mating every time you turn around, some mate a lot less. Even if I were looking at them myself I probably would not know what is going on in your flock.


I was lucky enough to go to a couple of talks given by a Poultry Science professor that specialized in poultry reproduction, the kind of stuff we are talking about. There have been studies on sperm retention, some of those he participated in. Normal retention was 9 days to three weeks, depending on the hen and the rooster. He said you could usually count on two weeks. Many breeders assumed a hen was clean (no residual sperm) after 3 weeks but some retention was possible for longer. He suggested 4 weeks to be more sure.

There have been cases where hens retained viable sperm longer than 4 weeks. You can find a few stories on here, very few. Mother Nature is like that, she loves her exceptions whenever we try to set firm rules. But I sure would not count on many, if any, eggs hatching after 4 weeks.

With your pullets I don't know how easy it will be to tell which rooster was the father if any eggs hatch. Your Wyandotte could be easy. Your blue will contribute blue to half of his offspring and the rest will default to black. The Lavender gene is recessive so all of his kids should default to black so maybe not definitive.

Good luck!

What do you mean when you say he will contribute blue to half his offspring and the rest default to black?

It doesn’t matter to me who the baby daddy is. Lol. Going forward I want a blue layer as the breeder but at this point I know we’re going to have an even more colorful egg basket and that brings us joy. I’m not in this for the specific blood lines, just the smiles.

 

[Slothinc]

What do you mean when you say he will contribute blue to half his offspring and the rest default to black?

It doesn’t matter to me who the baby daddy is. Lol. Going forward I want a blue layer as the breeder but at this point I know we’re going to have an even more colorful egg basket and that brings us joy. I’m not in this for the specific blood lines, just the smiles.

It just means that with your blue rooster, half of his offspring will inherit the blue gene and half won’t, so they will default to black. Like if the hen was black, then half of the chicks will be blue, and half black. If the hen was blue, half would be blue, 1/4 would be splash and 1/4 would be black. If the hen is splash, half would be splash and half blue.