Too many clear eggs on day 7

[JDGreene]

I have 5 hens and 1 rooster, white leghorns. I successfully incubated their eggs 10 months ago with an 80% hatch rate but they did seem to hatch a little early so I thought maybe the temp was a little high. May have had 2 clear eggs out of 24 from memory so fertilization wasn't a problem. The chickens are 1.5 years old. So moving on to this batch of eggs:

I calibrated my thermometer and humidity gauge just like the last time and came up with very minor differences. Thermo reads 0.5°F (0.28°C) low and humidity reads 1% low. So this batch I programmed the thermostat to 37.3°C (99.2°F), while last batch it was set at 37.5°F (99.5°F).

This batch of 24 on day 7 has a bunch of clear eggs (14 out of 24) which really shocked me, with 2 that the embryo has appeared to stuck to the shell, but the rest (8) are viable. So now I can only think of two possible reasons:

I wonder if the rooster is doing his job but with 5 hens and 24 eggs that is 5 eggs set for each hen so having 8 fertilized eggs don't sound right to me but maybe he just likes 2 hens now?

or

I am wondering if it was a mistake to lower the temp from last what it was last time. Would it be normal to see that many clear eggs on day 7 with a slightly lower than normal temp?

 

[Ryguy3684]

I don't think that low of a temperature change, in incubation, would result in clear eggs on day 7. Were there any differences on the eggs from lay to incubator, like the way they were stored? It seems unlikely, that with 5 hens, you rooster is not mating them all. Also, eggs stay fertile for 2-3 weeks after one mating session, so that makes it even more unlikely. I guess it could happen, but I'd look at an outside factor. Maybe someone else will have another idea.

 

[JDGreene]

I checked/collected eggs several times per day to get them as fresh as possible and I stored them the same.

I don't know why I didn't think to crack open some fresh eggs and see if those were fertile or not but it appears only about 30% are fertile eggs from what I can tell. That would explain why I have so many clear eggs and matches the 35% viable eggs I have in the incubator. I should have checked before I started but just assumed they would be good to go.

So it looks like only 2 hens out of 5 are fertile. Has this happened to anyone else?
What would cause that to happen?
Bad rooster, bad hen, bad time of year to hatch eggs?

 

[Yardmom]

I'm surprised with your roo so young that your percentage of fertile eggs is so low, but the time of year can affect the fertility. How did you store the eggs?

 

[JDGreene]

Yea that caught me by surprise.

I collected the eggs and brought them straight to a plastic egg holder inside at 68F which got turned 5 times per day by raising one side higher than the other. They were all really clean eggs.

I haven't really seen the rooster mount any hens lately like I used to see him do awhile back but I don't watch them that much. I looked at the hens combs and a couple do not have bite marks from the rooster grabbing them to mount.

I had been getting 5 eggs every day for a long time but about the time I started collecting eggs to hatch, I'd get 4 some days and then 5 some days so maybe one or two is fixing to moult. Still getting 4 or 5 eggs per day now. Would that be a cause for infertility? Haven't seen any extra feathers or no one looks to be moulting. No one is sickly but they have been picking at their tailfeathers pretty badly.