Mary Allen
The first breeders soon begin to collect hatching eggs. Especially in the cold season, it is important that as many eggs as possible are fertilized. A few measures can help.
For the transfer of the semen from the rooster to the hen, the two cloacae are pressed together. In this act, the rooster sits on the hen for a few seconds. The hen crouches down a bit and lets the rooster hop on her back. To keep his balance, he grabs some feathers on the chicken’s neck with his beak. This short stroke decides about future life from the egg.
After three days, the first eggs of this hen will be fertilized. In the worst case, however, it can take up to seven days for the first egg laid to be fertilized. One stroke is enough to fertilize about six eggs. It would therefore be ideal if the rooster mates with the hen every fourth day. The number of hens per rooster should therefore also be taken into account when breeding. In the breeding season, a rooster is ideally kept with two to five hens.
In addition, there are a few external features to consider: When a Rhinelander cock, for example, kicks, a lush tail plumage forms an obstacle between the two cloacas. Even in the case of the dwarf Cochin, which has plenty of under plumage, the cloaca must first find one another because of all the feathers. With a heavy Orpington rooster, the problem is often the weight of the rooster, making it difficult to climb onto the hen.
With Scissors and Files Against Disturbing Plumage and Sharp Spurs
The same applies to all breeds, the rooster and hen must press their cloacas together so that the semen can be transferred. So that there are fewer feathers in the way, the feathers around the cloaca can be cut off with scissors. This is not painful for either the hens or the rooster. The feathers can be compared to our fingernails – and when we cut them, it is not painful for us either. This recommendation was submitted by experienced breeders. However, the extent to which it effectively influences fertilization has not been documented in the literature.
The rooster reaches sexual maturity in the 26th week of life. In the first year, the spurs on the rooster also begin to grow. These are usually still small and cannot injure a hen.
However, if old cocks are used for breeding, their spurs should be cut back or their tips ground off for the second breeding season. This can easily be done with pruning shears or a nail file. Only the calloused part needs to be shortened or the tip filed away. If this is not done, there is a risk that the hens will be injured on their backs. With many pedaling processes, the feathers on the back usually fall out first and the skin underneath can even be slit open with sharp spurs, which certainly does not contribute to a high fertilization rate of the eggs.
Minerals and Hormones Should Help Determine Sex
It would be awesome if the sex of the offspring could be influenced by feeding the parents appropriately. In the 1960s, the author Carl Engelmann dealt with the nutrition and feeding of poultry. Some examples show that breeding hens and not cocks were used to influence the sex of the offspring. According to Engelmann, old hens produce more female offspring than young ones. There are also more female offspring from hens that are at the end of a laying series.
The author Rohde went even further in 1948. He found that the mineral content can influence the sex of the offspring. The minerals iron, magnesium, phosphoric acid, aluminum, iodine, and probably also potassium favor the formation of the male sex. These minerals enrich the cell nucleus. Calcium, sulfur, manganese, nitrogen, boron, silicic acid, sodium, and plasma provide the opposite. However, Rhodes’ views were never subsequently verified by any other scientist, and his discovery may well have been accidental.
Already 60 years ago there were also attempts to feed female hormone preparations to breeding hens. According to “Schouppée”, these are said to have brought only female offspring. However, this experimental result was not proven in the review by another author. In poultry, and especially in chickens, it takes very little to divert the female developmental processes into the male ones. For example, with the ovarian disease, the hen sometimes adopts rooster-like behavior.
Between the eighth and eleventh day of incubation, a decision is made as to whether testicles or ovaries will develop. The tissue is then developed by hormone release. Therefore, in the 1930s, attempts were made in the laboratory to influence sex by injecting hormones. But these attempts failed, and over time natural sex prevailed over artificial sex. So there is still no way today to influence the sex of the future generation of chickens through feeding.