AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

I refer to my silkie/sussex crosses I recently hatched.

Now I have Neurotic 78 light sussex that won't live with Larry the LS rooster as everyone knows. So I saw Snowball the white silkie rooster doing the deed with her (and she didn't mind) so I thought I would hatch a couple of eggs just to see what they were like. I though if any were hens they would make good broodies and backyarders for someone. So on 3.3.08 I had 3 eggs from her and decided to use those plus 1 pure sussex eggs as my test eggs in my new incubator.

On 24.3.08 I had these three buff/partridge coloured birds hatch and I thought the little white silkie hen I had was not true to colour so sold her. It turns out that those 3 little chicks have turned out to be the silkie sussex cross. I thought the white ones I had were but they turned out to be sussex.(all boys too I might add )


http://paforumphotogallery.com/displayi ... ?pos=-2167

http://paforumphotogallery.com/displayi ... ?pos=-2166

http://paforumphotogallery.com/displayi ... ?pos=-2165

NOw about 3 weeks before I decided to set the silkie/sussex cross eggs I did have a young buff coloured cockerel in the pen but I thought he was not sexual mature. He was a silkie cross from a buff silkie rooster and a gold partridge bantam hen.

This is the hen that was his mother which I have long sold:-
http://paforumphotogallery.com/displayi ... ?pos=-1213

I don't have a photo of the father as I only had him for a short time but this is a photo of the young cockerel:-

http://paforumphotogallery.com/displayi ... ?pos=-1043

Now I really think this is the father of the silkie/sussex chicks due to the colour and especially the little partridge chick.

HOW

1. I had sold him 3 weeks before I decided to set the eggs.
2. I didn't think he was mature enough.
3. I had never seen him do anything with any of the hens.
4. Maybe the partridge is infact a silkie/silkiecross bantam and not light sussex at all but from the little white silkie hen I thought was a dud.

This leads me on to a whole lot of other questions then.

If I wanted to say move a hen around the roosters what sort of time frame am I looking at to make sure the current rooster is the father of the chicks.

I ask this as I have a one particular very nice black pekin hen and nice lavender hen that I wanted to share between the cuckoo rooster and the lavender rooster. So if I took her out of the cuckoo pen say today and put her with the lavender rooster how far down the track could I set the eggs and be sure that the lavender rooster was in fact the father of the chicks.

Sorry for sooooo much info and sooooo many questions but I am just blown away if the buff silkie cross cockerel can in fact be the father of my silkie crosses.

If this is the case one has to be so careful and so diligent in keeping records or one can get really confused and sell people things that they really believed they were when in fact they are not.

In this case the silkie crosses don't really matter only that I want to know but if this can happen it can happen with pure breds where you want different colours.

I have a feeling it's something like 1-2weeks before you should set the eggs but i could be -extremely- wrong. I'm sure others will know

yes, well, what Rosemarie has said has totally blown what I'd read either here or somewhere else.

I had read the following:
3 days. Three days after the roo begins doing the deed, the eggs begin to be fertile.
10 days. After 10 days, no eggs will be fertilised.

So, as I understood (before tonight), if you had just one roo and kept him seperate from the hens, brought them together just one day, you could get fertile eggs from about day 3 - 10 ONLY.

If Rosemarie's chooks did what they seem to have done, that would mean that some sperm from some breeds could survive and continue to fertilise eggs for at least three weeks.

Is there any chance that the colouring came from anywhere in the ancestry of the parents you thought belonged to the eggs?

the three days I believe is to maintain fertility the roo needs to mate a particular hen every three days, if however she has been running with another roo prior to that and some of his sperm will still be viable, you will get a mixture of chicks if you set eggs in that 10 day or so period, so it probably would be best to wait 2 weeks till u set eggs thinking they are from a particular roo-------------if of course there has been no roo, 3 days will get u fertile eggs, cheers pam

I've also heard that the eggs will be fertile for upto 2 weeks after the initial 3 day mating period with the one roo

...and, in case anyone missed it, Rosemarie has told us of her situation involving three weeks.

saw that, maybe it could be an experiment, you could seperate a hen and make sure her eggs are unfertilised and then put a rooster in with her for three days, then collect the eggs and the ones from the 3rd week incubate them to see what happens

just a thought

I know nuttin' (in my best Schultz voice)...

I was basing my comments on someone else's experiment which I read about here or elsewhere.

As I recall...
A rooster was put with a hen (or hens) and eggs were collected daily and set in an incubator. I forget when the rooster was removed and therefore how many days he was with her/them.

Eggs that were collected from day three onwards were fertilised.

Eggs collected 10 days (maybe it was 11 days ... after 10 days) after the roo had been removed were unfertilised.


This will require some greenaus Google research. When I'm awake.

yes greenus---- a friend called jacquie did that experiment and posted it on another forum----she collected eggs from day 1 and the hen had not been with another roo---then incubated the eggs----from day 3 they were fertile

cheers pam

There I go stealing an idea from another forum.

Do you recall if I got the ten day bit right? Did she write something about reduced or absent fertility after day 10.