Happy owners of country cottages often have a small flock of chickens for the summer, which ensures that they always have fresh eggs on their table. Most often, such small farms do not contain a rooster, which causes sincere surprise among people who are not familiar with breeding chickens. Can chickens lay eggs without a rooster?
Does the presence of a rooster affect the egg production of a hen?
Farmers and poultry farmers have long noticed that chickens can lay eggs on their own, in the absence of a rooster. Many farms breed chickens without roosters, but this does not affect the ability of the chickens to lay eggs. However, eggs from fertilized chickens are believed to be healthier and have a longer shelf life than eggs from chickens that lay on their own.
Usually ten chickens have one cockerel. He, like a true gentleman, invites chickens to him, protects, monitors the peculiar order in the chicken coop. Traditionally, a rooster inseminates several chickens all year round. Their sexual intercourse is called "cloacal kiss" from the name of the rooster's genitals - cloaca. Rooster spermatozoa enter the hen's oviduct during friction with their genitals - cloaca. For 20 days, they retain their ability to fertilize maturing eggs. This is how chickens are made. And in hens that did not know a rooster, chicks cannot hatch from the eggs laid.
Chicken eggs are huge eggs. And they, like a woman, are produced every month, regardless of whether there is a man nearby or not. However, for procreation, two organisms are required - a female and a male.
Features of eggs of unfertilized hens
The rooster does not affect the ability of hens to lay eggs. But unfertilized eggs are considered less nutritious, dietary, containing fewer nutrients, although they do not differ in taste from fertilized ones. It is believed that with the presence of a rooster, the egg production of chickens increases. Chickens lay for about ten years without it, but over time, their ability to lay eggs decreases by 10-15%.
Domestic chickens are updated, as a rule, every couple of years, if there is no rooster. But for 15-20 chickens, only one rooster is born, because with more roosters, chickens will look pathetic and plucked.
In many household farms, after the rooster has done his job, he is allowed to eat meat because feeding him is no longer profitable. In addition, the rooster cocks, calling the hens to him. Some poultry farmers do not like this noise and harem that breeds a rooster.
To increase the egg production of hens, special additives and stimulants are added to their feed. These are the unfertilized eggs that are sold in stores and supermarkets. But homemade eggs from time immemorial have been considered healthier and brighter in yolk color.
