How To Tell If Chicken Eggs Are Fertile
To tell if chicken eggs are fertilized, you should crack the egg and look for the blastoderm. If there is white spot on the yolk or even if there is a blood spot, it is fertilized. You can also tell if your egg is fertilized with a bright light under the egg, if there is a dark mass in the egg it is fertilized.
He has now collected a few eggs from his hens, and wants to find out whether or not they are fertile, so that he can place them into the incubator. If you are looking to fertilise your chicken eggs, then you are going to need a rooster that is going to be doing its thing alongside your chickens, and it is going to be very happy doing it constantly.
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Healthy chickens are capable of producing eggs whether there is a rooster present to copulate or not. If the hen does not come into contact with the rooster, then laid eggs will remain unfertilized, indicating the eggs may never grow or hatch. If you are not looking to have an egg, consider getting no rooster, since your chickens would still be laying eggs without the male present, but they will be 100% non-fertilized eggs.
| How To Tell if Chicken eggs are fertilized | Number of eggs |
| You should crack the egg and look for the blastoderm | 1 egg per day |
| If there is white spot on the yolk or even if there is a blood spot, it is fertilized | 5-6 per week |
Once you have identified the fertilized eggs from the non-fertile eggs, you can either put the fertilized eggs back in an incubator, or put them in a brooder hen. Once you have verified the eggs, you can then put the fertilized ones back into the incubator or with a brooding hen, just remember to label them. This method of checking eggs will require that you incubate the eggs for several days; four to five days is best if possible, because you will want to let the eggs grow some, should they have been fertilized, so that you will be better able to identify fertilized eggs. Then, you can use the method called Candle eggs, which is one of the oldest and easiest ways of telling whether or not the eggs were fertilized.
The unfertilized eggs that you determine using this method cannot be eaten since they are sitting in an incubator, so you will need to either toss them out or bring them to your garden and break them up with a shovel in the soil. After you have lit your candles, if you see no signs of an egg developing, it means that the egg is non-viable, and you will have to remove the egg from the incubator and dispose of it. Once you break an egg it is exposed to bacteria and cannot develop into a chick, so you need to dispose of it.
Even if you have a rooster, you are not going to be opening the egg every day to find the developing chick unless you are collecting eggs. Eggs are not fertilized unless a hen has access to a rooster, meaning that an egg never evolves and hatches into a chick. If the rooster does indeed copulate with a hen, then the eggs it produces are fertilized, and with the proper incubation conditions, they may hatch chicks. If the hen has been mated within the past week to a healthy rooster, there is a good chance that eggs she produces will be fertile (can grow to chicks).
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A hen may lay fertile eggs anywhere from 2 days after mating up to 3 weeks after mating with the rooster. Once the hen and rooster have hooked and done the deed, rooster sperm is stored in the hens oviduct, and this hen is most likely going to lay fertilized eggs up to two weeks later. His sperm goes in the hens oviduct and fertilizes the yolks of any eggs laid over the following couple of weeks.
When a hen copulates, his sperm enters the egg, and the blastodisc, the tiny white blob that contains a chickens DNA, becomes fertilised. When the egg is fertilized by the cock, the hens own genetic material alone becomes known as the blastoderm, the first stage of embryonic development. An unfertilized egg contains only the hens genetic material, meaning a baby bird cannot ever hatch from that egg.
Fertile eggs are also similar to unfertilized eggs inside…except there is a white bullseye in the yolk of the fertilized eggs. If all you can see on the inside of an egg is a form of yolk, without any spiderweb-like veins or signs of the embryo, the egg is likely not fertilized.
When an egg is cracked, one that is fertilized can be distinguished by the small white disc on the yolk, and the other little white circle surrounding it. When breaking an egg, you will notice if it is fertile, there is a tiny white blob about 4mm wide at the top of the yolk. The yolk is about 4mm wide. The presence of the little ring on top of the yolk, measuring only around a 3mm to 4mm diameter, and being seen shortly after laying the yolk, allows you to identify an egg as fertile. The yolk, surrounded by egg white, then moves towards the glands in the chickens shell.
The fertilized egg will cool slowly after it has been laid, but the germinal disk will continue to grow, reaching about 5mm in diameter and holding around 40,000-60,000 cells. A fertilized egg which is never incubated will never contain an embryo, nor ever appear as anything but common breakfast fare. A fertilized egg laid by a chicken that is never been incubated is completely safe to eat, and unless you are paying extra close attention, you never will know the difference. If a rooster is nearby, there is an extreme chance the egg you are eating for breakfast could have someday turned into a chick, given some time (though embryos do not continue developing after being placed in a fridge).
If you are still not convinced that the eggs collected contained developed chickens, then putting a candle on the eggs should resolve the mystery. If you really have chosen some eggs to incubate, around the fourth day — if the eggs are fertile — you should be able to see veins and spiders running across the shell as you candler the eggs, or shine a torch on them. Once you have waited for some days, for either the mother to hatch the eggs, or you have an incubator, you may want to bring the eggs to a darkened room. If your chicken is laying eggs under your supervision, mark the eggs clearly to prevent your children, your spouse, or any helpers from accidently collecting incubated eggs with freshly laid ones.
Do we eat fertilized eggs?
The American Egg Board’s Lauren Cobey notes that there is a good chance that you have not eaten a fertilized egg since hens produce nearly all commercially available eggs without mated eggs. A rooster’s involvement determines whether fertilized or unfertilized eggs are produced.
How do you tell if a chicken egg is fertile?
The farm egg you just cracked open for breakfast can be used to determine whether it was fertilized or not. The germinal disc, a white area that floats above the yolk, should be visible while inspecting the egg. A sterile egg has an entirely white germinal disc that is made up entirely of the hen’s cells.
How do you tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs?
Looking at the yolk of an egg after it has been cracked will reveal if it has been fertilized. A white dot may be seen in unfertilized eggs, but a concentric circle will be present in fertilized eggs. In other words, a bullseye-like pattern will be visible around the white dot.