Poultry IrelandYour poultry community and information source

If you don’t want to breed your birds, then strictly speaking you need not get a cock. Hens do not need a rooster to be happy, and the pecking order within a flock is usually not a problem either. Often one of the hens takes on the cock’s role. She becomes a bit more dominant and starts behaving in a ‘testy’ manner like a rooster. Thus, very dominant hens sometimes even make a modest attempt at crowing. But if you find roosters handsome birds and it is possible for you to keep one, then you will have to take into account that he is going to fertilize your hens. That is of no consequence, as long as the hens don’t sit on the fertilized one, so you can simply eat it and not taste the difference. Still, it is something else if the fertilized egg has been brooded on for a couple of days. The developments in a hardset egg go very quickly: within a couple of days a system of blood vessels is already evident, and on the fourth day one can clearly distinguish an embryo. If you are aware that you occasionally tend to forget to gather the eggs for a day or more, then it is best to select a breed that is rarely, if ever, broody (‘non-sitters’). Otherwise you might happen to break a set egg over the frying pan. Many an inexperienced chicken buff can tell you horror stories about this. (The Complete Encyclopedia Of Chickens by Esther Verhoef & Aad Rijs)