[Marches Farmer]

Musn't sell fertile eggs from the farmgate. 

Sorry why not ? I have always understood fertile eggs taste better

I do something else with my cockerels though I will wait for Marches reply before I tell all 

Because once they're sold you have no control over how they're stored by the buyer.  Too warm and they could find themselves tucking into a half-formed chick when they crack open their boiled egg at breakfast.  It has happened to neighbours of ours who sold from the gate and didn't think their cockerel "was taking any notice of the hens". 

[chrismahon]

if my memory serves me correctly fertile eggs can be sold so long as they contain "no noticeable embryonic development". Now that's pretty vague because I can see a developing blastoderm, although it doesn't bother me. All the eggs we sold throughout the years were fertilised (or they should have been). Bit worrying that someone would realise and hatch them, firstly because they might be rather disturbed when a little TNN popped out! Secondly, TNN hatching eggs would be sold at 10x the price.


Storage conditions are very important because you don't want the MF scenario. Obviously storing them on a sunny windowsill isn't a good idea. Our eggs for sale at the 'gate' were kept in the shade in a cool box.

[lord flynn]

The 'spare' cockerels are penned separately.

do you mean individually penned or a bachelor pen?

I don't think I'll have enough hens to keep them happy but may try a bachelor pen of the boys I want to run on over the winter. Two pens will still be an improvement on last year.

[chrismahon]

Sorry Lord Flynn, the spare cockerels are penned individually. So we have one spare cockerel per breed. We tried keeping two together but Spring came; what a mess! Uses up a lot of coop and run space unfortunately.


The alternative is to run a rotating 7 day collection of hatching eggs. So when eggs get to day 8 they are consumed. If there are any deaths (fox, dogs, wild boar) we can put the hatching eggs for incubation. Problem is in Winter and moult, when we run short of eggs.

[shygirl]

i thought the topic was breeding birds etc rather than layers. i would keep my cockeral in  with his ladies, and the layers in a different pen altogether. with different breeds it does take up alot of pens.

[suziequeue]

I'm intrigued. I don't think I would have the space or resources to pen each cockerel separately.
Chris - how big are the pens and how many do you have?

[chrismahon]

We have 4 small flocks, plus others, set in a 580 square metre enclosure. The flocks each have their own coop and run set in a sub-enclosure which is 15- 20 square metres per bird. The two spare cockerels we have (because they can't be replaced over here) are each in a coop with a 4 square metre run. In the walk spaces in-between we let TNN hens run. When we breed the next generations is when we get problems as space is short until we buy somewhere here.