Help! How long does a rooster's sperm stay in a hen?

I have about 25 old Scandinavian lsndrace chickens and roosters, and on Sussex rooster I got free. He's very popular in the winter as he is so big: hens love roosting next to him.

I cannot let him impregnate the hens though. The chickens are trying to brood already (I mean really, it is friggin' midwinter with temps around zero F 🙄).

How long does his sperm stay viable in the hens? I was thinking of slaughtering him for meat, but my friend cannot come over to help for at least a couple of weeks.

Hi Karina;
It may feel like mid-winter and be zero outside, but we are well past the solstice.
Animals instinctively know when the days are getting longer and for some, this is the time to breed.
Chickens, however, I have no direct knowledge of their cycles.  
I have always heard you do not need a rooster to get eggs.
The chickens are of course are hoping for baby chicks not thinking of us having breakfast.

It stays viable for about 2 to 3 weeks. If you intend to let them brood within the next 3 weeks, you will have crossbred chickens.

So a chicken will likely lay fertile eggs from 3 days after sperm delivery, with gradually reducing fertility for at least 2 weeks and possibly as long as three from studies/websites I've looked at in the past.

So really, the question becomes, how long can you delay setting? If you keep taking the eggs multiple times a day, so the birds don't see a clutch in the nest, can you slow them down? Personally, I'd be trying that anyway because despite the day length triggers, keeping baby chicks alive will be a struggle, and they only take 3 weeks to hatch.

I gather that you want to keep your land-race chickens bred with their own rooster? How many eggs are you prepared to give each broody hen? (Size of both the hen and the eggs are factors - I will give my Muscovy ducks 3 goose eggs, but they can hatch up to 12 Muscovy eggs.)
1. Can you choose 4-6 of your Scandinavian hens and isolate them with a single rooster? Then give only those eggs to any broodies in the short term.
2. Have you already got the infrastructure arranged to isolate your setting hens? If not, other hens will sneak extra eggs into the nest or kick the mom off and the eggs will get cold, or any number of issues - in the wild, a chicken would go find a secret place to set a clutch, but your hens don't have that option.
3. From experience and reports, co-parenting with 2 hens looking after a single clutch of eggs, can easily go south. You have to be watching very carefully and as a first time chick wrangler, I wouldn't recommend it.

Wow, thanks for answers!
I have 6 landrace roosters and 18 landrace chickens. Plus this one Sussex rooster. So if I take him out, the rest can happily multiply as they see fit.Great to know, that I only need to snatch away the eggs for three weeks after he has been slaughtered.

Last summer I only had six hens and one rooster. The hens happily brooded, but it turned out the eggs were not impregnated. That rooster was eaten by a hawk and is no longer with us. Now I have six roosters so there should be no fertility problems.

I can easily live without eggs or with less.Besides, the chickens lay so much in the summer, that I preserve and present a sizable portion of the eggs. I would really like to see them having chicks.

As I have no electricity, they will have to do it their own way.I don't have heat lamps or the like. And we still have winter here for two months. I am in Scandinavia, equivalent to US zone 3.

I just bought Adam Danforth's book on butchering. It is my first culling and I have asked a friend to help.

Last summer the hen who brooded did so in the run. Every time she went to eat, somebody else would take her place. I put food close to her, but she still lost a lot of weight (gained it vack later without problens).

As nothing came of the eggs, I never thought about isolation. I can easily fence a part of the henhouse or run if it is necessary. Their henhouse alone is 200 square feet.

Many people ask me why do I have so many roosters. Well, I was given roosters from right and left! As they were prescious landrace roosters, I gladly took each.Landrace chickens are hard to find - only afecionados keep them. I called over 50 growers to build my tiny flock of 25!  

The roosters get along fine and never fight after the initial entrance "discussion" when a new rooster is brought in. My roosters are really mellow chaps, maybe Scandinavian landrace roosters are like that?

I had thought I might put some of the roosters into the pot, but only got my book now. And have gotten quite fond of them. Plus the winter has been fiercely cold, so the more birds there are, the warmer it is for them to roost together.

If you're trying to preserve a breed, more roosters is likely better, although it will be interesting to see if they've got their "favourites" or if it seems random. However, it will mean that you won't be able to narrow down who's related and who isn't.

As you say, it's still winter for 2 months, so just do your best to not let the girls go broody. Or... if someone insists, consider those chicks to be "dinner". Keeping your breed true is only an issue for birds you intend to keep, so if you mark birds that might have Sussex parentage, there's no reason to fight a hen that hard!

Did you investigate the eggs that didn't hatch last year? Were all the eggs infertile? Do you have any idea if the hen had laid all of them, or if it was a group effort? There are lots of things to observe when watching chicken TV!

Those are pretty much the numbers and situation I'm working with right now. I have 4 assorted Dorking roos, and roughly 15 Dorking hens, with 1 Cuckoo Maran roo and 3 hens.

The girls do have their favorites, and the roos have their favorites, too. It's funny to watch all the little groups form up and wander around. I have been thinking about setting up an isolation pen for the Cuckoo Marans, and really need to get on that. When I had done my research, I had decided on using 4 weeks as my time limit to make sure the hens were only being bred by the roo I wanted. Just in case, and because Life will find a way.

Egg season has started here, so I really need to get moving before all my broodies go broody. Last year was a mess and I only had one chick make it to this year, so I'm getting my incubator going and hoping for better luck, over all. That means I have to get busy building runs, but that's on me.

Kristine Keeney wrote: Last year was a mess and I only had one chick make it to this year, so I'm getting my incubator going and hoping for better luck, over all. That means I have to get busy building runs, but that's on me.

I hear you.  We've domesticated chickens, but we've also massively interfered with how wild Gallus gallus managed procreation. That puts a bunch of responsibility on us Humans to help compensate for what worked naturally.

My friend who has Banties has been doing this for a very long time, and she is fully convinced that "private accommodation" until after chicks have hatched and bonded with mom, and then gradual introduction to the general flock, is the way to go. To me this means, building chick-proof infrastructure well ahead of the need for it.

I personally avoid using my incubator because I've found that mom-raised birds behave better. However, 1. this isn't always possible, 2. sometimes a "fertility check" is a good thing, and 3. sometimes shit happens.

This is my first year using an incubator for birds. (Previous experience in raising ball pythons, not nearly the same thing.)
I'm reading all the books and checking and rechecking all the things. I usually just order in the chicks and/or let the broodies do their thing, but my broody goose died three years ago and I ended up with several hens trying to raise chicks as some sort of odd communal thing last year. It was great for pictures and video, but lousy in terms of survivability and hatching numbers.

I'm trying a combination of both this year - hatching and buying, but I agree that a hen raised bird just seems to be healthier and better adjusted. My hen raised survivor (a silver-grey Dorking roo) is one of my better roos.

I've had hens brood in the middle of the winter without any issues. In fact, I actually really like hatching in the winter and would highly suggest it. If you want your chicks to adapt to your temperatures, there's no better way to do it than have them raised outside by a mama hen in the middle of the winter. They can go under the hen when they're cold, but they HAVE to come out in order to eat and drink, unlike our pampered indoor raised chicks that have a heated house (which I've done frequently as well, so I'm not saying this is bad). That makes them hardier, builds endurance, and helps them feather out faster. Plus, incubating in the winter means that you're automatically selecting for winter layers. The chicks I've raised outside in the winter grew really fast, feathered out early, and are great winter layers. If the issue is that you don't want chicks, then just make sure to collect all the eggs. If you collect the eggs within a day of them being laid, regardless of whether or not a hen has been sitting on them, they're totally ok to eat. Having a rooster doesn't really impact a hens desire to brood, so butchering him isn't going to solve anything.

Elena, what kind of temperatures do you have in winter?
My henhouse has been around zero Fahrenheit for months. The chickens are fine, but everyone looks like an oversized fluffy balloon and they eat like horses.

Now the unwanted rooster has been living outside the henhouse for three weeks.

I know I boldly talked about putting him down, but. There were "circumstances". Firstly, I have never slaughtered anything. So I asked my city-dwelling but farmer background boyfriend for companionship.

After removed the rooster from the henhouse he was pottering around helplessly. And I started feeling bad for him. He was so forlorn and did not behave like himself at all.

Then one hen got a skin rash, lost a lot of feathers and  had a flaming red skin. So I toon her out as well.

And the rooster was so happy to get a companion that he was goo googing all the time.

I just could not bear putting them down. I have a huge hawk problem and have not been able to freerange chickens.

Now these outcasts make me happy a dozen times a day by pottering around the house.

And they are actually helping with tmy still dormant vegetable garden by diggi g and pottering  around.

Kaarina Kreus wrote:Now the unwanted rooster has been living outside the henhouse for three weeks.

I know I boldly talked about putting him down, but. There were "circumstances". Firstly, I have never slaughtered anything. So I asked my city-dwelling but farmer background boyfriend for companionship.

After removed the rooster from the henhouse he was pottering around helplessly. And I started feeling bad for him. He was so forlorn and did not behave like himself at all.

Then one hen got a skin rash, lost a lot of feathers and  had a flaming red skin. So I toon her out as well.

And the rooster was so happy to get a companion that he was goo googing all the time.

I just could not bear putting them down. I have a huge hawk problem and have not been able to freerange chickens.

Now these outcasts make me happy a dozen times a day by pottering around the house.

And they are actually helping with tmy still dormant vegetable garden by diggi g and pottering  around.

I'm a bit happy to read this, as reading your OP the first thought was WHY does he have to DIE to solve this? Can't they just be seperated?

All for taking out an asshole bird, we have one going in the pot as soon as we have a guaranteed successor, the good ones should be allowed to be. Enjoy the new pairing!