Breeding Chickens

Recently, I just found out 1 of my 4 chickens is a rooster. I was wondering how can I raise the eggs to hatch into baby chicks. The rooster is always violating the hens a lot, so I figured most of the eggs being laid are fertilized. And since my chickens aren’t brooders I was thinking I could incubate an egg right after it’s laid and hatch it myself.

However, I can’t find any information on how the whole process works. So if I gather an egg immediately after it’s laid and incubate it, would it survive and hatch? If not how does the process work?

Hey Ryan.  It's a lot easier than you might think.  You can save the eggs on your kitchen counter for a week if you like and then incubate all of them at once.  Just keep them at room temperature until you are ready to put them in an incubator.  If you only want one chick, you can just incubate one egg if you like if course.  You are going to get some roosters, and some eggs may not hatch, so I would recommend doing at least 4 or 6.    

Hi Ryan,
The basic idea is that you would collect as many eggs as you want to hatch, as Trace says, they should be stored at room temperature without washing them.

In a perfect world, chickens raised by their mothers do so much better, but since you say your chickens are not a broody variety, we will look at incubation.

There are many different incubators at various price levels. Some are simply a styrofoam box with a window and a mesh to set the eggs on and a heater. The eggs should be turned over at least twice a day, three times is better. The temp and humidity are very important to keep correct. The cheap ones you ahve to keep an eye on temp and add water for humidity, and turn the eggs manually. Some of the fancy ones will do all this for you.

After 21 days, plus a few hours of drying, your chicks will be ready to go into the brooder, which is just a smaller area with supplement heat until they grow their feathers and can handle normal weather. I'm not sure how much you know and don't know, so let me know if you need some more information on the brooder.

First off be aware that raising chicks is smelly, dusty, and can be very heartbreaking.
You will need a brooder, an incubator and possibly an egg candler or strong flashlight to check eggs for development.

You can make or buy the incubator,  a small 12 egg incubator is probably as big as you would need.   You do need to set up and run the incubator for a few days to make sure it will hold temperature and humidity levels before putting in your collected eggs. (some folks use bluetooth sensors to check how accurate the incubator is)  You want average size eggs for you birds, check for cracks or other signs of damage,  DO NOT WASH just set in a safe place on the counter like a bowl or in an egg carton with the tip down.   When you are sure the incubator is working right put the eggs in the incubator, make sure they are turned at least twice a day (rotate not flipping) and wait until they start to hatch.  Length of incubation, temperatures and humidity levels can all be found in books or online. YouTube is also a very good source of information from building and incubator to selecting eggs and what temperatures and humidity levels are needed at each stage of development.
When they start to hatch leave in the incubator over night.  This keeps the humidity and temps up until every one is hatched and dried off.  Then you move them to a brooder.
For a brooder you can use a large box with a heat plate or other heat source in one end and feed and water at the other.  Put puppy pads or similar on the bottom to make cleaning easier.  And watch your babies grow until they are feathered out and can go outside.  Then comes the challenge of introducing them to your flock.  

A lot of really good information is available on Backyard Chickens and on YouTube.  It helped me get through the hatching our first batch of quail babies.  Sadly we had issues with temperatures and humidity levels near the end and only got 13 chicks from 51 eggs.   But our babies are doing well in their box brooder.