# Weak hen genes?



## Ebony Queen (Oct 8, 2011)

My red sex link hen is an excellent layer, and lays constantly almost every day. For the past few months, we have been breeding all of our chickens with our two roosters, one Rhode Island Red and one cuckoo maran. Almost every egg we get out of her is fertile, and goes straight into the incubator. But lately, we've realized not a single egg has hatched! We've had our share of malformed chicks, about 10-15 days old, but not consistently from the same chicken! Could our hen just have weak genes? Can she only successfully hatch eggs that are fathered by roosters of her own breed? We're desperate, any help would be appreciated greatly.


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## milkmaid (Sep 15, 2010)

Oh, that is very frustrating! Are other hens' eggs hatching - it's just hers that consistently don't hatch?


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## JaLyn (Oct 10, 2012)

are you feeding oyster shells?


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## onehorse_2000 (Sep 17, 2012)

There are a ton of reasons why her eggs might not be hatching from she is carrying a diease that won't allow them to develop to the incubator isn't set right for her eggs. Do her eggs start to develop? At what point in incubation do they stop developing? Have you ever gotten eggs from her to hatch? Is your incubator clean? How much of the air sack is there when they should be hatching? Have you opened any of the eggs that didn't hatch but did develop from her? I would need answers to these before moving forward, but if she laid fertile eggs that hatched before, other then carrying a diease (possible), you should be able to hatch eggs off of her now, regardless of the male.


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