How to tell if an egg is fertilized

You
may remember that we ate
our rooster this spring when he became problematic.  The idea was to keep
one of his sons to father the last batch of chicks, which are going in
the incubator in early August.  I knew that a four month old
rooster might or might not be mature enough to fertilize the eggs, but
I figured it was worth the gamble.



Luckily, I don’t have to
throw the eggs in the incubator and wait three weeks before finding out
if our new rooster is all grown up.  As I explain in Permaculture
Chicken: Incubation Handbook, you just need to take a
close look at the yolks of your eggs to determine whether they’re fertilize. 
A solid white blastoderm (like in the last photo in this post) means
the egg wasn’t fertilized, while a ring (like in the second photo in
this post) means the egg can develop into a chick.



The eggs I sampled had
rings, so it sounds like our spring chicken is ready to be a
daddy.  Now, if only his sisters would start to lay — the more
we improve our pastures, the tastier our eggs get and the more we want
to eat.