Okay this is my first time on here and i have a question about roosters and i am serious so please don't laugh. I'm trying to figure out if my neighbor was lying to me or not. He's raised chickens but i have never been around any. Heres my question:

How does a rooster make the hens lay eggs with chicks in them and not just the ones you eat. My neighbor said the rooster uses his pecker to peck at the back of the hens neck and places a seed in the back of her neck and this makes the baby chicks. Is this true?!

I know this sounds weird but i would really like to know. I have asked a bunch of people, i even asked my teacher but no one would give me a straight answer so i thought i would ask you guys since most of you raise chickens. It's just puzzling to me and i hope you can help me figure this out. thanks! Teejae Monitor's note: This dear sweet innocent boy isn't what he is pretending to be. See the post titled Backwoods Mag. under Alternative Housing where he pretends to have built an elaborate home in his spare time. It is the same guy, or at least it came from the same personal computer.

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 16, 2001

Answers

TeeJae Bird, Dear could you give us your age ? Maybe it would help us know how to present the answer.

-- tren (trendlespin@msn.com), November 16, 2001.

I am 14. But please tell me the truth. okay?

I mean doesn't a rooster have to have sex with a hen to have eggs with baby chicks? or can any egg hatch a chick if the hen sits on it?

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 16, 2001.

Yes, your neighbor was teasing you I am sure.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), November 16, 2001.

Hey! how come it didn't post my response?!

I am 14 yrs. old.

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 16, 2001.

He said he wasn't teasing me that he would tell me the truth. so he was lying to me?

yes to they have to have sex? or yes to that any egg can produce chicks if the hen sits on them? Yes to which question?

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 16, 2001.

Yes,, it takes a sperm and an egg to make a chick. You have to have a fertilized egg to hatch a chick. Just any old egg will not do. The rooster has to fertilize the egg.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), November 16, 2001.

10-20-10 fertilizer works best.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), November 16, 2001.

Teejae,

A hen lays eggs just like you do. She does it a lot more often and you do it about once every twentyeight days or thereabouts. She lays hers externally and you retain yours inside your body.

Hen or girl, without sperm supplied by a male (of the appropriate species) you cannot get a fertilized egg. Without a fertilized egg you cannot get a baby - chicken or human.

If all you want is an egg there's no need for a male at all, the properly functioning sexually mature female body will make one without him.

The eggs you eat, if you've bought them from the store, are almost certainly not fertile eggs and won't hatch. If you raise you own hens and have a rooster in with them they'll probably be fertile. Providing you didn't leave the egg laying around outside in the warmth for days you can eat either and not notice any difference at all.

Unlike men, a rooster doesn't have a "pecker" at all though he does have a beak he can peck with. He climbs on top of the hen and places his cloaca (an opening that serves several purposes) against the hen's cloaca and passes the sperm to her that way. It's kind of hard to climb onto the back of a hen and stay there so the rooster often has to grab her by the back of the neck to stay on. Some folks might mistake this for the sex act itself but it's nothing more than a way for the rooster to keep from falling off the back of the hen.

I don't know if your neighbor is pulling your leg or is just misinformed but what I've said above is a good general explanation of what's what with hen's eggs.

={(Oak)- [who can't decide if Teejae is pulling *our* leg or not but at least it's a reasonably on-topic question]

-- Live Oak (live-oak@atlantic.net), November 16, 2001.

Not surprised that 14 year old would know zip about the birds & the bees of birds, but i am highly sketical of a net savy teen asking US for advice, jeves.com, maybe but us? When i was working a register and my nice boss let me also sell my farm fresh eggs, almost everytime someone would pick up eggs a regular customer would ask me " what about the baby chicks?" -huh? these eggs have no chicks in them.- "how do you tell?" -well there is no rooster.- "no rooster? how do you get the chickens to lay eggs then?" and i would answer with a straight face mind you can't laugh at customers and keep a job ya know - well ma'am female chickens lay eggs just like human females do, just a different kind & not once a month but every 23 hrs. or so. -

-- bj pepper in C. MS. (pepper.pepper@excite.com), November 16, 2001.

Well, I hope that question was answered completely. Thank you for putting it so well. It was done with very good taste and I would allow my granddaughter to read that. Hopefully, Teejse will find a better way to occupy him/her self...like get a job, do his/her homework, etc.

-- Ardie/Wi (ardie4965@hotmail.com), November 16, 2001.

Guys i'm not kidding, i just really wanted to know. And i don't lay eggs or have eggs in me, i am a Boy!!

I helped my neighbor today get some mulch and put it on his wife's flower beds and he bought me a big mac at McDonalds and we were talking about this again and he explained it better and now i think i have it!

I did ask Jeeves first and this is one of the places it gave me. I figured you guys would know the right answer since you raise chickens! I'm not pulling your leg, please believe me.

I'm 14 so i can't get a job. I don't know why you want to be mean to me, i just want to know because i thought it was something kind of neat. that's all!

Thank you to the people who answered me and took me seriously. I like the Discovery Channel and i like animals and just thought it was interesting!

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 16, 2001.

Excellent explanation, Live Oak!

-- Marcia (HrMr@webtv.net), November 16, 2001.

Teejae, don't take it too personally that some of the responders did not believe you. It is not anything that you have said. You did a fine job of asking. It was that some other, not so nice, people asked some wacko questions and this one just seemed iffy to them. I think that your question was a good one. My children are around chickens all of the time, so they already know, but I appreciate the sensitive way that many answered! Don't let that scare you away from asking more questions. To make you feel better, an adult asked me the same thing about having a rooster in with the chickens too!

-- Nan (davidl41@ipa.net), November 17, 2001.

Well, glad that I was not the only one that got taken on this one. I thought that he was just an ignorant little boy and come to find out that he was just a weirdo getting kicks out of watching chickens! Worse yet, he was pretending to watch chickens! Strange person! Gotta be better things to do than to think up things like that. Must not have any social life whatsoever! It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out how to get a life! If your ugly buddy, paper sacks are cheap!

-- Fooled me once (Not@this time.net), November 17, 2001.

I fooled you?! Dude, i am 14 yrs. old and no i don't sit around watching chickens. the only chickens i have ever seen have been on tv. I just wanted to know what i asked and now i wish i never even asked you guys! This is the only question i have asked on this forum. i am not the same webtv as melkelly or what ever his email address is. Where do ya'll get this stuff from? Geez!!!

I should of just asked Charles E. Cullens. do any of you know him? He has his own show on our local station here in Roanoke, Va. It's called the Chicken Chat show. He wouldn't of given me this crap! But i was afraid he would laugh at me. i don't have a personal computer, i just have webtv that my dad's girlfriend let me keep when she moved out. So there!

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 17, 2001.

One thing I'll add here. A chicken with a rooster will have fertile eggs, but there is no chick in it untill the egg is held at 99 degrees for 24 hours. Then the little chick heart starts to beat, after 24 hours of heat. Neat huh.

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@msn.com), November 19, 2001.

Well TeeJae I'll have to apolgize for crediting the wrong gender to you. The way you spelled out TeeJae led me to believe you were a girl rather than a boy. An unwitting misinterpretation on my part but you did get the jist of what I was trying to get across I hope.

Don't take the suspicious folk too hard. You just had the misfortune to post your question at a time when we've had a couple of jackasses here trying to cause trouble. The way your question was worded kind of made it unclear if you were someone really trying to get information or one of the fools wasting everyone's time.

If you have other poultry questions feel free to come on back and ask, we'll see what we can do.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (live-oak@atlantic.net), November 19, 2001.

You think the way i spell my name looks like a girls name? I have never known a girl name teejae. It really is initials for my real name but that is the way i was taught to spell it. My dad would only call me by my real name when i would get into trouble and he was mad. Some people call me teej for short.

thanks live oak. you seem to be the nicest person on here. :-)

-- Teejae Bird (zachdawg@webtv.net), November 20, 2001.