Eli5 when a hen lays eggs, what happens to all the eggs that would make a rooster?
In: Biology
Are you asking specifically about fertilized eggs that are growing a rooster chick?
First off, hens only lay fertilized eggs if they breed with a rooster. So if you have a bunch of hens and no roosters, you only get unfertilized eggs which will never result in an ‘egg that would make a rooster’.
There is a separate ‘production line’ for breeding chickens (vs producing unfertilized eggs for consumption), you generally don’t mix those lines up. So on the breeding side, they generally keep a low ratio of roosters to hens. Then when eggs are fertilized, they are incubated until hatching…if its a hen it may be sold to egg-laying farms (that don’t usually have any roosters), or kept/sold for breeding *or* for meat. If it’s a rooster, they are generally sold for breeding/meat, or killed early if necessary to control the ratio of male:female chickens.
Simply put, the ‘path’ of a chicken egg depends on whether it was fertilized or not….if it was fertilized it goes a different path than the unfertilized eggs you buy in stores whether it’s a rooster or a hen, but exactly who buys it depends on if they run an egg farm (produce eggs for consumption) or a chicken farm (produce chickens for consumption).
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