• Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    Parthenogenesis is natural, an adaptation for adverse conditions, typically caused by a specific gene (or genes perhaps, the research is pretty young yet). If it happens and they tend their nest like they want to, it’ll hatch and be female.

    Most chickens won’t produce self-fertile eggs at all, and those that can don’t always produce fertile eggs either by my understanding, so most of them will just be wasted. But if you get a specific breed that’s known for it the chances are much higher.

      • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        I certainly didn’t mean to imply anything else, it’s a rare gene after all, just that there are an absolute ton of eggs produced daily and I bet if you were to incubate all of them you’d have a lot more fertile than you’d think. Not a lot of people out there incubating eggs (or letting their chickens do it) from cock-free flocks to see what happens, you know?