cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44261915
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Not necessarily, no. Chickens are capable of parthenogenesis, or reproduction without a male, tho it’s fairly rare.
It would probably happen a lot more if we tried incubating all the unfertilized eggs we have them produce every day, but they take longer to mature and are smaller on average than chickens born from sexual reproduction, so it’s not really worth pushing for from a husbandry standpoint.
Well but naturally, if you got a hen just laying eggs, what will happen if nobody picked the eggs?
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.
Yeah that's my point. Only in rare occurrences will they be actual chickens, most of the time, they're going to waste
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?
They eat them.