Promised Picture

Here's the big boy.

This is the rooster that can't figure out heads from tails. He is a big beautiful rooster that should be doing his job. It will hard to replace him if he doesn't straighten up. I am ordering a couple more roosters in the same breed and with different colors but it will be a year before they are ready.
 

Stupid Rooster

 For the past four months our incubators, hatchers and brooders have been running. Total estimated cost to run them per month is around $60.00  to $75.00

Potential long term income from one months operation with a 100% hatch and mortality rate is around $3700.00
(that is hatching 210 eggs and selling those chicks at eight months old and does not factor in the cost of feed. For this post, I am just focusing on one months electricity use to continuity run the devices and re-setting)

I learned long ago that you never count your chickens before they hatch. You never really understand that statement until you do so and get burnt. Even taking that advise, I still count on a percentage. If I set 200 eggs and figure a modest 60% hatch rate then I can almost for sure count on 120 chicks.
Last year after building my own incubator, my hatch rate increased from 40% to 95%. That was something I could count on. It hit it every time.

Saying that, I counted on that rate this year as well. My first batch hatched at a neck breaking 1%. Thinking that it was just a first time goof, I sat another batch. That one hatched at 36% and the next one after that at 7%.
It is now coming down to the end of the third batch of eggs and I will candle them this weekend.
Everything is the same. My incubator is set right, with the right humidity, right turners, right everything. I am doing nothing different with these eggs than I was doing with the 95% eggs.
What has hatched out now will not even pay for the electricity it took to hatch and brood them. It will actually be cheaper to buy chicks than to keep doing it this way.

I have beat myself up really bad on this trying to figure it out until last night. I was sitting out back thinking what in the world is going on with these eggs and then I saw the problem, It's my rooster. I saw him do it five times in a row.

Last year I had to sell all my breeding stock and start over. All the chickens I have now are young and just started laying four months ago. That was one of the reasons I figured for the bad rate on the first hatch. Maybe they were all pullet eggs and not fertile.

The stupid rooster is mounting the hens wrong. He is mounting them backwards, head to butt. (Picture it so I do not have to describe it any further)
This is why when I candle the eggs just a few are fertile, but most are not. Sometimes he does get it right.
I know what I need to do, I need to get a smarter Rooster because I am not going to show him how it's done.
(Even though this is really not funny, it kinda it and deserves a good laugh)