What do you consider good fertility?

I am curious what you consider is good fertility.

Do you consider 50% good fertility?

What about 40% or 70%?

Assuming there is decent Hen to Roo ratio and theres been no illness or extreme weather to affect anything, 50% in my opinion is not good enough. Depends on how your measuring, and why. If your building a breed back from extinction, you take what you can get.

Low fertility (in any anmial) is a pet peve of myne. I've had to deal with Stallions, and to a lesser extent, mares, who have NO reproductive selection pressure put on them. I know what a pain it is to deal with low fertility animals. Fundamentaly, to propagate any trait, whether its colouration, confirmation or anything else, you have to be able to PROPAGATE.

In my backyard non-show hobby flock, I've decided to keep one Roo over the winter. Major's fertility this spring was about... %70. To me, thats not good enough. His sole purpose is to make babies, I myself dont get any other offsetting benifits from him, at least a hen that still lays without being fertile is producing eggs.

In a young, healthy bird I'd like to see 85% fertility at least, asuming there are no obvious mitigating factors. (Dont see that yet in my flock for sure, but thats my goal)

That seems to depend entirely on the breed. My aggressive, non fluffy bummed chickens have much higher fertility than my laid back fluffy butts. I suppose a little plucking would give them a edge. The skinny breeds seem to be more fertile than the tubby ones.

Truth be told it doesn't much matter to me as long as they lay LOTS OF EGGS! I don't sell eggs often and hatch most myself. If a hen only gives me a couple dozen eggs in a season and I hatch them all, even at 100% fertility that doesn't give me much to choose from for my breeding program.

Now before you laugh at me, I was talking to a man who had top show quality light brahmas. He sold them all. Why? Each hen only gave him 3-6 eggs a year. A YEAR! When he spoke to another breeder, that breeder said, " Six eggs? Lucky you! I get far fewer! "

something that hatches.