This past week or so, it has become very obvious that one of my hand reared chick is not a hen, its a cockerel! I was wondering how do you know if they old enough to fertilise eggs? One of my hens has gone broody (although she often is) but I don`t want to eat any eggs now in case they are fertilised. I am in the process of building a second chicken house so I can at least have sum chickens just for eggs if you know what I mean. I don`t want to rehome Tweety (not that hes very tweety now lol) as I`ve had him since he was a week old.
Any advice welcome

How old is he?I have a cockeral here that just started crowing 2 weeks ago and he is definatly fertile as I have hatched some of his chicks out.Without checking I would say he is 19 weeks old now.
You say you wouldnt want to eat them incase they are fertile?Is that because you would rather hatch them out?If its only because they could be fertile it makes no difference to the egg untill they start to incubate them.
If you do decide to hatch some make sure you mark the hatching eggs so that if another hen lays in the same nest you know what eggs are fresh and what is being incubated

Hi and thx for your reply. Hes 17 weeks old and been crowing for just over a week. I have 4 hens and 2 of them(which do tend to get broody) have been sitting on eggs for 5 days now so I will leave them and see if they hatch. Hubby is helping me build another run so we can put the other hens in so we can sum eggs to eat and sum to hatch. Does that sound ok? And if you mark the eggs will the hens mind lol? They get very grumpy when theyve been broody and I steal the eggs!

Sounds fine to me,have you seen him treading the hens at all?
When any of mine are clocking I just mark a set number of eggs with a marking pen and put them under the broody,yes they will get very grumpy but soon settle back on the eggs .It will be better if you can seperate them and also the 2 clocking as I have had clockers come off the nest when another one hatches her eggs out.