Comparison of various characteristics of duration of fertility in hens

1. Maximum duration (Dm, number of days post-insemination until last fertile egg) and efficient duration (De, number of days post-insemination until first infertile egg) of fertility, number of fertile eggs (F), dead embryos and hatched chicks (H) during the 21 d following the latter of two intravaginal inseminations (with 125 x 10(6) spermatozoa) on two consecutive days were measured in a total of 2549 layer-type hens at three ages (starting at 30, 44 and 55 weeks of age). 2. De and Dm were highly correlated (0.46 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.67). Both De and Dm were also well correlated with F (0.45 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.80) and H (0.45 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.76) whereas correlations between numbers of dead embryos and other variables were very low and often not significant (0.04 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.29). 3. The highest repeatabilities between hen ages were observed for F (0.34 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.49) and H (0.36 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.48) and the lowest for numbers of dead embryos (0.02 less than or equal to r less than or equal to 0.28). 4. Because of low fertility 18 d after insemination, the period over which measurements were made could have been reduced by 3 d without significant differences in the ranking of the females. 5. The number of perivitelline spermatozoa found in eggs laid on day 2 is not a good predictor of duration of fertility but could allow the culling of hens associated with lowest De or Dm.