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[Ice]

Hello! I recently started playing Dwarf Fortress and first off, I will have to say that this is one of the most amazing games I have played 
I have now started my second fortress and wanted to try out getting food through eggs and butchering animals, so, I embarked with 4 hens and 1 rooster.
I remember reading somewhere that this would be a good number to start with since you can simple not use the first few eggs for food and instead let them hatch for more hens (which of course, means more eggs). But now that my hens have laid eggs, instead of hatching, they simple began to rot until finally landing on my refuse pile 
I'm not sure what I've done wrong. I build a small room in my fort, put the 4 hens, the 1 rooster and 4 Nest Boxes in it and waited. I've also forbidden eggs from being put into my food pile. Am I missing something?
I'm sorry if this is a 'noob' question, but I wasn't able to find an answer anywhere 

[Trif]

Maybe you just got unlucky and the eggs weren't fertilized. The rooster needs a walkable path to the hens.

[Drazinononda]

So to be clear: the eggs were in the nest boxes, with the mothers still sitting on them?

[hiroshi42]

Maybe you just got unlucky and the eggs weren't fertilized. The rooster needs a walkable path to the hens.

This is untrue, the only requirement for any [PET] fertilization to happen is that there needs to be a mature male somewhere on the map.  It can be wild, hidden in the deepest cavern or in a cage that the merchants just walked in with.

Also: ho long were the eggs in the nest boxes for?  were the hens disturbed after laying?  Personally I have never had eggs actually rot while being tended in a nest box.

[Kumis]

Try to make sure that nothing can disturb the hens and their eggs.
It may be the case that you missed a stockpile (so it still takes eggs), or maybe a prepared food order interfered.

I like to split my poultry up into those that lay eggs for eating and those that lay eggs for hatching, and put the 'hatchers' into their own room with a forbidden door.

Also, if you think a chicken has laid you can 't' their nestbox and explicitly forbid the clutch.

Also, maybe give other poultry a try, there are 4 main variables you can toy with:
Bird size
Clutch size (number of eggs)
Time to maturity
Lifespan

Turkeys, of the easily accessible egg-layers, have the biggest body size and clutch size, so that means lots of meat, bones and eggs, but they take a while to mature and don't live for particularly long (I think).
I favour geese, personally, never actually tried chickens.

Oh yes, and beware the exponential growth of poultry! Really, it's quite terrifying.

[MasterShizzle]

Geese give the best balance between clutch size and meat production. They don't reproduce as ridiculously as turkeys, but they mature in half the time so it ends up being worth it. One fort of mine has 25 female geese.

For my purposes, having each animal in its own 1x1 pasture room with a nest box and a door works great. When you want to hatch another clutch, wait until the bird lays their eggs (check the nest box with "t") and then forbid the door. When you get the message that they've hatched, un-forbid it.

You have to be careful with large clutches, though. Being locked in a 1x1 room means that the chicks are all going to be stuck on top of the mother, which means the mother might take some damage from fighting chicks/goslings/poults/whatever if you leave them unattended for too long. As soon as you get the "have hatched" message, go and un-forbid the door and quicky assign the offspring to a different area. I usually just throw all my baby animals into a cage next to my butcher's shop (kittens, puppies, piglets, whatever). Then when they mature, you just assign the adult animal to their respective pasture and butcher the parent.

[i2amroy]

Maybe you just got unlucky and the eggs weren't fertilized. The rooster needs a walkable path to the hens.

This is untrue, the only requirement for any [PET] fertilization to happen is that there needs to be a mature male somewhere on the map.  It can be wild, hidden in the deepest cavern or in a cage that the merchants just walked in with.

1)Caged creatures can not breed, though pregnant creatures will still give birth in cages.
2)I know for a fact that intelligent creatures need a walkable path to their mates, and I believe this also applies to pets as well. They do not need to come into contact with each other, seeing as they breed through spores, but there does need to be a walkable path at some point.

On the topic of eggs, all eggs hatch in the same amount of time (9 months IIRC) if they are fertile, regardless of creature type (assuming the mother never leaves the nest box). As such any eggs that have been sat on for more then a year are infertile, and can be collected without problems.

[Ice]

So to be clear: the eggs were in the nest boxes, with the mothers still sitting on them?

Ah, now that you mention it, I think the hens actually simply left the eggs in the Nest Boxes, though I don't know why they would o.O
They weren't disturbed in any way that I know of. Heck, nothing of real importance has happened in my fortress except my farmers running out of seeds. It's still summer of the first year.
Do workshops near the hens disturb them (as in a few rooms away)? Or if dwarfs walk into their room from time to time?

[SharkForce]

does your pasture for those hens (if any) include the nest boxes?

if not, it's quite possible a dwarf came along, grabbed your hens, and put them into their pasture, which would quite effectively ruin the process.

[Ice]

does your pasture for those hens (if any) include the nest boxes?

if not, it's quite possible a dwarf came along, grabbed your hens, and put them into their pasture, which would quite effectively ruin the process.

The Nest Boxes are in the pasture if that's what you're asking.

I think I'm going to try and see if this will occur again by saving the game and then having DF run in the background for a bit, too see if any eggs will ever hatch...

[Kumis]

If the hens are already in the future pasture do they get moved to it anyway once it's made? (So just picked up and put down again, say.)
Maybe that could screw with their egg-laying?

[Ice]

Well, it seemed to have been a one-time thing, since some chicks just hatched...
I'm still not sure what exactly disturbed them, but I since it seems to be working now, it doesn't really matter to me 
Though now I kinda feel bad for asking you for help when I could have easily tested this before 
Thank you for all the answers anyways

[Kumis]

No, it's good that it's sort of on the unofficial record. If anyone else ever has a similar problem someone will probably point them this way and then it'll help us piece together information about what might have happened.
Maybe it'll help us uncover a bug, or smooth out the supply chains in our fortresses, that sort of thing.
You were right to post it!

[Quietust]

1)Caged creatures can not breed, though pregnant creatures will still give birth in cages.

Caged males, however, can still impregnate uncaged females - spores cannot enter cages, but they can still leave them.

2)I know for a fact that intelligent creatures need a walkable path to their mates, and I believe this also applies to pets as well. They do not need to come into contact with each other, seeing as they breed through spores, but there does need to be a walkable path at some point.

The walkable path requirement is only effective for members of your fortress, and it's also accompanied by the requirement of the units being married and the check against BABY_CHILD_CAP (and the resulting pregnancy being 9 months long instead of 6 months). There is no path check for tame animals.