OK, before I get the common answer that "sex is determined in the egg", let me state that I know this, what I am interested in is whether one sex can survive a particular temp better than the other, resulting in for instance more "dead in shell" male eggs.
I first read this from a source that sounded pretty legit, but darn if I can find the site again, and I think they said slightly lower temps favor the females. I incubate at 37.8 degrees or thereabouts pretty much throughout the incubation, and I would say my ratio long term is about 1:1 of course.
I read the other threads on this subject and didn't really find a definitive answer, but one person saw a huge difference with 2 incubations of 24 eggs (a decent sample size but I would say a few more repeats would be more convincing - I think 37.5C gave more pullets than the higher temp.
So I was hoping folks would chime in if they have tried this, or even better if they found a scientific paper researching the topic...
As an aside (I lost the paper of course but I could dig it up if folks really interested)... a VERY interesting paper showed that for storage at ambient temperatures for a number of days (THINK SHIPPING EGGS) that a 24 hour PRE-INCUBATION increased the hatch/survival rate tremendously. This makes good sense embryologically (to me at least) - a single cell is far more vulnerable to physical trauma than a group of say 20-40 cells.
I wish sellers would read this paper and adopt the method - it was very sound with a large sample size.
I first read this from a source that sounded pretty legit, but darn if I can find the site again, and I think they said slightly lower temps favor the females. I incubate at 37.8 degrees or thereabouts pretty much throughout the incubation, and I would say my ratio long term is about 1:1 of course.
I read the other threads on this subject and didn't really find a definitive answer, but one person saw a huge difference with 2 incubations of 24 eggs (a decent sample size but I would say a few more repeats would be more convincing - I think 37.5C gave more pullets than the higher temp.
So I was hoping folks would chime in if they have tried this, or even better if they found a scientific paper researching the topic...
As an aside (I lost the paper of course but I could dig it up if folks really interested)... a VERY interesting paper showed that for storage at ambient temperatures for a number of days (THINK SHIPPING EGGS) that a 24 hour PRE-INCUBATION increased the hatch/survival rate tremendously. This makes good sense embryologically (to me at least) - a single cell is far more vulnerable to physical trauma than a group of say 20-40 cells.
I wish sellers would read this paper and adopt the method - it was very sound with a large sample size.
