Cream Legbars

[chicken pickin]

My experience in hatching EE's and 1/2 Copper Maran's is that in January I hatched 12 eggs under a broody and 9 were female. In April I got 5/5 males. Could temp have anything to do with it...like in turtles?

I had one very lucky hatch this summer(June) with eggs hatched under a broody. She hatched 9 out of 10 eggs and ALL NINE were pullets. It was the best hatch I had all year

 

[DCchicken]

Just curious:

Wonder if this is just another genetic trait that gets passed along....or are there environmental factors?

It's not just the CLs that have hatched a lot of boys this year. I have 15 rare breeds and most of them have produced mostly boys this year. For example, I had one hatch of Ayam Cemani in which 9 out of 12 were boys. Multiple that by 15 breeds and I have dubbed this the "Year of the Roo."

 

[enola]

Same here way more male chicks from my Araucanas and my Olive Eggers...........

 

[ChicKat]

Just curious:

Wonder if this is just another genetic trait that gets passed along....or are there environmental factors?

I'm just getting starting in the CCL breeding, and I have very limited capacity being a real backyard person...so, I have 4 ccl chooks two girls and two boys...all have flaws, and a couple of good traits, and I do not know how (given my limited capacity) how should I be proceeding....

Both girls have just started laying.....the non-crested one is being covered by my #2 roo (the one with too much color, they grew up together)..the crested girl has so far resisted both roo's advances...(she was recently re-homed to me and have only recently been allow to free range with the flock)....

I think both the girls are on the smallish side...Roo #1 is a big boy, Roo#2 is huge for his age....

Any input is greatly appreciated....TIA!!!



Nice neon yellow legs on this pullet. Because her comb is so small, she doesn't appear mature to my eye. Could she be younger than you think? Was there damage to her comb? compare her comb to your other CL pullet and you may see what I am referring to. Or is it my small screen, bad eyes and the angle of the photo?

 

[ChicKat]

Just the opposite here. I get far more females - This spring's hatch was 10 pullets and two males. I do rather hope as Stake wondered that it is a genetic trait the hen will pass to her daughters. :O)

 

[lonnyandrinda]

WIthout hatching a minimum of 100 chicks from a single hen it is hard to say whether it is just an unlucky happenstance or a hen tendency.

 

[gootziecat]

I had a hen (not CL) that I repeatedly set 4 eggs each clutch and without fail, each hatched out 3 pullets and 1 cockerel. The jury isn't in on this one.

 

[mollybuck]

we had a 50/50% split on the sexes in the incubator. Under the broodies however.. it was 2/1 in favor of pullets... same eggs... go figure! I am going to let my girls to the work from now on!

 

[GaryDean26]

In my opinion there is no sense complaining about hatch ratios. If the odds are 50/50 that the offspring are cream, I can't force more to be cream than gold. If the odds are 50/50 that the offspring will be crested I can't force more to be crested than non crested, and if the odds are 50/50 that I will get pullets I can't force there to be more pullets than cockerels.

I do believe that mother nature always wins out. Whether I get what I want or not, I always seen to get what I need. My first year with CLB's I got heavy pullet hatches for 8 weeks in a row. I was getting 60% pullets 40% cockerels. Once I had everything I need for my own grow out groups I tried to push my luck at having some surplus pullets to sell and ended up with two cockerel heavy hatches for the last two hatches. So...did I need more pullets? More pullets was a want not a need and the flock must have a way of knowing what it needs because I didn't get the additional pullets I wanted.

I had a good group of pullets and was going to monitor them as layers until they were 12 months before sorting or selecting any keepers from the group. Before that group of Pullets had reached their 12 month mark I again tried some more hatch using the same foundation stock as the 60% pullet hatches the previous season and ended up with 75% cockerels. I had culled all the cockerel from the pervious season so with a large group of F1 hens and zero F1 cockerels I think that nature was telling me that I needed to focus on the cockerels before starting another group of pullets.

I grew out 25 cockerels and ended up with two wonderful cockerels that were what I was looking for in breeders. One of which is now a year old and will be bred next spring. So...I figure if I get tons of cockerels I should be grateful. The cockerel is half the flock and so it is a great gift to be able to have large group of cockerel to evaluate and choose from.

This year was another pullet year. We had about 9 breeding hens a little over a year ago, but have slowly been making cuts one by one as we get pickier or find new faults with the hens and are now down to just 4 hens in the breeding pen. So.. the pullet year was once again what we needed. Funny how nature does that.

There will always be pullet year and cockerel years. Don't worry if you are having a cockerel year. Thousands of year of domesticated chickens have proved that this will change and the pullets will eventually catch up.

Nature has a way of taking care of its self.

 

[ChicKat]

In my opinion there is no sense complaining about hatch ratios. If the odds are 50/50 that the offspring are cream, I can't force more to be cream than gold. If the odds are 50/50 that the offspring will be crested I can't force more to be crested than non crested, and if the odds are 50/50 that I will get pullets I can't force there to be more pullets than cockerels.

I do believe that mother nature always wins out. Whether I get what I want or not, I always seen to get what I need. My first year with CLB's I got heavy pullet hatches for 8 weeks in a row. I was getting 60% pullets 40% cockerels. Once I had everything I need for my own grow out groups I tried to push my luck at having some surplus pullets to sell and ended up with two cockerel heavy hatches for the last two hatches. So...did I need more pullets? More pullets was a want not a need and the flock must have a way of knowing what it needs because I didn't get the additional pullets I wanted.

I had a good group of pullets and was going to monitor them as layers until they were 12 months before sorting or selecting any keepers from the group. Before that group of Pullets had reached their 12 month mark I again tried some more hatch using the same foundation stock as the 60% pullet hatches the previous season and ended up with 75% cockerels. I had culled all the cockerel from the pervious season so with a large group of F1 hens and zero F1 cockerels I think that nature was telling me that I needed to focus on the cockerels before starting another group of pullets.

I grew out 25 cockerels and ended up with two wonderful cockerels that were what I was looking for in breeders. One of which is now a year old and will be bred next spring. So...I figure if I get tons of cockerels I should be grateful. The cockerel is half the flock and so it is a great gift to be able to have large group of cockerel to evaluate and choose from.

This year was another pullet year. We had about 9 breeding hens a little over a year ago, but have slowly been making cuts one by one as we get pickier or find new faults with the hens and are now down to just 4 hens in the breeding pen. So.. the pullet year was once again what we needed. Funny how nature does that.

There will always be pullet year and cockerel years. Don't worry if you are having a cockerel year. Thousands of year of domesticated chickens have proved that this will change and the pullets will eventually catch up.

Nature has a way of taking care of its self.

If the parent stock is homozygous for crest and cream, why would you get 50%? Shouldn't you get 100% of both if parents have the required genes.......