You Can Sex a Chicken Egg?

[paulzie32]

Well... no one said it was 100% guaranteed accurate. And the zoos need to feed their animals too ya know

 

[1muttsfan]

Changing the temperature of incubation does not change the sex of the chicks - it may, though, affect the survival of the embryos. It appears that male embryos tolerate a higher temperature than female, so higher temps at incubation will result in more male chicks because more female embryos die during incubation - meaning that you hatch fewer chicks, but a higher percentage of them will be male.

 

[redhen689]

Changing the temperature of incubation does not change the sex of the chicks - it may, though, affect the survival of the embryos. It appears that male embryos tolerate a higher temperature than female, so higher temps at incubation will result in more male chicks because more female embryos die during incubation - meaning that you hatch fewer chicks, but a higher percentage of them will be male.

About 12 years ago my daughter wanted to do a science experiment for school... She wanted to hatch eggs. I built a still air incubator, and put a baffle in it so half of the eggs were near the light, and half were away from the light. The temperature of the eggs near the light was 100-101, the temperature of the eggs on the other side of the baffle was 99-100. The warmer eggs hatched a day before the cooler eggs,
I know that the first egg to hatch was female, she was with the warmer eggs. I don't think I have the records any more of what chickens hatched from which eggs, but one group did end up being mostly female and the other mostly male. (If I had to guess, I think it was the warmer eggs that were mostly female, but that is contrary to what muttsfan posted.
No, I don't believe that incubating temperature affects the sex of chicken eggs, or we'd be incubating at a different temperature. And it has been proven that temperature does not affect sex-determination in birds, only in reptiles.

BTW, when looking for scientific evidence, try searching with "Google Scholar" It eliminates much, but not all, of the unscientific garbage.

 

[gguineasfamily]

Thanks everyone for this thread! I hope to try it soon - does anyone know if this works for guineas?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I don't think it works for any birds.

 

[gguineasfamily]

I don't think it works for any birds.

Okay. Well I guess there's no harm trying.

 

[dmbnj]

If this were true, my Orpingtons would only hatch females, and my Ameracauna's would only hatch males.

 

[mtminstrel]

HahahahAa, I saw Some videos about this on YouTube and tried it last year. I gave my hen 5 eggs round as I could find. 3 hatched. Alas all 3 were roosters. Dare I experiment again?

 

[bandittheroo]

Just found this thread and looking back i tjink its funny because they have egg sexing now proven to work 100% of the time. There are actually several different ways they do it too. There is air pressure or using air to get a reading of the structures, there is a laser hole technique where they use a microscopic hole to bounce a laser and get a reading of interior stuctures and there is a new way coming out now with just candleing!!

 

[bandittheroo]

Oops *think