You Feather Sexing Experts... have at it! Pretty please? (Video update)

[daharja]

We've found the same thing - lowering the temperature in the incubator is giving us more females than males.

Anyone know if it works for all breeds, or just purebreeds though? We've found so far it's working for our crosses (barnevelder crosses) but our purebreeds are due to hatch soon and am hoping that we'll get the same result. With the crosses we've had about 70% females hatching.

 

[AllenWMiller]

It tends to work with all breeds pure or cross.

 

[GardeNerd]

Ugh Oh. This will put my broody hens temporarily out of work! It sounds interesting and I am going to have to buy an incubator and try this.

 

[humpbacks1962]

Ugh Oh. This will put my broody hens temporarily out of work! It sounds interesting and I am going to have to buy an incubator and try this.

Give it a go! Lower the temperature next time. What do you have to lose? Just males...

They don't have good chances of getting adopted and re-homed anyhow...

From first hand experience, nobody can tell me that this is an old wives tale anymore

 

[Syharrison]

2 boys 3 girls, at a guess

 

[jerryb]

I chose to take a minute to research the "temperature determines sex" question. What i found is that while temperature does effect the sex of many reptiles it does not determine the sex of chickens.

for reference you can take a look here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1629050/

the paper is quoted here with a relevant statement (emphasis added):

Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) during incubation is a well-known phenomenon in reptiles, whereas birds have genotypic sex determination (GSD) in which sex is determined at fertilization long before the incubation of eggs begins (Hardy 2002).

So I would suspect that the increased rate of pullets when incubating is probably due to the male chicks being more likely to die early due to low temperature.

cheers
jerry

 

[AllenWMiller]

Yes Jerry you are exactly correct; which is what I stated in an earlier post. This is a main reason hatcheries do no use this method; as even cockerels have monetary value to the commercial poultry business. Cockerels tend to die in the shell at lower temperatures than do pullets generally. Though as stated this method is not 100% either.

Only vent sexing and sex-link breeding techniques can offer near 98% sexing accuracy.

Cheers

JA

 

[braindead101]

If using the cooler temps to incubate, does it increase the length of incubation?

 

[humpbacks1962]

I chose to take a minute to research the "temperature determines sex" question. What i found is that while temperature does effect the sex of many reptiles it does not determine the sex of chickens.

for reference you can take a look here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1629050/

the paper is quoted here with a relevant statement (emphasis added):

Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) during incubation is a well-known phenomenon in reptiles, whereas birds have genotypic sex determination (GSD) in which sex is determined at fertilization long before the incubation of eggs begins (Hardy 2002).

So I would suspect that the increased rate of pullets when incubating is probably due to the male chicks being more likely to die early due to low temperature.

cheers
jerry

Yes. So if we want to follow what hatcheries do, then let's be ready to get results like they do.
Otherwise, take a chance to see if you could get a different result.

 

[CarolJ]

So since sex is determined at fertilization, you're deliberately creating a condition in which susceptible chicks (mostly males) will die off before they hatch?