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There are two different proposed mechanisms: one that kills the males, and the other that causes genetically-male chicks to develop as females and even lay eggs. About halfway through the thread: I haven't been able to find the actual study myself, but I've found a few news articles about it...

OP wants to try different incubation conditions to hopefully influence how many chicks of what gender actually hatch. So they are checking details of what other people have done, that supposedly resulted in more pullets and less cockerels hatching.

You can raise layer-type males for meat too. It may not be cost-effective, just like raising the dual-purpose ones is not always cost-effective, but they certainly can be eaten.

Considering how much cheaper male chicks are than female chicks, either they do not use it or it does not work very well. (I'm going by the prices hatcheries list for chicks.)

I think they are not supposed to. Hatcheries usually guarantee "not sorted by sex," but refuse to guarantee any ratio of chicks. For private individuals, it would depend on how honest they are, and how well they know what the terms actually mean, and how good or bad they actually are at...

Just one example: it would probably not be practical if it killed 1/2 of cockerels and 1/4 of pullets, because the hatchery would have to start with more eggs to get the same number of pullets. That would require bigger breeder flocks and more feed, and also more incubators, by which time there...

There are plenty of possible things that are still not practical. In this case, I think some studies have found some difference in the ratio of male and female chicks when they mess with the temperature-- but not enough to be useful in a commercial setting.

I think it works out to birds that are genetically males, but look and act like females (even to the extent of producing eggs that can hatch.) But being genetically ZZ, they can only produce male chicks-- because a normal female gets her W chromosome from her mother. And these "mothers" have no...

That mechanism might work. But if you sell any of those "females" to someone, they may be pretty disappointed when they hatch some eggs and every chick is male! Have you tested any of them to see if this is actually what is happening with your birds? (Either DNA sex test on the "females"...

How? If a male embryo has ZZ sex chromosomes, I do not see any way refrigerating it can make the chromosomes become ZW. Cold temperature is not going to add something that was not there before (W chromosome.) (And yes, it is very clear that chicken gender is determined by the chromosomes. All...

And no infertile ones or ones that quit early? In that case, I think your birds have just been producing eggs that mostly hatch females. The idea of lowering the incubator temperature, or refrigerating eggs, is that it kills some of the male embryos. Dead embryos would show up as eggs that fail...

How many in each group failed to hatch?

What hatch rates are you getting? I'm interested in how many eggs total, how many males, how many females, and how many did not hatch.