Air sac determines sex.

[Ladybird CA]

Im not even sure why I’m doing this experiment as I doubt I’ll keep the chicks long enough but I’d rather be prepared in case I do. I’ll also have to remember to weigh the eggs before putting them in the incubators so that I can see if they lose 11-12% of weight at hatch like ChickenCanoe said they need to.

 

[Ladybird CA]

It was a high of 3 C (37.4 F), low of -11 C (12.2 F) with 0 (32 F) when I went to collect the only egg, a serama egg with an off centered air cell that I'll consider centered as I can see a bit of it on the other side, at 3:45 PM with SI 78. Around 5 PM there was a possible Polish egg (the golden Polish was in the nest when I collected the serama egg) and it appears to have no air cell, unless the air cell is so large that it is centered, I think it was SI 74.

39 eggs are now in the hovabator that I patched up with gorilla tape. 6 of them were from the smart incubator.

The 33 others with their weights:

Unidentified white eggs (14):

• side air cells (4): 39 grams, 40 g, 43g, 48g (Apr 10: 38 g)
• no air cell: 45 g
• centered (9): 39 g, 40 g, 42 g, 43 g x2, 46 g, 47g, 49 g x2

Golden Polish eggs (3, a few of the unidentified eggs could be hers when the yellow food gel disappeared and I didn't add more due to bad weather like today)

• side: 43 g
• centered (2): 39 g, 46 g

EE (4):

• side air cells (3): 46 g, 48 g, 49 g (Apr 10: cracked, 52 g)
• centered: 51 g

BLRW (5)

• side air cells (5): 50 g, 52 g x2, 53 g x2 (Apr 10: 58 g)

I think we ate some of her eggs that had centered air cells- wish I had kept one to compare

Columbian rock

• side: 47 g
• centered: 54 g

Serama (5)

• side: 27, g, 28 g x2, 30 g
• centered: 28 g

That would be interesting of one serama cockerel hatches with 4 pullets and one of the pullets being larger than him. It was the same with the April 2023 hatch that the hen, Dustbunny came out of. There were 2 pullets that weighed more than the cockerel at about a month old.

The eggs with centered air cells were refrigerated except the serama egg that I collected today.

20 eggs with side air cells, 1 white egg was cracked

13 Eggs with centered air cells

 

[Ladybird CA]

It was a high of 6 C, low of - 7C. Eggs were laid around 9:30 am this morning.

3 eggs with side air cells. The EE egg was cracked. I added more food colouring to the golden polish’s vent (yellow) and the campine (green)

There was an egg that had a tiny yellow spot that disappeared. It might be the golden polish’s. Going to update the previous thread so it’s easier to keep track of. Will need to post SI numbers the next time I’m having insomnia at night.

 

[TexasBlues]

You’re getting good at spotting the side side air cells. What do you use for candling?

 

[Ladybird CA]

Thanks! I use my phone. It’s an iPhone 13

 

[Ladybird CA]

My dad got it for me. I was mad that he did that instead of flying to see me. But anyway I’ll save buying gifts for children instead of seeing them for another time and perhaps another thread. I did see him in 2023 at a wedding and will see him again in 2 years at a graduation hopefully.

Back to highjacking the thread with side chicken related comments

Me to my bird brain I can’t wait until my turner arrives so I can move the incubator to the shed.

 

[Ladybird CA]

Gotta start a new post to get rid of italics.

Anyway, I wish there was a way to clean eggs for the incubator. I have to move them to the shed after the Turner (I know the word Turner is lowercase in the context I’m using but I’m just going to let autocorrect win these times…ahh when technology becomes more of a burden than it is helpful)

I hope the temperature in the shed won’t affect hatch but I want to move the incubator there to protect it from my cat. We had a door put in the basement for when I had button quail but he still managed to get in there when someone forgets to close it and really scared my birds, preventing them from laying and managed to injure one as I had a trio in a mesh enclosure. Very sneaky kitty.

He didn’t actually bite the hole in the incubator. It was created from being transported through luggage. But two pieces had broken off and he would grab those pieces to play with and chew, leaving gaps in the incubator.

I also don’t like 39 eggs with some having chicken poo incubating in my room with a baby in it despite having a filter (The room, not the incubator. Although DH was in one for being born 10 weeks early.) DH doesn’t want it in the spare bedroom for the same reason. Wonder why we are such germophobes when we have a cat and seeing a reason why people have dogs. Although in this cold weather I wouldn’t want to be forced to walk one 3 times a day especially if ill. Anyway I wish dirty eggs could be cleaned for incubation. The egg that was really dirty I wiped with a warm wet paper towel and it’s doing ok. But I’m afraid of not having that luck the more I risk it, despite being 4% Irish (thanks, AncestryDNA). I wonder why the Irish are considered lucky when they weren’t with the English. England even took over more of my DNA with it being 16%. Although AncestryDNA combined it with Northwestern Europe (before Brexit- the DNA test goes back 500 years for autosomal DNA, thousands of years for mitochondrial).

Wow how did I go from talking about dirty hatching eggs to Brexit. Time to try to go back to sleep.

 

[SkyAJK]

I recently read a booklet by Thomas Quisenberry that was titled How to Tell The Sex of an Egg Before Incubation. In the book it described candling a chicken egg prior to incubation. If the air sac is off center and can only be viewed from the front and sides of the egg, a female will hatch. If the air sac is centered in the end and can be viewed from all sides, a male will hatch. This was proved in a University study. Mrs. Noda Fry was the person who reported this method to Mr. Quisenberry. She hatched 96 eggs and 92 were female. She also described holding a chick by the head. If the legs relax and hang, this is a cockerel. If the legs draw up toward the head/abdomen, this is a female.
Has anyone else ever tried this? I am about to put a couple dozen eggs in the incubator that I have candled using this method.

That is very interesting. Please update your hatching.

I had tried "holding a chick by the head. If the legs relax and hang, this is a cockerel". Both my chicks were legs relax and hang, it turned out 1 rooster and 1 hen.

I will certainly test this air sac thing out next time when I give my hen eggs to hatch. I will do the update.

 

[Ladybird CA]

Thank you, we need more participants and less opportunities for me to digress. I fear I may begin to write of how I digest.

I plan to do that test with the bird on my palm as well. I can’t keep cockerels and will need to sell the chicks at auction because I probably can’t take care of chicks either. Unless I pay my son to do it. But then it’ll be considered child labor. Full disclosure I paid him $3 an hour to help me clean the house the other day (he set the wage amount not me even though I did most of the cleaning) and he was very excited to raid the gas station in snacks. We do try to promote healthy eating and he had some of the cauliflower potato I made yesterday (aloo gobi is my favourite Indian dish)

 

[Ladybird CA]

It’s 3:21 am so I’m not going to type it all out (SI etc, posting a pic instead) because I’m going to a bird auction today and who knows what I’d buy on little sleep from staying up too much. Maybe a roo with a crazy ‘do that I’m not allowed to have. If I were allowed I’d love one to have one though. I actually did have a buff polish cockerel but he died on March 25 which is probably why when I candled those 39 eggs last night most looked clear. 6 I took out as I somehow missed the cracks in 5 of them and one EE egg looked like the yolk wasn’t good which was confirmed by cracking it.

Anyone who’s annoyed by my, as DH puts it, “verbal diarrhea “ can blame it on my high school history teacher Jason. Instead of wishing me a good summer like everyone else, he wrote “you need to talk more”. This was about two years before everyone started using social media and now all introverts can become extroverts. I’m usually very quiet in person, especially in crowds. Annoyingly quiet. I guess it’s my mission in life to be annoying. Sometimes I do it because I’m “too polite” (and don’t want the chance of interrupting anyone) like I was told when I worked at Tim Hortons making me wonder how this country was stereotyped to be too polite. They didn’t know that I’m American and I didn’t say. I’m even less inclined to say it these days for obvious reasons.

Back to the other mission, sleep.

By the way that polish egg above the EE egg has the most “side air cell” of any egg. If they all were like that telling them apart would be a breeze. But a lot of them are off centre and one would need to ensure you don’t see it on the opposite side to be classified as a side air cell.

It was 6 C when I went to get the eggs yesterday.