Ameraucana thread for posting pictures and discussing our birds

So it's not just me with Roo Overload!
barnie.gif
I have 11 BBS in the grow out pen, and I have 3 pullets, 2 of which have a clean face and 8 roos!
he.gif
I have 15 more chicks in brooders and they are to young to sex confidently yet. I hope I get a few nice girls so I can start hatching my own eggs next spring. This has been a slow frustrating way to start a breeding flock.
 
Quote:
Its nice to see some girls in somebody's picture!
barnie.gif
I swear somebody is coming to my house at night and leaving little wheatie roos everywhere.


Haha! I know! I hatched over 20 males and only 8 females!
th.gif
Can't wait 'till my girls start laying and I can hatch some of my own eggs!



Oh and another question, SINCE I have over 20 cockerels, between 6 and 14 weeks old, do you guys think I should cull the few with OBVIOUS defects now or wait?


Thanks!



Out of 20 I would begin culling down to what is definately not going to be a breeder. Any obvious that early isnt going to change. Just depends on how many roos you think you need.
 
Quote:
I read....somewhere .....and the real experts can probably tell us where, that the hotter the incubator, the more it favors the male, but it's only a degree or a half degree. The reason I didn't pay more attention is because it didn't make sense to me. I assume the gender is predetermined at fertilization, however it was a very long and techincal report, it was actually reffering to the survivablity of the embryos at different temps.
 
Quote:
Temperature affects sex ratio of many animals - like some species of turtles. In the past I've researched this to see if I could find this type of study published on chickens and couldn't find anything. If you can locate that report, I'd love to see a link to it.
 
pips&peeps :

That's only in reptiles.

Oh Jean! You're going to make me go find it now. I definitely was in chickens. It wasn't changing the sex, It was survivability of embryos or " hatch rate".​
 
pips&peeps :

I've read that the female embryos will survive hotter temperatures better, so I agree with you on that point.

Ok, this is not the article I was reading but is another on the same lines. Hotter temps favor the male embryos. Here is a quote from that article:


Neither chronic nor short-term increase in incubation temperature had a negative effect on hatchability and chick quality. Short-term warm stimulation improved hatchability by more than 1.5% and was associated with a significantly higher proportion of hatched male chicks

Here are 2 articles related to the subject:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19904643

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1652/2703.full
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom