Cockerel pullet ratio high from one hen. Don't breed?

[bobbi-j]

A subconscious decision then. Pre programmed.

Not a decision of any kind. It's a physical thing. The rooster's seem carries only one sex chromosome (since I don't kno for sure which one, I'm just going to say it's the z). That means the hen's egg will carry the X or the z. Whichever one the sperm fertilizes is what determines the sex of the chick. So what I am taking from that is, if a hen carries more Y chromosomes, she's likely to throw more males.

Culling a hen at the basic level involves NOT BREEDING HER. So by culling or not breeding this hen or hatching her eggs you may inadvertently be letting a large number of pullets be stillborn. Nature has a way of leveling out the high and low spots of sex distribution. I know from breeding gamefowl for most of my life and being disappointed when a favored hen threw too many female chicks. 92% cockerels this year can quickly become 92% pullets the following year.

"Culling" an animal means to remove it from the herd or flock. Not breeding one because of a certain trait is selective breeding. Not breeding that hen doesn't cause anything to become "still born". In order for that to happen, the chicks would have to develop and then die in the shell. The only thing that would happen is that chicks won't grow or hatch if the hen isn't bred or allowed to hatch.

@Chichero - I'd be interested in knowing how future hatches from this bird turn out. I'm glad you can find homes for the males.

 

[Pyxis]

Yep, it's the hen that donates the chromosome that determines the sex of the chick. She doesn't make a decision about it, it's just whatever chromosome the egg happens to have that determines whether the chick is male or female. I have heard of some hens that seem to produce more of one sex than the other, and that is possible if when she was born, she was born with more eggs of the Z chromosome than of the W chromosome. A chicken is born with all the eggs she will ever have so if she ended up with more Z eggs than W eggs, she could end up producing more males than females.

That said, it could have just been really bad luck these last three hatches. She may very well have a more even amount of W and Z eggs, but these last few hatches just happened to be more Z than W that got laid.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

To clear up some genetics mentioned in the thread.

A hen does determine the sex of the offspring as she is ZW...a long chromosome and a short chromosome.

The rooster's sperm is ZZ, both long chromosomes.

Then it is statistical math whether a Z of the sperm (either one) matches with a Z or W of an ova from the hen.

Typically that is 50% but just as you can toss a coin and get all tails in a row, if you toss long enough you will eventually get 50% heads and tails.

So I would not consider 24 set eggs enough statistical math to set a trend. If you set 24 more eggs, and then get all roosters, I would then suspicion something amiss in her ova manufacturing as somehow her eggs are only getting the Z chromosome and never the W. (Any geneticists out there...I wonder if there might be something amiss with the shorter W chromosome???)

What does seem to influence survival of cockerals to pullets is the incubation temperature of the eggs. Not so much that the industry can develop around it, but cooler eggs tend to favor males. But that would mean survival of males not existence of males.

So I think you hatch some more and see what trend you get.

My first 3 years, I only hatched pullets. Seriously. Everything I hatched was a pullet. Yippee. It helped me grow my flock quickly.

The last 2 years, I've only been able to hatch cockerals. Sigh. I've eaten and re-homed more boys, and my breeding plans are developing very, very slowly.

So I think it is most likely too small a sampling for true statistics.

LofMc

 

[Lady of McCamley]

And yes, a hen at hatch has all her ovum in her ovaries.

But what develops into an egg is merely the toss of a coin. She could possibly have more Z ova than W ova, but without a lot of egg hatching, it would be hard to state that was the cause over simple statistical math chances.

LofMc

 

[bobbi-j]

Thank you, @Pyxis and @Lady of McCamley for chiming in. I know how it works, but am not as good at explaining it as you two did.

 

[Mrs. K]

If she hatched 100 eggs, then you might have a statistical trend. While I have never had 100% roosters, it seems like the last several times, I have had way more roosters than pullets. Lady of M- you should have bought a lottery ticket!

 

[lomine]

 

[song of joy]

@Chichero - Did you have the hen and rooster in a breeding pen while you were collecting eggs for hatching? If so, was she the only female confined with the rooster?

 

[lazy gardener]

If she were in my flock, I would consider the stats of those last 3 hatches to be significant. And I would consider her to be a hen who I would not want to play in my gene pool because she appears to throw more male offspring. Now, if I had a hen who produced 90% pullets in her first 3 clutches, you can be sure that I'd be hatching more of her eggs. And you can be sure that if the latter hen produced a cockerel or two, I'd be keeping them as breeders.

 

[Nimueh Alene]

@Chichero - Did you have the hen and rooster in a breeding pen while you were collecting eggs for hatching? If so, was she the only female confined with the rooster?

Yes it was just her and my OEG bantam rooster