DNA Sexing - Where do you recommend. Please post website Address:

[texascowboy1979]

HI.. to those of you who use DNA sexing.. what site do you use? Please post the address on here.. as I am interestedin sexing a few birds.

 

[CityChicker]

Avian Biotech, http://www.avianbiotech.com/

 

[chickenzoo]

Me too, although I found another I am going to try..

 

[Phage]

Ouch!!
unless your birds are super valuable that is a lot of $$$

I am sure that about a year ago I saw it being offered for about $1

 

[chickenzoo]

I sure wish they would invent a do-it-at-home kit, I know they could..............

 

[CityChicker]

Quote:
You are not talking about DNA sexing then. DNA sexing is about as close to 100% accurate as you can get and it has cost in the $20-$25 range for literally about the last 10+ years. You never would have seen it for a $1.

 

[sonew123]

Quote:
Phage a 1$???...I can flip a coin too but I only charge .50$ LOL I see a huge need for a new business here! hahaha love you Phage!

 

[DMFarm]

Quote:
You want find anyone cheaper that 20.00 to 25.00 a bird. I use Avian Biotech. I have seen that ad before to for 1.00 and it a scam there is no way to do dna testing for 1.00 he was getting sample in and guessing what sex they were and send them back he had a 50/50 chance of being right but when you send in two samples from the same bird and it come back a pair something wrong this is how he got busted and most bird magazine want put his ad in anymore.

 

[silkiechicken]

Well, let's see. What is involved?

The sample, the lysis buffer (cheap), a pile of various plastics (semi cheap), protinase K (kind of "cheap"), a heat block to keep at 55c (5K), some ethanol to precipitate the DNA (cheap), centrifuge that can do 10k+ RPM, some clean ddH20 (15k for a new system), primers for the sex chromosome (really cheap), a pcr machine (5k), a gel running set up (a few hundred). Averaged over time, over head and man hours will be the expensive part, so $20bucks a sample doesn't sound unfair to me. Your small french fries cost 1.29, but you could buy a 10lb sack of potatoes on sale for the same price.

Guess if the company was really high tech, they can use illumina genotyping, but that's $$$ for the facilities.


Edit: Just took a look at avian biotech, looks like they use regular ol pcr to do their testing. Safe, simple, tried and true tested method used for decades. $20-25 is a fair price for the job. Running a lab isn't cheap. I'm actually waiting for a pcr at the moment to finish the batch of genotyping on 92 samples.

 

[Phage]

I am with you - business is business and everyone has to make a buck. I figured the $1 was not quite right and a post above explains it (thanks).

Just seems hardly worth spending $20 to sex a $25 chick, or even a $50 chick. Totally worth it if you need to sex a very valuable bird or need genotyping for breeding.

I have these run at work and if you have the equipment already sitting there, it not that expensive to run a bunch especially as the technology has moved forward so fast in the last 5 years that they can run a large number of samples simultaneously, hence the rush on genotyping all sorts of animals, plants, tumors etc.

It also means that there is a glut of totally serviceable "obsolete" equipment available for very little$$. University surplus supplies are full of this sort of equipment because new labs starting up naturally want the latest and greatest.

That is a thought........