LOL Okay, quick turtle lesson:
Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata (Has a notochord for at least part of the animal's development)
Subphylum - Vertebrata (Has a true backbone)
Class - Reptilia
Superorder - Chelonia (turtles, tortoises and terrapins (Testudines) along with the "proto-turtle" Australochelys)
Order - Testudines (Good note here about the differences between turtles, tortoises & terrapins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle#Turtle.2C_tortoise.2C_or_terrapin )
And from the Free Online Dictionary:
Che`lo´ni`a (kė`lō´nĭ`å)
n. pl. 1. (Zool.) An order of reptiles, including the tortoises and turtles, peculiar in having a part of the vertebræ, ribs, and sternum united with the dermal plates so as to form a firm shell. The jaws are covered by a horny beak.
So turtles and tortoises are grouped together
within the reptile class.
@Lessalynn: I don't think that Sarah was implying that birds were mammals, you'll have to ask her. I think she just was going through a list of animal classes and jumped from bird to mammal.
Akane is right, it is the hen that determines what sex the chick will be. Because of this you can't even select for females by playing games with the sperm before artificially fertilizing the hens. There may be some truth that higher temps favor the female embryos as in that wild turkey. That would be a wonderful study although if it is true we would simply be killing off the male embryos.
SeaHen, since hens control the sex of the embryo, it could be possible that she is only capable of producing W chromosomes. ("Males are the homogametic sex (ZZ), while females are heterogametic (ZW)."
Wikipedia Were there any clears or blood rings that hatch? If not, keep track of her hatches, you may be sitting on a genetic gold mine. If we can breed for feather color and frizzle, we could breed hens with the inability to produce roos, couldn't we?