hatching pullets

jmbwholesale

Chirping
5 Years
May 8, 2014
69
4
71
has anyone had more success hatching pullets more than cockrels in an incubator? I understand if your incubator runs on the hot side, your hatchlings will be males as the female eggs can't take the heat. So I'm wondering if you incubate at a half of a degree cooler, would you end up with more pullets? They say the egg is both male and female in the beginning. I'd think there should be some scientific evidence supporting a 1/2 degree cooler incubation to have more hens. :). Any thoughts? :)
 
Hello there and welcome to BYC!
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Actually you are on the right track, however I believe it is the storage of the eggs that can determine male or female. So eggs stored at really cool temps generally turn out to be female and eggs stored at higher warmer temps can turn out to be males. When I say cool temps I am talking 40's to low 50's, no warmer. Any higher and they can become males. I have never tried this but there have been a few studies on it. So you might give it a try and please keep us posted! Lots of us would enjoy knowing how it turned out! :)

Good luck with all your hatches and may they all turn out to be pullets!! (if that is what you are after. :) )
 
Welcome to BYC! Please make yourself at home and we are here to help.

Some people believe pointy eggs are male and round are female. Others believe temperature determines what gender you get. I believe there is no way to determine or change what they will be. I think you have a 50/50 chance of either sex.
 
Welcome to BYC! Glad you decided to join our flock. It is impossible to change the gender of an egg by temperature or any other method after it's laid. The chick's gender is determined at the time the embryo forms exactly the same as in mammals except that the female is the one who is heterozygous and determines gender instead of the male. The gender can't change later because the gene just isn't there. An egg either gets ZZ and is male, or ZW and is female. There is no way to spontaneously create a W or another Z. However it is potentially possible to alter what hatches. You can't change the gender in the eggs, but you can kill off more of one gender than the other. Your hatch rates would drop, and the dead eggs left behind would be mostly the same gender. Nothing is guaranteed to work though. The have been some inconclusive studies that indicate that cockerels might survive temperature extremes better than pullets. That means that making the temperature too hot or too cold will get you more cockerels than pullets by killing the pullets. Your unhatched eggs would be pullet eggs. Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have. We are here to help in any way we can. Good luck with your flock.
 
I'm a skeptic - if it worked they wouldn't be dumping tons of cockerels every year. Maybe when I see slim people where once were obese (myself included) I might try the diet pills.
 
Welcome to BYC
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Glad you joined us! Unfortunately, as Mountain Peeps said, there is no way to manipulate the genders. If you hatch enough eggs you will eventually end up with roughly 50/50 female and male.
 

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