How to tell Male or Female Egg?? 92% accurate!

[appps]

I personally think luck has a lot to do with it when using such a small sample size.

My dad swears by the accuracy of dangling a pin above the egg and observing the way it spins to determine sex. He has seen results to prove it.

My boss had his 10 pullets selected by the hold them upside down and tell the sex depending on how much they flap method. He got all girls.

Common sense tells me both methods are too ridiculous to be true but yet the statistics in their small sample size say it's accurate. I would say the egg shape is the same and has more to do with how hard the chook pushed than what's inside , somebody has to have the odds to win the lottery and this time it was you when the numbers matched your hypothesis. Could you get the same result with 1000 birds? I'm not convinced lol

 

[pjquail]

Okay. I have also heard that temperature determines sex? I've heard that a couple times about eggs, but mostly with dogs/cats. Like, if you increase the temp. you will end up with most girls? My friend put a heating pad under her pregnant dog and she had 90% girls. Just a hypothesis though...

 

[appps]

 Okay. I have also heard that temperature determines sex? I've heard that a couple times about eggs, but mostly with dogs/cats. Like, if you increase the temp. you will end up with most girls? My friend put a heating pad under her pregnant dog and she had 90% girls. Just a hypothesis though...

Henry the 8th had 90% girls too so by that same logic one could also say chopping the heads off your wives will also give you more girls lol

What I would actually like to see if a study done on the ratio of boys to girls produced by particular hens. The female determines sex, do some female hens have a higher percentage of girls than boys just as same male humans will have more of one sex or the other. We know the average of all hens is 50/50 but do individuals also produce 50/50 as well or is that total chickens statistic made up by a mix of more boy and more girl producing hens. ((Does that even make sense?

 

[pjquail]

I'm curious too! I'm not sure, but when my hen lays her first "batch" of eggs and they hatch, I will definitely let you know the genders and how many!

 

[BlueBaby]

I know that this is an old thread, but what was the results of this?

 

[MrsBachbach]

Henry the 8th had 90% girls too so by that same logic one could also say chopping the heads off your wives will also give you more girls lol

What I would actually like to see if a study done on the ratio of boys to girls produced by particular hens. The female determines sex, do some female hens have a higher percentage of girls than boys just as same male humans will have more of one sex or the other. We know the average of all hens is 50/50 but do individuals also produce 50/50 as well or is that total chickens statistic made up by a mix of more boy and more girl producing hens. ((Does that even make sense?

I think some hens do produce more females than males. After several years of doing this, I noticed that I would get more girls from certain hens and always seemed to get a males from others. What I also found was those daughters from those female producing hens tended to have more males. I also noticed that the hens that tended to be over bred by the roosters, daily, seemed to have more females. Could be the girl figured she better produce some more females?

Idk, but I did have a long time breeder tell me if I wanted more females to put a 1st year cockerel in there with them, so, maybe there is something to that over breeding.

 

[junebuggena]

I think some hens do produce more females than males. After several years of doing this, I noticed that I would get more girls from certain hens and always seemed to get a males from others. What I also found was those daughters from those female producing hens tended to have more males. I also noticed that the hens that tended to be over bred by the roosters, daily, seemed to have more females. Could be the girl figured she better produce some more females?

Idk, but I did have a long time breeder tell me if I wanted more females to put a 1st year cockerel in there with them, so, maybe there is something to that over breeding.

I've noticed the same correlation between mother and daughter. One of my hens produces about a 60/40 female to male ratio. Her daughter has a 30/70 ratio.

 

[BlueBaby]

I think some hens do produce more females than males. After several years of doing this, I noticed that I would get more girls from certain hens and always seemed to get a males from others. What I also found was those daughters from those female producing hens tended to have more males. I also noticed that the hens that tended to be over bred by the roosters, daily, seemed to have more females. Could be the girl figured she better produce some more females?

Idk, but I did have a long time breeder tell me if I wanted more females to put a 1st year cockerel in there with them, so, maybe there is something to that over breeding.

Maybe that is why some will change their rooster out every year for another younger one?

 

[Chrysostomist]

Henry the 8th had 90% girls too so by that same logic one could also say chopping the heads off your wives will also give you more girls lol

What I would actually like to see if a study done on the ratio of boys to girls produced by particular hens. The female determines sex, do some female hens have a higher percentage of girls than boys just as same male humans will have more of one sex or the other. We know the average of all hens is 50/50 but do individuals also produce 50/50 as well or is that total chickens statistic made up by a mix of more boy and more girl producing hens. ((Does that even make sense?

Chickens are different from people in which parent determines the sex? I have no idea about chickens specifically, but my expectation would be males do because I don't know why males of a different species would not be "XY" and therefore responsible for determining sex.

And in response to other replies, I suppose it is true that amphibians can change sex, but without looking it up, I have never heard that birds do. Therefore, once an egg is a fertilized egg, it is already female or male for the rest of its life (just as people are, too). Changing incubation temperature wouldn't change eggs being male or female.

A couple of replies say that hens produced more females. Despite your experiences, it should always be a 50% chance an egg will hatch a female and a 50% chance an egg will hatch a male. If your hens seem consistently to lay more females, then they happen to be getting the combination of more females every time by chance, which can happen to any hen, at any time. Meiosis will result in equal numbers of cells that would combine to make male and female chickens. If they didn't, the overall numbers of chickens in the world would not hatch as 50% males and 50% females but would instead be skewed to one side. There just is no reason besides chance that is the cause of eggs being mostly female or male even after a long time. The very rare chicken, and it's more likely it will never exist) will lay a female fertilized egg every time it lays an egg. If a chicken lays 1000 eggs in its life, the chance all of them will be female is 1 in 2^1000...

There is no reason for a hen laying mostly female eggs and there is nothing you can do to get more females. Anyway, things in the world would be even worse if people could control whether a male or female was born. (Look at China- millions of men there don't have women to marry and it's not hard to figure out why. By its fruit will you know if something is good or bad.)

 

[lazy gardener]

Quote: It's the hen who determines the gender of the chick. You are correct in that reptiles and some fish can change gender of the eggs based on temp and some other factors. But not so with birds.

I read a study a couple of years ago that indicated that it is possible to influence the hatch rate of pullets by setting eggs that bear a certain profile. The study indicated that longer, more pointed eggs were most likely to bear a cockrel, while shorter, more rounded eggs were more likely to bear a pullet. It sounded foolish, but I like to experiment, I like to hatch eggs, I needed chicks, so I decided to put the theory to the test. My previous 2 hatches each yielded pullet/cockrel ratio of 40/60%. So, I collected my eggs, did the best I could do to match eggs up into groups laid by each hen. For example, one gal lays an olive egg with brown speckles. Quite distinctive, so all her eggs went into a group. I then took each group, and set the eggs that most closely matched the "female egg profile" aside to go in the incubator. In this bator hatch, and a following broody hatch, the pullet/cockrel ratio was 60/40%. Not a bad improvement on my pullet hatch by playing a mix and match game. Of course, it was only 2 hatches (4 if you count the previous 2 random sets), and of course it was a small sample. But... I've got nothing to loose by continuing to play with this method. Will be setting an other group of gender selected eggs late March.