Incubator temperature affect the sex ratio?

[Naduah]

Rounder is supposed to be female while pointed is male, but considering your hen lays reletively the same shape of an egg you'd have to consider (since the female determines the sex of the egg) if a hen that lays rounder eggs has a higher average of producing females and a hen that lays more pointed eggs has a higher average of producing males. There are some people and I can name one that has been playing with this theory by incubating the more rounded eggs and she has been having a higher pullet ratio. 

Personally I think it's all wishfull thinking. I've had a 100% hatch rate hatched at the higher average and the majority (for once) was pullets. Not by much though.

Oops I must have remembered that one wrong

 

[AmyLynn2374]

I am not sure what DIS means but hatch 1 produced 12 pullets and 2 cockerels. Hatch 2 produced 11 cockerels and 1 Pullet. CCLs are auto sexing breed so can tell the sex as soon as they fluff up a few hours after hatching.

DIS is "Dead in Shell"

The theory of temps is based on one sex hatches better at a certain temp, so to have an accurate assesment of if there is any validity to it, you'd have to know if the chicks that didn't make it were in fact comprised mostly of one gender.

For example in your hatch one you had 18 fertile eggs, 14 of which hatched with 12 being pullets and two roos. But the key is what were the ones who died. If they were all females too, the experiment has no validity because all it shows is your hens produced a lot of pullets, but if the majority of those that died were roos, then it validates the hypothesis that more females survive at that temp and the roos fall to the wayside. Same with hatch 2.

 

[Naduah]

Interesting! No I didn't not check the dead ones. When I candled, i found they died early on as I hadn't candled them til the 17th day to prepare for lockdown.

I'm going to get another 4 dozen from the same group of chickens to do another experiment, so this go around I'll check if they make it far enough (the dead ones) to determine sex.

 

[RattlesnakeRidgeWV]

Sorry guys it is all wishful thinking. Don't you think that hatcheries would do this to make more pullets than cockerels if it were possible!

Kurt

 

[Naduah]

Sorry guys it is all wishful thinking. Don't you think that hatcheries would do this to make more pullets than cockerels if it were possible!

Kurt

Definitely wishful thinking! I was just running my own experiment like so many others and wanted to know what others results were that ran similar experiments. I still plan on doing more to see what results I can yield

even if the results of the next ones and several more don't correspond with these first ones, it's still fun to get the results and compare other people's results!

 

[Ctptcha]

WOW! This seems so cool! I'm getting A LOT of duck eggs to incubate and 2 incubators... So I'll definitely be trying this! Both incubators have fans, 1 is a Janoel 12 incubator, 1 is a brinsea (I have bid for a 40-egg one on eBay). I'll keep you all updated!

 

[Family Affair]

Wow! Very interesting. A friend of mine mentioned this to me last week and it was the first time I heard that the temperature during incubation affects the sex of the chick. If this is true, that is very good information.

 

[TaunyaT]

So, my last two hatches I ran my own test out of curiosity with an auto sexing breed (CCL) with temperature. I had read that lower temps produce more pullets and higher temps produce more cockerels.

Hatch 1: had 24 eggs set at 99.5; varying highest temp of 100.1. 14 hatched, 6 infertile, 4 'dead' eggs. 12 were pullets, 2 were cockerels.

Hatch 2: had 24 eggs set at 100.8; varying highest temp of 101.3. 12 eggs hatched, 7 were infertile, 5 'dead' eggs. 11 were cockerels, 1 was a Pullet.

Has anyone else conducted temperature experiments to see if it affects the outcome of sex? What were your findings?

I am trying this method! Hope to post a update at hatch

 

[Portugal Muscovy Novice]

I was searching the net about this as I thought I stumbled upon something unique but it seems I'm late to the party. I have two incubators. I have one that I add eggs to on a weekly basis and I have another that I use for lockdown. My lockdown Incubator seems to have lost its calibration and was actually 2C lower than it should have been. I had about 40-50% hatch rate and in two batches of 14 only hatched one cockerel (I can only assume that the rest that was DIS were cockerels. Ive now fixed the calibration and will let you know the outcome here in about a week's time. If this does work I might just carry on doing this as I don't have use for cockerels and this seems like a suitable solution. It could also just be a massive coincidence...

 

[Iluveggers]

Interesting! No I didn't not check the dead ones. When I candled, i found they died early on as I hadn't candled them til the 17th day to prepare for lockdown.

I'm going to get another 4 dozen from the same group of chickens to do another experiment, so this go around I'll check if they make it far enough (the dead ones) to determine sex.

WOW! This seems so cool! I'm getting A LOT of duck eggs to incubate and 2 incubators... So I'll definitely be trying this! Both incubators have fans, 1 is a Janoel 12 incubator, 1 is a brinsea (I have bid for a 40-egg one on eBay). I'll keep you all updated!

I am trying this method! Hope to post a update at hatch

If you guys try this, please tag me if you post results!