Is this True of False in your experience?

[PNE443]

Hiya

I was talking to someone today about hatching quail eggs. He has never hatched any but hatches quite a lot of chicken eggs. He said that with polystyrene home made incubators you get a lot more males hatching than females compared with a machine that turns the eggs automatically and that this was down to the number of times the eggs were turned throughout the day in the incubation process. As I have never hatched any eggs myself yet (just starting with my first batch ever) I was just wondering what everyone else's experience was that had hatched quail eggs already?

thanks

 

[tlstal]

LOL

 

[rllupien]

I hatched out 13 coturnix in January and ended up with 9 boys and 4 girls. I wondered if the ratio was always this high for boys or what. I had an automatic turner etc. After some researching online, I found where someone did a study somewhere (lol) and male eggs are hardy when it comes to being incubated. So, if you hatch from winter eggs, that were shipped to you, you should have a higher male count that hen. I have no idea if this is true, but I am currently hatching eggs from my own cots and will be interested to see what my ratio is now.

 

[Chikaby Pond]

I have heard (lol) that the temperature in the incubator can influence the sex of birds. The lower the temp=more females. The higher the temp=more males.

Only ONCE in my many times of incubating and hatching Japanese quail has a lower (98.7F) temp yielded more females than males. Even though the temp has dropped to that a couple of times since...I have not had the same result...darn it!

Not sure if there is a right or wrong answer to this!

 

[Ntsees]

I have heard that the sex is already determined when the egg is laid. Temperature won't change it's sex.

 

[rllupien]

I have also heard that in poultry it is determined when the egg is laid but in reptiles the temperature will decide more males or females. I think that's amazing.

 

[PNE443]

Well I wasn't too sure if he was making it up or not lol just because I had said I was just starting to incubate my first lot of quail eggs in a homemade incubator. It will be interesting to see what happens and if I get more males than females. Either way it wouldn't really matter to us as we only intend to keep a few and the rest we will probably just give away to friends etc. It was really just a bit of fun for our kids to watch them hatch and grow etc. Although I am finding it a bit addictive and they haven't even hatched yet lol!

 

[rllupien]

Oh it's absolutely addicting! When are they due to hatch?

 

[1muttsfan]

The sex of the chick is determined at fertilization, before the egg is layed. Higher incubation temps do sometimes lead to more male chicks than female, but that is due to increased death of female embryos when stressed by higher temps - they are apparently more sensitive. Male embryos, on the other hand, are slightly more likely to die if stored at colder temps before incubation. Neither of these increases the number of chicks that hatch overall - as a matter of fact they decrease the total number - they just change the ratio by killing off some embryos.

There is no correlation that I know of between number of times turned and the sex of the chicks, just that you get more chicks overall if they are turned more often.

 

[bonnie in indiana]

In all my years of poultry, I can say that is averages out. 50-50. I and my friends have noticed over the years and we joke about it some------there are PULLET years and there are COCKERAL years. In the last 10 years---one year I had all pullets and 2 males and I needed males. One year - all males and 2/3 females. And that seems to be across the board--my friends had the same luck those years.

But most times it will lean one way or the other, but not by a whole lot.