It seems that there are more male chickens hatching this year than normal

[ChickenCanoe]

N


No, my father taught me to caponize, 9 years ago. In the beginning I killed many birds, but I learned quickly. Now it takes me only two minutes to caponize a cockerel, my father can caponize atleast two cockerels in a minute though. Last year I caponized some 350 or so birds with only 1 dead (a fidgety leghorn with high BP) and two slips. I thinks that is good enough.

A couple questions.
Do you trim or pluck the feathers in the area before making the incision?
If you have capons with intact cockerels, are the cockerels/roosters aggressive toward the capons?

I usually hatch about 50 males or more each year. Learning to caponize may be a good thing for me to teach myself. Out of the 50, usually only 5-10 are suitable for replacement breeders. I can usually tell about a third won't be breeders at hatch. Then by a month or two which ones I definitely won't be using for breeding. Those I can caponize early. Then when the intact cockerels mature, I can further decide which to cull.

 

[SueT]

Also, photos in link in post #29 showed them putting in stitches. @Kabootar what about needing stitches, yes or no? And do these cockerels struggle or stay still?

 

[Kabootar]

Also, photos in link in post #29 showed them putting in stitches. @Kabootar what about needing stitches, yes or no? And do these cockerels struggle or stay still?

We don't stitch here. The cut is left to heal on it's own.

 

[Kabootar]

Also, photos in link in post #29 showed them putting in stitches. @Kabootar what about needing stitches, yes or no? And do these cockerels struggle or stay still?

I just hold the upper leg and upper wing of the cockerel. After that they don't struggle much.

 

[Love that Jazzy]

Didn't post that for attention, just so upsetting with all the unrest going on through the World. Sorry and thank you @so lucky

So sorry.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

... I forget the exact number but it was about every 55 hatches of a dozen eggs will yield all pullets or all cockerels. That's statistics.
....

I misremembered. I asked him again yesterday.
The number is 4,096. That is a 0.024% chance that all will be male or all will be female.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

...

But what does it tell you when there is more cockerels than normal.

It tells me it is an anomaly.
There are hatcheries that hatch a million or more chicks per week. I don't think they experience such anomalies that are seen on a relatively miniscule scale.

 

[Uff Da]

So, many species don't have a 50/50 birth ratio between the sexes. For example, humans have a natural (ie excluding sex-selective abortion) 105/100 ratio in favor of males. Experts theorize this is because males die at a higher rate than females, both due to illness and injury, so it nearly evens out in adulthood (then women overtake males as individuals age). Still, these precise ratios are unlikely to be noticeable in small sample sizes. Small sample sizes often look very skewed one way or another. For example, my grandmother had 8 girls and 5 boys--13 being a small sample size, she came nowhere near the expected ratio. You need a very large number for such a slight ratio to become evident, and even then, it isn't especially obvious.

But I think the root of this observation doesn't have much to do with the likelihood of one sex hatching more than another. I think it is because there is a phenomenon studied in the service industry where people are more likely to be vocal about a negative than a positive. So, it's probably just that it seems like more people have cockerels than pullets because they are more likely to speak up about it.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

 

[SueT]

Unlike in chickens, where the sex is determined at fertilization, the sex of most turtles, alligators, and crocodiles is determined after fertilization. The temperature of the developing eggs is what decides whether the offspring will be male or female. This is called temperature-dependent sex determination, or TSD.
Research shows that if a turtle's eggs incubate below 81.86 Fahrenheit, the turtle hatchlings will be male. If the eggs incubate above 87.8° Fahrenheit, however, the hatchlings will be female. Temperatures that fluctuate between the two extremes will produce a mix of male and female baby turtles.