Old OLD argument... Hatching females..

[catwalk]

Fifty!?!? Naw, just offer to keep it out of the landfill for him. You'll find "something" to do with it, right?

I think the only credible method is to choose the right hens. Like Cynthia said, there are flukes out there that will produce mostly one gender or the other. For example, this past summer I traded yogurt to a neighbor for EE eggs. About a week early, they started hatching. I got one chick a day for eight days! This makes me believe that some broody hen was sitting on another hen's nest, and each egg that was laid there got a day's head start on the next one. They are all the same color, and they are all girls! If we only knew which bird it was laying those eggs.......

 

[Akane]

I don't think anyone meant the hen actually picks the gender out consciously. The hen just determines the gender by what genes are given which is a 50/50 chance since she has one of each. Where in humans and other mammals the male determines the gender because males are the ones that are heterogeneous instead of females.

The posted paragraph of research explains why you get more roos at higher temperatures. The pullets die. If the temps are outside of the normal range so you have more losses then more of one gender is likely to die. I don't think you can kill roos at one temp and pullets at another like those birds though. I think in chickens the pullets are just the more sensitive ones and you get more roos if you go too low or too high. If you didn't have lower hatch percentages then I'm just gonna go with bad luck. The sex of the egg is determined before you incubate it so there is no possible way you can alter the percentage of each gender without failing to hatch certain eggs.

 

[Barred Rocker]

I can't believe no one on here knows the correct way to tell which egg is a roo and which is a hen. You toss the egg 2 ft into a wooden bowl, it it breaks it's a hen if it doesn't its a rooster.

 

[Teach97]

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[bargain]

 

[Sir Birdaholic]

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That's the way it works here!

 

[horsejody]

I read a study once that said that, with chickens, the male embryos were hardier than the females. It showed that when all incubation and hatching conditions were ideal, you were more likely to have all embryos survive and would be more likely to get the 50/50 ratio. However, if humidty, temperature or whatever else was not ideal, you were more likely to lose more female embryos than males. So I guess that might explain why so many people get more roos than pullets when using small home incubators.

 

[k2chickens]

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BINGO!

 

[Ban seabhag]

Okay. I am lost. Once (MANY moons ago) I took a genetics class in college and the lab Prof told us that more males were started than females and this was (speculation) because males tended to be more vulnerable, or susceptible to failures from genetic disorders or disease. (He was male, by the way, and considered it ironic). By the time maturity was reached the ratio would tilt more to the females, which is more practical from nature's view. I don't know if this idea is defunct. Everything changes.

 

[horsejody]

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If I remember right from my genetics class, an equal number of males and females should be produced. However, for most species, more female embryos survive because baby girls are tougher. The study I read stated that chickens seem to be an exception to this. The boy embryos are tougher. Perhaps because nature needed more defenders than egg layers.