pointy eggs?

That old wives tale is probably false. I think the real reason for not hatching pointy eggs is because the chick won't have enough space to develop properly if the egg is really pointy.

 

Hi Henney. I don't know why anyone would want to hatch a bunch of roosters. But there was a study done a couple of years ago that indicated that more rounded eggs were somewhat more likely to hold a female chick. I put this study to the test, and increased pullet rate from 40% to 60%. Others are playing with this concept. See the thread titled, "sexing eggs" as well as my thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/958517/nutrition-and-gender-and-inducing-broodiness

 

Sample size is everything. The larger the sample the closer to "truth" we get. Case in point is we know that the chances of male to female from any conception is 50/50 but that truth does not hold true with hatches of 20 or even 40 eggs. The folly I see with the old wives tale of pointy eggs is when I had a mixed flock of birds some would lay pointy eggs. Not a pointy egg now and then but that bird that laid a pointed egg always laid a pointed egg. The hatchery stock Rocks always laid a round egg. Does that mean the red sex link eggs would only hatch males and Rock eggs only female? Gosh no. Every egg, pointed or round, has a 50/50 chance of either sex. I only takes very large samples to reach that truth. I can flip a coin and get heads 8 of 10. If I continue to flip 100 times we get closer to the 50/50 chance of it all. 1000 flips and that margin of error is tiny.

 

And that is exactly why we are experimenting. Granted, each of us are doing a small sample. But... those small samples add up. I understand what you're saying, but that won't disuade me from selecting based on shape, especially if it continues to yield a 60% pullet rate.