Potential way to hatch more female chicks?

[Eelantha]

Read this article to see what I'm talking about

Has anybody with an incubator ever tried out this method before? If you did, what were your results?

 

[MarkJr]

So dna supplied to egg changes with temp?

Im more inclined to think of this as an outlier of data. If a large sample were taken, it’d be closer to 50% vs grasping at straws.

 

[FuzzyCritters]

I have not personally tried it, but I have a friend that does it in her frequent hatches and she says it is successful. She learned it from a breeder that also does that trick and also claims it is successful. Next spring I will try this with an autosexing breed to see if it really does work.

 

[Mylied]

I shouldn't have responded. This urban legend goes around at least once a year. People try it out. Some claim it works. Some claim it fails. But it's not like you can do an accurate study in your living room with a handful of eggs. I hatched out 10 out of 10 cockerels with no dead eggs just recently. If that happened during during an experiment to test this theory, I'd be biased to blame it on the experiment. Who can conduct a conclusive, repeatable large scale study with expertly calibrated machines? Large poultry house who happen to want to only hatch females. They don't use this method. That should be proof enough it doesn't work. All your doing is stunting growth on your chicks and hurting those chicks that do hatch.

 

[the3quail]

Think it'd work with quail?
My mom has chickens, also raised with our quail in her backyard.
I have two males.. and tbh I would LOVE to get girls once my girls start to lay!

 

[Eelantha]

Think it'd work with quail?
My mom has chickens, also raised with our quail in her backyard.
I have two males.. and tbh I would LOVE to get girls once my girls start to lay!

I have no idea if this method works with quail. However all birds descend from reptiles, and crocodile gender ratio gets influenced by temperature during incubation, leading the clutch to hatch all males, or all females (no idea if the missing gender at time of hatch is because those embryos died or transformed into the other sex during incubation). So it's plausible, though unproven.

 

[Eelantha]

So dna supplied to egg changes with temp?

Im more inclined to think of this as an outlier of data. If a large sample were taken, it’d be closer to 50% vs grasping at straws.

No, apparently eggs that contain male chicken embryos will simply not hatch if incubated at a slightly lower temperature than normal. Or so the article says. The verity of that claim needs to be proven though. Cue this thread.

 

[Mylied]

Doesn't work. People have tried this countless time. If it worked, the hatcheries would be doing it. Search the posts on here and you'll find more about this topic.

 

[the3quail]

I'll test it once I get fertile eggs.. once my girls even start to lay.

 

[Eelantha]

Doesn't work. People have tried this countless time. If it worked, the hatcheries would be doing it. Search the posts on here and you'll find more about this topic.

I've read many times that incubators are difficult to calibrate and keep stable, especially if you're unfamiliar with it (like someone who's new at using one). If people tried out this method while having a few difficulties with their incubators, it would explain why it did not work.

@the3quail & @FuzzyCritters - I'll wait for the results with baited breath! I hope you'll succeed. Good luck! ^^