Rooster only siring male chicks???

[speckledhen]

Not that I'm encouraging lotsa hatching...

Oh, noooooo, I'm sure you wouldn't do that.

 

[flakey chick]

Yes, out of 5 chicks, you have almost a 20% chance of getting 1 or less girls.

 

[wclawrence]

fancyfowl, you said what I wanted to say. Got the nail on the head.
I just noticed that all you are going on is 5. You are lucky to get ONE hen out of only 5 chicks, if what you are hoping for is hens!
lol

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

My personal best in # of roos in a hatch is 27 out of 28 chicks(all one batch), let me tell you your patience will really be pushed if you have 27 Golden sebrightX Buff Jap cockerels roaming the yard being little pricks.....

I think inbreeding may have a bit of an influence as well when it comes to male/female ratio, I got a decend ratio(with hen hatched chicks) with my Ameraucana flock until last year. I have an extremely small genepool with them since the only breeder I knew killed off her flock due to the birdflu scare 5 yrs ago... So I have my original roo and 2 of his daughters(well one is sorta his great grand daughter acctually) and this year, besides fertility being in the dumps, from the 8 chicks that I have been able to hatch over the past 7 months only 1 is a hen(and sadly very mismarked and useless for breeding, got some nice brothers tho). Now I crossed my roo over a black hen of a completely unrelated line and got 100% fertility and from what I can tell all chicks I hatched so far(6) are all female.

 

[MamaDragon]

Our roo and all the hens are from McMurry.... so I can only assume that they are unrelated, with only the roo and two of the hens being of the same "breed". I have no real way of knowing who the mamas are of the ones that hatched, and as a newbie to all this, will have to wait to see how they feather out to try and determine (if it's even possible) what breed-crosses I might have ended up with.

I've got 15 in the bator now, from 6 donor hens and, with Murphy's Law being what it is, Of Course, the temps are swinging more than they should.

Hopefully, we'll get a few to hatch out, and go from there.

All the spare roos are destined for freezer camp as soon as they're big enough, so that's not a real issue. I was just curious if it was the roo's fault, or if I was doing something wrong.

Sounds like this second-hand incubator needs to be replaced, especially if I get all cockerals from whatever does hatch out.

 

[silkiechicken]

With just 5 I say it was just bad luck. Even 100 isn't a big enough sample size .

I've done batches were it was 50/50 on the nail boys and girls (n= 18), batches where I got 3 boys in a row (n=1), with the batch of n=2 being two girls all with the same bator in the same year.

I personally don't think temps have too much to deal with it.

 

[MamaDragon]

these 5 are from a brood nest.... two hatched out and are with Mama.... when Mama abandoned the remaining eggs, we brought them in to the incubator, and ended up with 3 more over the next few days. Both of the ones outside have prominent comb-ridges already, and do the flying chest-butting, so I'm guessing roo's. All three inside also do the flying chest-butts, and two have prominent comb-ridges as well. Hence my question.

Thanks all for your replys.

Kathy

 

[silkiechicken]

Oh, I'd just wait a few more weeks to see if the combs grow. If not, you may still have bunches of girls! Different comb styles and gene mixes can cause different sized starting combs.

 

[Pidgey104]

I have a game hen that hatched out 12 babies. all but 1 are hens.