Sexing eggs

[lbchickens9]

Is it possible to incubate eggs at a certain temperature to hatch hens vs roosters?

 

[DraigAthar]

Nope. The sex of the egg is determined before it is even laid. There is some evidence that females are preferentially killed during development by exposure to certain temperatures, but in terms of actual sex determination, incubation temperature has nothing to do with it. They're not reptiles.

 

[lbchickens9]

Darn! Wish it were that simple.

 

[saladin]

They may not be reptiles but they are very, very close cousins.

For example, in the wild Turkey females are capable of laying self-fertile eggs when no males are present. Consequently, all the self-fertile eggs will hatch males only.

By observation, older literature claimed that the first eggs laid in a season would be predominately male whereas later eggs in the season would be predominately females; thus, coming to the 50-50 split. I have generally found this to be the case as well.

 

[gimmie birdies]

someone said fridge eggs only the females would hatch. I hatched 3 out of 7 I did wing and vent checks they look female, but I will know more as they age. I am also keeping track of another batch of fridge eggs I am hatching to see if being high in an egg (near the air cell) or lower in an egg makes a diff. also checking the size of the embryo in the egg it see if that is any diff.

 

[DraigAthar]

As an aside, don't you think that if there was a reliable and simple method for sexing eggs, commercial poultry would have discovered it long ago? 3 eggs do not make a statistically significant sample, your results are anecdotal. I did find a fascinating article about sexing eggs using PCR methods, specifically for studying sex ratio manipulation by the mother bird. I'll paste it here if you're interested.

 

[gimmie birdies]

yes but maybe they didn't think about it, I am not trying to be Jonas Salk or anything just experimenting. I am a do-er, and don't listen to the don't-ers.

 

[Pele]

I have hatched grocery store eggs, and I can vouch that the temperature does not affect the gender. I get just as many roos as I do with shipped eggs from breeders (IE too many). My most recent hatch from Whole Foods yeilded 3 roos and 1 female.

 

[DraigAthar]

yes but maybe they didn't think about it

 

[gimmie birdies]

I tried to go by egg shape once I picked out the most beautiful round egg, it was a greenish blue and yelded a barred roo.