Sexing eggs!

[abqchicken]

I do not cull. I have a small flock and am incubating small number of eggs just for fun to get some different kind of hens I cannot get locally ( I can only have 15 hens in the city due to ordinance). Before I started to incubate, I made a deal with a friend that has land and free range chickens and he will take what I cannot keep. Great deal all around! Good eggs too!

 

[lindalouly]

I have a similar arrangement. I hatch for my small flock and my sisters farm... But I am only going to be hatching small numbers. The roosters will be raised and processed at her farm to feed our families. Nothing wrong with that but the point of this experiment is to detect the sex of round vs pointed. If some choose to vent sex, it's all good with me. Everyone raises differently. Everyone's knowledge and talents vary.

 

[mournlight]

ChickenCanoe, that's a really good article. Did anyone else read http://ps.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/12/3096.abstract ?
My takeaway from that article is that you can, in fact, intentionally hatch more females by paying attenton to egg length, width and size as compared to the other eggs that same hen is laying, and that the success of this is breed-dependent. So, for a back yard hobbyist like me, the challenge is that multiple hens lay in the same nest. I'll have to pay more attention to who is laying where, because it will soon be time to hatch a few more.

I think this is going to have merit for me because last year, I picked the biggest and best looking eggs to incubate, and unfortunately I hatched nine roosters from nine eggs. I was not a happy camper with those results.

I have one duck who consisently lays wobbly shaped eggs. Wonder if those would be transexual ducks?

 

[lazy gardener]

I have also seen a correlation between large eggs and cockrels.

 

[mournlight]

Hey Guyswithchicks, do you have an update yet? I'm looking forwards to your outcome.

Regarding "to cull or not to cull", I have a bit of a story. I did not believe early on in culling. My birds free-range except when the hawks or coyotes are active. They live a pretty good life. A few years ago, I had two beautiful grown roosters. One was blonde, and the other white. They were both knock-outs. They were hatch mates. I heard a commotion one day and thought a hawk was in the chickens. I looked out to see the two young roosters fighting one another, for the first time ever. They had chased each other before, but to my knowledge they had never fought before. I ran back inside to get my shoes and ran back to where they were fighting. It did not take me but about 90 seconds to get back outside. I couldn't find either one of them at first. Then, I found the blonde one on his side, bloody and panting. A few yards away, I found the white one, also bloody but not breathing. It was July. They both died. My assumption was that they had chased each other before fighting, and they died of heat stroke. I wouldn't have heard them simply running. I lost two beautiful roosters to their own nature, without them ever being confined with each other or in any way encouraged to fight. They just got that age, and bam! I had about 35 hens at the time, so it wasn't due to a lack of hens.
So, now, I keep one adult rooster, and when he gets to about four years old, I let a younger one become an adult. The others become dog food when their age becomes apparent. I only hatch every couple of years to replace whatever has been lost to age, hawks, and the other myriad of things that love to get chickens. I decided it was better to cull the roosters before they become too old to serve another purpose than to lose them because their chromosomes tell them to fight one another to their death.

I also have ducks. I finally culled two of the drakes a few weeks ago, and it has changed the peacefulness of the whole flock. The girls see more peace now, and the whole flock is quieter, rests more often, and just generally seems happier. They also free range.

I'm not sure I don't see it more like pruning my raspberry vines or the pear tree now - If you want fruit, sometimes you have to trim back the branches.

 

[lazy gardener]

Hey Guyswithchicks, do you have an update yet? I'm looking forwards to your outcome.

Regarding "to cull or not to cull", I have a bit of a story. I did not believe early on in culling. My birds free-range except when the hawks or coyotes are active. They live a pretty good life. A few years ago, I had two beautiful grown roosters. One was blonde, and the other white. They were both knock-outs. They were hatch mates. I heard a commotion one day and thought a hawk was in the chickens. I looked out to see the two young roosters fighting one another, for the first time ever. They had chased each other before, but to my knowledge they had never fought before. I ran back inside to get my shoes and ran back to where they were fighting. It did not take me but about 90 seconds to get back outside. I couldn't find either one of them at first. Then, I found the blonde one on his side, bloody and panting. A few yards away, I found the white one, also bloody but not breathing. It was July. They both died. My assumption was that they had chased each other before fighting, and they died of heat stroke. I wouldn't have heard them simply running. I lost two beautiful roosters to their own nature, without them ever being confined with each other or in any way encouraged to fight. They just got that age, and bam! I had about 35 hens at the time, so it wasn't due to a lack of hens.
So, now, I keep one adult rooster, and when he gets to about four years old, I let a younger one become an adult. The others become dog food when their age becomes apparent. I only hatch every couple of years to replace whatever has been lost to age, hawks, and the other myriad of things that love to get chickens. I decided it was better to cull the roosters before they become too old to serve another purpose than to lose them because their chromosomes tell them to fight one another to their death.

I also have ducks. I finally culled two of the drakes a few weeks ago, and it has changed the peacefulness of the whole flock. The girls see more peace now, and the whole flock is quieter, rests more often, and just generally seems happier. They also free range.

I'm not sure I don't see it more like pruning my raspberry vines or the pear tree now - If you want fruit, sometimes you have to trim back the branches.

Interesting story about your roos! And I agree with you. Culling is a necessary part of husbandry. IMO, no one should be hatching, unless they are willing and able to cull. Of course culling can go all the way from giving away/selling excess chicks/roosters to raising them up for meat. But, if one is going to hatch, and wants to improve the flock, culling must be done! I was just doing calendar math this morning, and came to the realization that my youngest birds are past their 16 week mark! 4 pullets, and 2 cockrels (from gender selected eggs, I might add!) The cockrels do a bit of sparring, but have yet to declare themselves by crowing or mounting the girls. I find this interesting, b/c they share coop/run space with Jack. Previous hatches have seen dominant cockrels crowing and mounting at 12 weeks. Seems these boys know better, b/c Jack will whup them good if they mess with his dominance!!! First bit of shenanigans will send them to the crock pot. Actually, I hope they will co-exist through the winter, b/c... well... just b/c.

 

[WVduckchick]

I had 2 roosters that lived well together for quite some time, until the non-dominant one decided he wanted the top spot. It got ugly between them, but in the end, I chose to keep the original dominant guy because he was the better flock-tender.

 

[venymae]

SO, the study was done with "Super Nick white layer breeder flock" with 300 eggs being incubated and 244 being sexed, which is a small but decent size to me. I would love to see this study replicated and peer reviewed for accuracy, and also with other breeds before I would call it fact Interesting though!

 

[mournlight]

I peered for a really long time at three dozen duck eggs collected over the last few days. It's gonna be a LOT more challenging to decide which are more pointed than the others. Their size varies quite significantly, too. There are six full pekings, and three who have some measure of mallard in them, which accounts for the wide variance. I'll have to figure out how to see who is laying where. The ducks are a lot more reliable winter layers. The hens are hardly laying at all right now but the ducks don't mind the cold at all.

 

[Lozuufy]

I did notice with my duck eggs I incubated this past spring that the difference was very small, but there were 4 eggs that I remember being more pointy of the 12. 10 hatched and of those only 3 were boys, I don't know if they hatched from the pointy eggs but next time I am setting all rounded duck eggs to see what happens.