Sexing eggs!

[lindalouly]

Good morning... My chicks were born Dec 5th... nine out of nine eggs hatched... I picked the most round of the bunch.. as of today it looks like I have eight hens and I rooster... The rooster is from an egg that was irregular long yet rounded. That is not a bad percentage at all. The eggs were picked by seperating them by color and picking the most rounded in comparison with each group they were seperated by. I had noted the one egg that was longer and am pretty positive it is a boy. I hope this helps in your studies.

 

[lazy gardener]

Awesome test results. Your pullet rate was higher than mine. Keep those stats written down. I need to get busy and put up the survey. If anyone has specific ?'s they would like to consider for addition, please PM me. I'm thinking of going along the lines of: previous hatching history, # eggs set, # hatched, male/female ratio, method of hatch. plus a comment section. Followed by same ? format for gender selected hatches. I don't know how the surveys can be set up, may contact a mod for details, I think it would be appropriate to have a separate response for every gender selected hatch, for example, if you do 3 gender selected hatches, you'd fill out the second half of survey for each hatch.

 

[ChickenHermit]

You could potentially put something together on Zoho or SurveyMonkey for free- they have some basic reporting and analysis you can do on the results, which is nice.

 

[lazy gardener]

I think the response would be better if it were kept here. We'll see. I'm a forever procrastinator. My goal is to have it going in Feb. I still have many days left, right???

 

[CherriesBrood]

Hello again everyone! I found homes for my two babes. I will hopefully be doing another hatch this spring so I will let everyone know my results again!

 

[junebuggena]

As soon as my Easter Egger girl lays another 2 eggs, I'm firing up the incubator.

 

[kuchchicks]

I am going to be following this. I'm getting ready to start my hatch season here next month (if my girls get on board LOL! Right now they are pretty much on strike!!!) I'm very curious how this will turn out. Thanks for doing it. I think I will keep track of my results as well. One question I do have is how are you all sexing your chicks? I have Polish that I can pretty much tell right away but none of my other breeds are that easy. I have tried to find someone in my area that can sex chicks but never found anyone.

 

[SpringPeeper]

I am going to be following this. I'm getting ready to start my hatch season here next month (if my girls get on board LOL! Right now they are pretty much on strike!!!) I'm very curious how this will turn out. Thanks for doing it. I think I will keep track of my results as well. One question I do have is how are you all sexing your chicks? I have Polish that I can pretty much tell right away but none of my other breeds are that easy. I have tried to find someone in my area that can sex chicks but never found anyone.

I plan to cheat and use sex-linked color genetics. A lot of people are just waiting until the cockerels start to make themselves known, and don't know the results right away. I think some have mentioned feather sexing.

 

[Wendy High]

My chicken man showed me how to tell by holding them upside down with legs between my fingers. Talk to them and calm them down. Within a few seconds the hens will hang upside down. The roosters will continually try to sit up and flop in the upside down position. Usually about 2-3 months old this trick works.

 

[lazy gardener]

Feather sexing is supposedly unreliable unless you breed specifically for it. Sex linked, auto sexing chicks: of course provide instant gratification. There are 1 or 2 posters who feel confident with vent sexing. Otherwise, you just wait for secondary sex characteristics to show up. Best would be if you could set all eggs that you suspect SHOULD yield females, and compare it to previous hatch percentages. I did 3 hatches that way. Otherwise, divide your bator in half, with suspected female shape on one side, male on the other and band the hatch to check accuracy. If you have a small enough flock that you can id each hen's eggs, you can separate eggs according to hen, and set each hen's roundest eggs produced during each collection period.