Since my Accidental Rooster...

[DobieClose]

I've told the story 100 times. Bought 7 day-old female chicks from Meyer back in April. 1 of them turned out to be male.
Anyhow, since the situation presented itself, I really think it would be so great to hatch babies just one time. I have room for a few more.
Obviously, due to the small size of my Flock, I couldn't have more than 1 rooster.
When I read the BYC threads, it seems like the overwhelming majority of hatched chicks are males. Is this true?

 

[SmiYa0126]

I can let you know in a couple of weeks. At first I thought mine were mostly male, but after another week I think there are three males and five females, however I'm hoping that only two are males.

 

[DobieClose]

I hope the same. I know someone said 5 out of 7 were male last week and I read one yesterday that said 9 out of 11. Why so many males?

 

[SmiYa0126]

Since I did this hatch I researched it, there's a theory that if you lower the temperature half a degree you get more hens. I'm going to try that next year.

 

[DobieClose]

So that would mean using an incubator.

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

No, the majority of hatched chicks are not male. If you were to hatch 1000 chicks or more, you're statistically likely to come up really close to even numbers on males and females. However, most people only hatch a hand full at a time, so those numbers seem skewed just because the sample size is so small. And, let's face it, people tend to post more about things that they've had rotten luck with to commiserate with others about, so you're likely to see more posts about high-percentage-male hatches. That doesn't mean that high-percentage-female hatches don't happen as well!

I will give you an example. My last three hatches of my silkied Cochin bantams have gone like this:
3 females, 1 male
5 females, 4 males
4 females, 8 males

Individually, the first one looked great, second not bad, and the third... yikes. But, if you add them all together, the totals are 12 females and 13 males. Pretty close to 50-50, right? It's like flipping a coin 10 times versus flipping a coin 100 times. You might just happen to get more tails flips right at the beginning, making it seem like you're more likely to flip tails if you only look at that first 10 flips. But by the time you hit 100 flips, odds are you'll be closer to an even count between heads and tails overall. A small snippet like hatching only a few eggs at a time does not change that the odds are still 50-50 on each individual egg hatching male or female.

It's impossible to say if you'll get an even number of males and females in your hatch, if you'll get more males, or if you'll get more females. With a small hatch, anything could happen. All you can do is try your luck and see what you end up with.

 

[SmiYa0126]

Interesting!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Since I did this hatch I researched it, there's a theory that if you lower the temperature half a degree you get more hens. I'm going to try that next year.

This theory is based on that some reptile embryos can actually change sex based on the temperature at which they are incubated, but this isn't true for chickens. What studies on it have actually found is that the male embryos don't survive the lower temperature as well as the female embryos. In other words, you will hatch fewer eggs this way, but more of the ones that survive will be female. You are not hatching any more females than you would at a normal temperature, just fewer eggs hatch overall. It's also by such a tiny percentage that it honestly is not likely to make that big of a difference for you unless you're incubating hundreds of eggs.

 

[SmiYa0126]

So that would mean using an incubator.

I have a cheap magic fly incubator with great results. I also had a broody this year, but I had a horrible situation that turned into a staggered hatch... So had to incubate the remaining eggs.

 

[DobieClose]

This theory is based on that some reptile embryos can actually change sex based on the temperature at which they are incubated, but this isn't true for chickens. What studies on it have actually found is that the male embryos don't survive the lower temperature as well as the female embryos. In other words, you will hatch fewer eggs this way, but more of the ones that survive will be female. You are not hatching any more females than you would at a normal temperature, just fewer eggs hatch overall. It's also by such a tiny percentage that it honestly is not likely to make that big of a difference for you unless you're incubating hundreds of eggs.

That makes sense.