Standard rule of breeding. The female should always be listed first in a cross! ...then no need to s

[windyridgefarm]

The problem is that there are times when it makes a difference which one was the female and which was the male. Such as sex linked traits where one way you get chicks you can sex at hatch and the other way you cannot. or else you have to specify which is the rooster and hen everytime you talk about the parents. Which is more work and more confusing

 

[Michael OShay]

No way! It has nothing to do with laziness or ignorance. To the contrary, it takes effort to learn the local and common names that different people use in different places. It is lazy to say they should all use the same term!

The arrogant idea/attitude that everyone should be "scientific" is the same one that makes so many people proudly anti-science.

I personally have no problem with using "common" names, but learning the local and common names that different people use for various living organisms in different places is not simply a matter of effort. Given the number of languages in the world, the numbers of common names for each individual organism in that language (consider that there are dozens of different English labels just for Red Sex Link chickens), and the number of times those common names change over the years (sometimes even months), it is an impossibility to learn all the local and common names that different people use for various organisms in different places (or even a single organism). This is the reason why scientists came up with universal scientific names for the various living organisms. Learning long lists of scientific names is a matter of effort; learning the different common names for long lists of organisms across the globe is an impossibility.

 

[Toddrick]

Western science was a male dominated field, just like everything else used to be before this century. I find it hard to believe that they would've chosen to list the female first in their lingo. So from that standpoint alone, listing the dame first is counter-intuitive to me. Of course, I'm ignorant of the actual facts/history, but I am skeptical that OP is correct, since he didn't cite any links. I'd like to get this settled though so I am not causing confusion. However, if the hatcheries list the male first, then I don't see how we can avoid confusion.

Even if listing the female first is scientifically correct, standards are usually set by the industry, so if we can agree that the hatcheries are the industry, and they do the opposite then we should likely follow their standard.

Bah, this is starting to seem like a stalemate...at least I know I need to clarify from now on.

 

[Michael OShay]

Western science was a male dominated field, just like everything else used to be before this century. I find it hard to believe that they would've chosen to list the female first in their lingo. So from that standpoint alone, listing the dame first is counter-intuitive to me. Of course, I'm ignorant of the actual facts/history, but I am skeptical that OP is correct, since he didn't cite any links. I'd like to get this settled though so I am not causing confusion. However, if the hatcheries list the male first, then I don't see how we can avoid confusion.

Even if listing the female first is scientifically correct, standards are usually set by the industry, so if we can agree that the hatcheries are the industry, and they do the opposite then we should likely follow their standard.

Bah, this is starting to seem like a stalemate...at least I know I need to clarify from now on.

That was my point exactly in my second post. )

 

[Michael OShay]

That was my point exactly in my second post. )

LOL! Excuse me, I meant my first post. I can't even remember which post I'm talking about, much less millions of common names. )

 

[HeritageGoose13]

you have to specify which is the rooster and hen everytime you talk about the parents. Which is more work and more confusing

I don't see how writing or reading one or two more words is "more work."

In the end it doesn't matter what scientists think, it's up to chicken-raisers to make their own rules. Scientists can't just tell the chicken-keepers how to do things! Imagine if painters told architects that what they were doing was incorrect, or that chefs told plumbers they needed to do things the "professional" way. It's ridiculous.

 

[Finnie]

Western science was a male dominated field, just like everything else used to be before this century. I find it hard to believe that they would've chosen to list the female first in their lingo. So from that standpoint alone, listing the dame first is counter-intuitive to me. Of course, I'm ignorant of the actual facts/history, but I am skeptical that OP is correct, since he didn't cite any links. I'd like to get this settled though so I am not causing confusion.

Did you try to go to the link I posted on the first page? I was skeptical that the OP was correct, too, but the page where I tried to link to is very explicit. They are taught to write the female before the x and then the male.

OP, if you would be kind enough to find us some scientific literature telling that animals are denoted the same way, that would be of a lot of help, I think. I know that there are differences between the Plant Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom, so I am still open to their notations being different for some things.

I had another thought, too, and I don't know if there is anything to it. Some of us have mentioned about dogs and horses having the sire before the x. Well, if you think about it, those are mammals, and mammals have the X and Y chromosomes backwards from how birds have it. In mammals, XX is the female and XY is the male. In birds, the female has the Y chromosome and the male has the two Xs. (Yes, I know, and they like to use Ws and Zs instead, which I've never understood why, and I don't want to ask here.) So perhaps what we are familiar with about dogs and horses having the sire first does not apply to birds at all, and we just don't realize it because we are lay-people.

 

[Old Rando]

I have been around livestock all of my life and have never know of any reference to mating other than malexfemale even chickens. The only poultry genetic papers or on-line studies I recall reading were also malexfemale . I am not changing If one is going on the possibility that the male parent may be unknown then you know nothing anyway about the youngs genetic background.

 

[Finnie]

I would also like to speak to the issue being brought up about scientists being allowed to choose terminology vs the lay people in the field.

I come from a parrot breeding background. I have tried to learn as much as I can about the color genetics of the birds I breed. That field has a huge mess caused by new mutations being named by the non-scientific breeders who discovered the colors popping up in their chicks. When something new arises, often the genetic mode of inheritance behind it is not understood. But the breeder has to call his new color of bird something. And what usually gets picked is something descriptive, but which is already being used in another bird species to refer to a different, already discovered and named gene. That leads to a mass of confusion, whereby people are using the same word for unrelated genes, and they are also using two different words for a gene that ends up being one and the same.

The problem might be solved if everyone could agree to use whichever name is the most scientifically correct, and fits with the actual genetics of the bird. But you can't make Joe Bird farmer out in the country start calling the colors of his birds anything different than what he learned that they were in the first place, even though he might have learned it wrong.

So it is an age-old problem that doesn't have an easy answer, whether its parrots or chickens or plants.

 

[bamadude]

The chicken color calculators that I have used are listing males first.