Too many male chicks

[Brahmababe20]

Hi everyone , been raising chickens for years but new here.
Anyway, how can I get more females produced than males? is it the make or female who determines sex?
I heard it was temperature during hatching?
What’s the secret?

 

[mandelyn]

There's no real secret. If you hatch hen by hen you may be able to find your stronger pullet makers.

We became dual purpose because of it and it changed the type of birds we raise so that we have better dinner and can embrace a boy heavy hatch with recipes. In our area you can barely get $5 each for boys, after they've eaten $8.

Sometimes we get a girl heavy hatch. Sometimes boy heavy. Other times it's an exact 50/50. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. A couple of times I've had ALL girls, or ALL boys. So we opted for making sure the boys had a reason for their existence, since only 1 in 10 of them is needed for every 10 girls we keep.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Hi everyone , been raising chickens for years but new here.
Anyway, how can I get more females produced than males? is it the make or female who determines sex?
I heard it was temperature during hatching?
What’s the secret?

The hen determines the sex of a chick.

Unlike us people which is the male determines the sex of a human child.

Temperature only effects the sex of reptile offspring.

 

[NatJ]

As several other people said while I was typing-- the hen "determines" the sex of the chick by which chromosome she passes to the egg. (She doesn't seem to be able to control it, but apparently some individual hens do produce more chicks of one gender than the other.)

No-one has found a very good way to influence it.

The temperature doesn't do much--if it's a little higher or lower than normal, more chicks of one gender will die sometime during incubation. It will not give you more females, just slightly less LIVE males if you do it "right."

The males all do taste like chicken, no matter what breed or size they are. And even bantams will will typically grow larger than quail, so they could be considered "big enough" to eat. (If you butcher banty roosters around 8 weeks old, you can use the leg/thigh pieces in recipes for chicken wings. And each deboned breast half is about the size of a chicken nugget. Last time I did banties, I did throw out the wings because I didn't think it worth plucking them for such a small amount of meat.)

 

[chickenlittle21]

Sex Link chickens are chickens that you can tell their gender from the day they are hatched

 

[bobbi-j]

If it were possible to influence what gender chicks are hatched, whoever figured it out would have a whole lot of money, and we would never see the “Help! I don’t know what to do with all these roosters!” threads. It’s good to have a plan BEFORE hatching or buying chicks. If you can’t have or deal with roosters, a better option might be buying started pullets.

 

[Brahmababe20]

Ok. I haven’t been keeping an eye on which female my rooster is favoring. So I’ll have to do that this spring. Isolate & supervise & record who is best for females. Thx!

If it were possible to influence what gender chicks are hatched, whoever figured it out would have a whole lot of money, and we would never see the “Help! I don’t know what to do with all these roosters!” threads. It’s good to have a plan BEFORE hatching or buying chicks. If you can’t have or deal with roosters, a better option might be buying started pullets.

 

[Brahmababe20]

I breed all my own. Yes I bought my male & female from a poultry show a couple years ago. I breed Bantam Light Brahmas. I have a standard Maran hen. So I have to find out which hen is responsible for it
Wish I had an expert to come to my house & sex my chicks when they’re hatched.

 

[aart]

Ok. I haven’t been keeping an eye on which female my rooster is favoring. So I’ll have to do that this spring. Isolate & supervise & record who is best for females.

It's not about what female the male is favoring...
....it's about which female might generate more females than males.
..and that's a mighty big might.
Would take some very, very careful isolation of females and marking their eggs
then their chicks to check offspring gender ratios.