Unbelievable....all PULLETS!! ***please read**

[NC29mom]

My fiance went a little crazy a few months back and decided he wanted 100+ buff orphingtons. Luckily, we have plenty of room, so he started to build a large coop further back from the house (than our current coop). At that time we had 1 buff roo and 6 buff hens. He decided he wanted to hatch out only 1 particular egg, a large darker brown egg. So, his plan began. He collected the "special" eggs only, adding to the incubator every day.

Crazy thing is........ALL OF THE CHICKS ARE HENS!!!!!! He has hatched out >100 eggs, and we are YET to get a roo!!!! Has anybody EVER heard of SUCH madness???? Now, we aren't complaining....just curious. I did do some checking....and found out the hens determines the sex, and some hens have >% of 1 sex.

I feel like we have the GOLDEN CHICKEN!!!! And to boot, the buffs have a beautiful golden/orange color. If I could figure out how to work my new camera, I will add some pictures to this post later tonight.

Thanks everybody!

 

[SamuelMcF]

WOW!! Thats amazing!!

 

[Gypsy07]

Wow. That's really interesting. I wonder if that is a trait that is likely to pass on to the offspring as well. Is that something you're going to keep a look out for? I'd be really interested to follow this story and see what sex ratios your golden hen's offspring go on to produce...

I have hatched a few batches of eggs from just one of my hens too, and so far she has produced 2/3 pullets and 1/3 roos. Of course, I haven't hatched anywhere near the same number of chicks as you, so things might well even out with the next few hatches. I hope not though.

Have you thought about selling hatching eggs? I bet you could get a premium price for them!

 

[chickens? not yet]

That is amazing! Keep this updated if you would, wild!! LOL "You want all hens that will be the dark eggs they are twice as much as the light eggs!!" $$$$

 

[Denninmi]

Interesting. I guess there could be several possible explanation -- you are selecting only a certain color of egg, and while I doubt that shell color is linked to sex, you never know. I suppose its possible that the rooster is producing viable sperm of only one sex - it happens in humans, I have a group of cousins, 6, that are all boys, my uncle and aunt kept trying for a girl, but it doesn't happen.

But, I'm just curious, are you sure they're all hens? How old are they? Perhaps they just aren't old enough to exhibit secondary sexual characteristics that will allow you to differentiate the genders?

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
Well, it IS the HEN that determines sex of the chick, not the rooster. Unlike many other species.

 

[Gypsy07]

Yup, in humans it's XX for women and XY for men. The man can pass either an X chromosome (female) or a Y chromosome (male) on to his children. But the woman can only pass on X chromosomes. With chickens, the roosters are (I think) ZZ and the hens are Zw. So it's the hen's genes that determine the sex of the offspring. I seriously doubt it has anything at all to do with the shell colour, other than that it's almost certainly the one hen with the quirky genetics that's laying all the dark brown eggs.

 

[SierraView]

Wow. That's remarkable

I can identify some of my hens eggs by looks. From now on I think I'm going to keep a record what they hatch and see what i get.

 

[hcppam]

WOW!

 

[helen8_11]

That's really cool! You're quite lucky! I think I have the opposite since I got 4 roosters and 2 hens out of 6 eggs...