Why does it seem I can only hatch roosters??

[Chicken Love]

Can anyone shed some light/advice on this? I've had 4 hatches this year, all pretty dismal, like 10%, though the birds that do hatch are very healthy and strong and grow into strong healthy adults... only... they are almost ALL roosters! My incubator is a top hatch brower model from about 15 years ago, so it may be an air circulation problem, as I gave some eggs to a someone and she hatched 16/24, though not sure the %age of roos. Could it be the daddy rooster? Or the incubator is crap and only the very strongest chicks hatch, and that happens to be roos? I have had 2 hens out of almost 20 hatchlings. Help!

 

[Quyen Le]

What is hatch rate?

 

[cmfarm]

I'm thinking it is the latter. The girls are probably just not surviving.

 

[Quyen Le]

I think I hatch more hens than roosters so far. I think because of temp fluctuate that kill roosters in their eggs.

 

[jak2002003]

I was having the same problem. Each broody would hatch out 6 eggs and I always ended up with 4 roos and 2 hens! This went on for a while.

But now its the other way around. One hen just raised 5 chicks and they are all hens!!!! I think you have had you bad luck, and next time you will get more hens.

 

[XavCas]

I read online that the temperature can affect the gender of the chicks when they are in the incubation process. A higher temperature means boys, and a lower temperature means girls.

 

[JimnTer]

I agree with Cmfarm that it is probably just the strongest chicks surviving and they happen to be male. The temperature affecting gender thing is only true with reptiles, not birds.

 

[Mac14]

Now following this thread!

 

[stevetone]

I read online that the temperature can affect the gender of the chicks when they are in the incubation process. A higher temperature means boys, and a lower temperature means girls.

In chickens, incubation temperature does not affect the embryo's sex.

However, the incubation temperature can affect the successful hatch rate of the sexes differently. This gives the appearance of it affecting the sex of the hatched chicks. It's called "sex-biased temperature-sensitive embryo mortality."

IIRC, higher incubation temperatures are more damaging to male embryos than females.

 

[bonnie in indiana]

I learned from an old timer and now I am 40+ years into chickens. I will not get into the scientific theories or try to explain any thoughts. I can only tell you that some years are rooster years and some years are pullet years.
There has been years that I have prayed for a rooster and then the other way around. Just keep doing it as right as you can do it and it will average out. I will be the first to admit that the rooster years SUCK.