Why so many roosters?!

[jak2002003]

I have been having far too many rooster hatch from my hens eggs, compared to hens!

The last time the hatch was 10 eggs. Out of this batch 8 roosters, 2 hens.

I just thought I was unlucky.

This time 10 eggs again, and I got 7 roosters and 3 hens!!!!!

What is going on? My chickens are Japanese Bantams. Is this normal for this breed? What am I going to do will all the roosters! Too small and beautiful to eat, and no one wants to have one without me giving them a male, female pair. ARRRHHHH!!!!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it is just the luck of the draw, some really bad luck in your case. Since I raise them mostly to eat, I'd be real happy with your luck, but I understand your frustration.

I often get about 2/3 of one sex or the other when I hatch, sometimes more pullets and sometimes more cockerels. That's with the same incubator and the same hens laying the eggs. I can't explain it.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

As Ridgerunner says it may simply be bad luck.

There are two things you might could do to alter the outcome of future hatches.

The first is if one rooster fertilized all of the eggs of the previous two hatches try a different cock bird. Sometimes a rooster throws more males than females.

Second if you had a lot of eggs that failed to develop or that quit part way in those last two hatches you might try lowering your incubation temperature a few tenths. It may be that your box is running a bit high which is resulting in the eggs that would have been female expiring. Male embryos are somewhat more heat tolerant (to a degree) than females.

Of course you may have had more than one unrelated rooster fertilizing your eggs and your box temperature may be just fine. But possibly one of those could explain it somewhat.

For what it's worth I normally hatch at least twenty five at a time and I've yet to get a perfect 50-50 ratio. It's always been off by a few (as in more than one) either way. Haven't been way off, but never a perfect 50-50 yet.

 

[carmentk]

I always hatch out far more male guineas than females. When the bachelor flock gets too large I sort out the ones at the bottom of the pecking order and trade them for something else. This year I traded 8 extra male guineas to someone who had 30 guinea hens but no males! I got a a nice little bantam chicken couple in exchange. The male has become my personal pet, following me around when I'm working outside.

 

[spikennipper]

As Ridgerunner says it may simply be bad luck.
There are two things you might could do to alter the outcome of future hatches.
The first is if one rooster fertilized all of the eggs of the previous two hatches try a different cock bird. Sometimes a rooster throws more males than females.
Second if you had a lot of eggs that failed to develop or that quit part way in those last two hatches you might try lowering your incubation temperature a few tenths. It may be that your box is running a bit high which is resulting in the eggs that would have been female expiring. Male embryos are somewhat more heat tolerant (to a degree) than females.
Of course you may have had more than one unrelated rooster fertilizing your eggs and your box temperature may be just fine. But possibly one of those could explain it somewhat.
For what it's worth I normally hatch at least twenty five at a time and I've yet to get a perfect 50-50 ratio. It's always been off by a few (as in more than one) either way. Haven't been way off, but never a perfect 50-50 yet.

It is the hens that determine the sex of chicks not the roos. I have a good light sussex bantam hen that has given me mainly female chicks whichever roo she is paired with so your hens are to blame

 

[RonC]

I know we are talking about chickens here and this may be totally not related to the issue. Some reptiles sex is determined by temperature during incubation. Just a thought but something that someone that incubates may experiment with as only a degree or two can produce a totally male or female brood in reptiles. Here's an article explaining it. If nothing else it's interesting reading. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=experts-temperature-sex-determination-reptiles

 

[Ridgerunner]

Chickens are not reptiles. The hen determines the sex of the chick by which set of genes she donates to the ovum. If she gives a copy of all her genes, it will be male if fertilized and hatched. If she withholds some of the genes (the sex linked genes) the chick will be female. It has nothing to do with the rooster. He gives a copy of all his genes to all his offspring.

Some people that keep track of these things (like people that have breeding pairs) say they seem to get more males or more females from specific hens, but I have not kept that close a track of it to be able to confirm or deny that. I have hatched eggs from my small flock and sometimes gotten more females and more males from the same flock in different hatches, but I was not keeping close enough track to know which individual hens laid the eggs that went into the incubator or under the broody and hatched.

I've heard that about the males being able to survive a warmer incubation than the females. It's not that the sex changes because of the heat but that more males survive to hatch than females so it just seems that way. From my experience, I cannot confirm that. Until I tuned my incubator to get the right temperature setting, it ran warm. So warm that I sometimes had eggs pipping when I went into lockdown. I had two hatches while it was running that warm that were mostly female and one that was mostly male. One of those was 10 female and 6 male.

 

[Illia]

Trust me, it's all about 50/50 odds. Last year ALL my Polish but for one late fall chick were girls. This year I've only got a couple girls so far. And often, I get all girls or all boys in hatches from shipped eggs, many times from my own I get a perfect 50/50 or just a couple boys and several girls, and so on. You find over time that it really is just 50/50 odds, sometimes it's perfect sometimes it's really unbalanced.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

It is the hens that determine the sex of chicks not the roos. I have a good light sussex bantam hen that has given me mainly female chicks whichever roo she is paired with so your hens are to blame 

Yes, you are right. Had to go and look it up.

 

[Poppa chicken]

As Ridgerunner says it may simply be bad luck.

There are two things you might could do to alter the outcome of future hatches.

The first is if one rooster fertilized all of the eggs of the previous two hatches try a different cock bird. Sometimes a rooster throws more males than females.

Second if you had a lot of eggs that failed to develop or that quit part way in those last two hatches you might try lowering your incubation temperature a few tenths. It may be that your box is running a bit high which is resulting in the eggs that would have been female expiring. Male embryos are somewhat more heat tolerant (to a degree) than females.

Of course you may have had more than one unrelated rooster fertilizing your eggs and your box temperature may be just fine. But possibly one of those could explain it somewhat.

For what it's worth I normally hatch at least twenty five at a time and I've yet to get a perfect 50-50 ratio. It's always been off by a few (as in more than one) either way. Haven't been way off, but never a perfect 50-50 yet.

Have any y’all played with the incubation temperatures and run one just a little hot and I want a little cool but just a degree or so I’ve had a little luck with that it seems like the hotter incubation temperatures gave more roosters in the cooler. Incubation temperatures gave more pullets.