Does incubation temperature determine gender of chicks?

[Lesalynn]

Birds are not mammals. They do share characteristics however, with reptiles. I'm no scientist, but I took enough Science classes to know they ARE NOT mammals. I for one, do beliveve the sexes MAY be influenced by temperature. Would be a great Science project, I believe.

 

[Cowgirl71]

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I'd LOVE it if the demand for chicks never died. Oh well. I hatched a bunch of chicks this year, and had to keep the last couple batches for myself...

 

[deerman]

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this has been test test and tested. same with shape of eggs, ring on a string..etc....THINK about it if there was a way hatchery would not have thousand of surplus males.


honey bees...fertile eggs hatch out females non fertile hatch out males......


I have some pullet sand for sale...just hatch them in the sand all pullets.

 

[SeaHen]

Okay, BUT.. My BC hen did hatch out 15/15 pullets this past fall. The only variable I could think of was the weather. Maybe my hen is genetically or hormonally predisposed to having girls (this was her first and only hatch), or maybe it was a lucky fluke. In humans higher temperatures in semen are associated with a higher percentage of males being conceived, so I would not be at all surprised to learn there is a correlation in chickens.

 

[CalebtheChicken]

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Actually turtles and tortosies are classified to themselve in a seperate group of animals.

 

[dorthal]

I Love you people!!

 

[Akane]

Completely impossible to change the gender of an egg after it's laid. It's determined at the time the embryo forms exactly the same as in mammals except that the hen is the one who is heterozygous and determines gender instead of the male. The gender can't change later because the gene just isn't there. An egg either gets ZZ and is male or ZW and is female. There is no way to spontaneously create a W or another Z. It is just plain not possible and the topic comes up probably monthly.

However it is potentially possible to alter what hatches. You would not be changing the gender in the eggs but killing off more of one gender than the other. Your hatch rates would go down and the dead eggs left behind would be mostly the same gender. Nothing has been proven to work though. The closest proof I've seen is an inconclusive study showing that roos might survive temperature extremes better than pullets. That would mean making it too hot or too cold would get you more roos than pullets simply by killing the pullets. Those would be your unhatched eggs.

It's also not impossible that feeding the flock differently or having different aged birds would result in different genders. Again nothing has been proven though. The age of the roo also should not have any bearing on gender because like I said in birds the female determines the gender. The roo can only contribute a Z while the hen can contribute a Z for male or a W for female. It would be the hen you need to look at not the roo.

 

[missred871]

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psst....I believe turtles are amphibians....I think.....yeah.....I am tired though so dont quote me....

 

[SweetMotherOfMars]

LOL Okay, quick turtle lesson:

Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata (Has a notochord for at least part of the animal's development)
Subphylum - Vertebrata (Has a true backbone)
Class - Reptilia
Superorder - Chelonia (turtles, tortoises and terrapins (Testudines) along with the "proto-turtle" Australochelys)
Order - Testudines (Good note here about the differences between turtles, tortoises & terrapins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle#Turtle.2C_tortoise.2C_or_terrapin )

And from the Free Online Dictionary:
Che`lo´ni`a (kė`lō´nĭ`å)
n. pl. 1. (Zool.) An order of reptiles, including the tortoises and turtles, peculiar in having a part of the vertebræ, ribs, and sternum united with the dermal plates so as to form a firm shell. The jaws are covered by a horny beak.

So turtles and tortoises are grouped together within the reptile class.

@Lessalynn: I don't think that Sarah was implying that birds were mammals, you'll have to ask her. I think she just was going through a list of animal classes and jumped from bird to mammal.

Akane is right, it is the hen that determines what sex the chick will be. Because of this you can't even select for females by playing games with the sperm before artificially fertilizing the hens. There may be some truth that higher temps favor the female embryos as in that wild turkey. That would be a wonderful study although if it is true we would simply be killing off the male embryos.

SeaHen, since hens control the sex of the embryo, it could be possible that she is only capable of producing W chromosomes. ("Males are the homogametic sex (ZZ), while females are heterogametic (ZW)." Wikipedia Were there any clears or blood rings that hatch? If not, keep track of her hatches, you may be sitting on a genetic gold mine. If we can breed for feather color and frizzle, we could breed hens with the inability to produce roos, couldn't we?

 

[SweetMotherOfMars]

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Me, too!