Keep hatching out all roos

[THEFERMANATOR]

I'm on my 3rd incubation in my nurture right 360, my 1st hatching turned out 6 roos & 1 hen, my 2nd hatching turned out all 12 nothing but roos, and my 3rd batch is hatching now and so far I have 14 that appear to be all roos(I'm hatching barred rocks so fairly easy to tell). I have it set to the pre-set 99.5 degrees, but I live in Florida, and we have been very humid here recently. Even with the vent wide open, the humidity runs around 60% with the small water chamber filled, and goes up to low 80's when I fill the other water chamber.

Am I doing something wrong that is causing me to get so many roos instead of a mix of roos & pullets? I'm trying to hatch these eggs to replace my ageing flock of hens that are starting to not lay as well, but I keep ending up with roos that are doing me no good.

 

[HollowOfWisps]

Where did you get the barred rock eggs from? Unless you got them from a quality breeder the auto feather sexing at hatch is useless. It is a trait that has to be specifically bred for. Hatcheries and most backyard breeders do not usually breed for the trait so you will end up with pullets that have larger head spots/lots of white.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I live in Florida, and we have been very humid here recently. Even with the vent wide open, the humidity runs around 60% with the small water chamber filled, and goes up to low 80's when I fill the other water chamber.

Adjust humidity down by not filling the water chambers at all (at first), to adjust for your ambient humidity which is high. Then for lock down fill the chamber that puts you at or near the 65% humidity mark.

While incubation parameters can impact which gender is *more* likely to hatch, the embryo's gender itself is determined before incubation by the hen. Some hens may throw more of one gender than the other.. but it seems unlikely that all the hens would throw only boys.

As stated in post #2, are you actually growing them out to see if your gender determination at hatch is accurate?

 

[Susan Skylark]

Your problem is you want hens. Murphy’s law states anything that can go wrong will but MacDonald’s law asserts Murphy was an optimist. I ordered some shipped eggs to replace my aging male quail and expand my genetic base, out of 40 eggs, 11 hatched and of those ones a mutant and another a jerk. The remaining nine are either not birds I want to keep (if male) or are likely female. My first hatch ever which was supposed to start my flock was 5 males and one hen, the exact opposite ratio you need in quail…it happens, but all joking aside, make sure you are sexing your birds correctly, I never could breed rabbits because they are so hard to sex and you’d be amazed how many Tom cats get spayed before someone realizes it isn’t female!

 

[SweetieChicken234]

Sounds just like my luck. It's annoying but males make good meals at least. I'm in Florida too and yes this recent humidity has been absolutely horrible and intolerable. I Always dry incubate my eggs because of this. I don't add water until lockdown. If you are growing out all these males and you know for sure they are indeed males then you need new breeding hens because the genetics they throw are terrible.

 

[THEFERMANATOR]

The eggs are off my own birds. My hatching last year was 6 roos and 1 hen, my current rooster is one of those roosters that hatched out. I hatched some out almost 5 weeks ago and they all had the distinct white spot, white legs, 2 different length wing feathers, and currently are developing combs at a fairly rapid rate just like roos. I'm going to raise them up to about 10-12 weeks to be certain. And my last hatching on Friday has all the same indicators as my hatching from 5 weeks ago. It's just a bummer because I really could use some younger hens as mine are on there 3rd laying season and the number of eggs they're laying is definitely dropping off.