Marking eggs to track hatchling.

[NatJ]

Tiny silly question…. Numbers are hard hahaha. You said you ordered medium 3/8. Not finding 3/8.. did I read it wrong ??? Sorry for silly question

If you're talking about the bands here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQSW57N

When I go to that page, I see a bunch of options to choose size.
Each size has a little box that lists the size (like 3/8") and gives a price.
Other sizes include 1/4" and 1/8" and so on.

I also see another row of options to choose medium, heavy, or light (that row is labeled "color").

So to get 3/8 inch medium, you would make sure the 3/8" box is selected and also the medium box. (The system thinks it's like buying a shirt: choose size and choose color. But in this case, it's really the weight instead of a color.)

Unless you are getting different options on your screen. I suppose that's possible

 

[Slothinc]

If you're talking about the bands here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQSW57N

When I go to that page, I see a bunch of options to choose size.
Each size has a little box that lists the size (like 3/8") and gives a price.
Other sizes include 1/4" and 1/8" and so on.

I also see another row of options to choose medium, heavy, or light (that row is labeled "color").

So to get 3/8 inch medium, you would make sure the 3/8" box is selected and also the medium box. (The system thinks it's like buying a shirt: choose size and choose color. But in this case, it's really the weight instead of a color.)

Unless you are getting different options on your screen. I suppose that's possible

Thank you so much for explaining that @NatJ. Other sizes and colors may work but for me that ended up being a great weight and size.

 

[Debbie292d]

Thank you so much for explaining that @NatJ. Other sizes and colors may work but for me that ended up being a great weight and size.

Have you used these on silkies? I was wondering about them getting lost in their feathered legs. My only other thought was to buy some heavy duty nail polish in like five colors. At least their nails usually stick out.

 

[Sic]

The one time I tracked a few chicks by which shape egg they came from, I got 2 males and 2 females from the 4 eggs that were long and pointy.

Based on that as well as other people's experience, I would say it is no more accurate than random guessing. Which would give you a 50/50 chance of getting a male from that egg.

Eggshell shape is a certain amount inherited. If your pointy egg does produce a cockerel, and you use him for breeding, his daughters will be more likely to lay pointy eggs. If you make a point of hatching mostly pointy eggs, or mostly round eggs, over time you will have a flock that lays more eggs of one shape and less of the other shape, but they will not produce more male or more female chicks than usual.

There has been some research in this area greater than 50%:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9832119/

 

[Slothinc]

Have you used these on silkies? I was wondering about them getting lost in their feathered legs. My only other thought was to buy some heavy duty nail polish in like five colors. At least their nails usually stick out.

I used them on my last hatch which was all silkies or silkie crosses. I used them until close to 3 months old, when I could easily tell them apart (well I could actually tell them apart by about a month, but I kept them on just to be able to see on first glance because I had 4 black chicks that looked almost identical!)

But they worked just fine on feather leg chicks. Easy to put on despite the extra toes. On the ones with the most feathered legs they were a little lost, but on the inside of the leg is usually clean and you could see it there

 

[Debbie292d]

There has been some research in this area greater than 50%:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9832119/

What a sad article in the beginning talking about how many little cockerels are culled at hatch.

Keeping in mind, this is a hatchery with the eggs coming from sources all bred similarly to be layers. They're testing virtually normal eggs that are off a small amount. "With these features, females classified with 80% and males classified 81% correctly."
Keeping all the alleged females, one still gets 20% males—way less than the usual 50/50 for us, so that would sure be nice. At least this would prevent hatcheries from culling so many males, as that would be down to 20% from 50%.

I think this method wouldn't work for us this well because we're dealing with a few chickens, not hundreds, and ours may lay different-sized eggs just because of their age, stress, what they've been eating lately, and any number of factors the hatcheries don't deal with, so theirs could be more accurate.

 

[Sic]

What a sad article in the beginning talking about how many little cockerels are culled at hatch.

Keeping in mind, this is a hatchery with the eggs coming from sources all bred similarly to be layers. They're testing virtually normal eggs that are off a small amount. "With these features, females classified with 80% and males classified 81% correctly."
Keeping all the alleged females, one still gets 20% males—way less than the usual 50/50 for us, so that would sure be nice. At least this would prevent hatcheries from culling so many males, as that would be down to 20% from 50%.

I think this method wouldn't work for us this well because we're dealing with a few chickens, not hundreds, and ours may lay different-sized eggs just because of their age, stress, what they've been eating lately, and any number of factors the hatcheries don't deal with, so theirs could be more accurate.

It is sad that millions/billions of male chicks are killed, at least they are looking for ways to avoid that.
Not really correct on the normal hatchery eggs though..
"The experiment was carried out in the Aksaray University hatcheries in accordance with the national regulations on wellness and protection of animals used for experimental and other scientific purposes. Eggs for the experiment were bought from the local backyard poultry farms. The morphology of an egg varies on the chicken breed and in the local backyard farm had a hybrid flock."

But I agree, I'm not going to buy calipers so I can accurately measure my eggs, otherwise it is just a best guess, but I'm also not trying to hatch mostly female. Someone informed me that it wasn't just an old wives tale - so I was just passing on the info, no idea if their experiment is practical in any way.

 

[NatJ]

Someone informed me that it wasn't just an old wives tale - so I was just passing on the info, no idea if their experiment is practical in any way.

It is definitely not practical yet.

The biggest problems I see with it:
--they trained the computer algorithm on the eggs & the chick sexes, then had it predict sex of chicks from those SAME eggs. So it was 80% accurate at predicting the sex of the very same eggs/chicks it was trained on. That's not very impressive-- it's like telling a kid all the answers to a test and then bragging that they got 80% correct when they actually took the test.

--they were only working with 47 chicks (all that hatched from their 60 eggs).

--they say they sexed the chicks at one week old "by visual inspection based on their body size, comb color, and feathering." Most chicks cannot be accurately sexed at one week old by any of those traits. The chicks that can be sexed accurately at one week old, could usually be sexed at one day old as well. And since the eggs came from "hybrid" flocks, they are almost certainly not any of the kinds that can be accurately sexed at such a young age.


A quote from the concluding paragraph:
"In this study, a total of 60 used eggs, and only 47 of them were hatched. This number is comparatively low, and a large number of data is needed for better results. Random eggs were chosen from local farms as breeds and the age of chickens, if a specific breed and age are to be used in future studies it may give better results."

I agree that it needs more study before it has any chance of being useful in any practical sense. Personally, I don't think it is ever going to be useful, on a backyard scale or a commercial scale, but it is much better to have real data than my current general idea of "I don't think."