Marking eggs to track hatchling.

[ManOverBoard]

In chickens, males have sex chromosomes ZZ. Females have sex chromosomes ZW. That means the hen determines the sex of the chick by whether she gives a Z or a W chromosome. The rooster gives a Z to all of them.

That is useful if you want to breed sexlink chicks:

You use a rooster with a recessive trait on the Z chromsome. Because it's recessive, he only shows the trait if he has it on both Z chromsomes, so you can tell he has the right genes just by looking at him. And you use a hen with the dominant trait on her Z chromosome (but nothing on her W chromsome.) Because she's got just one Z chromosome, you know she cannot be carrying a recessive trait, so just like the rooster, you can tell by looking that the hen has the right genes.

When you cross such a rooster and hen, the rooster gives a Z chromsome with the recessive trait to all his chicks. The hen gives the dominant trait to her sons, which they show because it is dominant. The hen gives a W chromsome to her daughters, so they show the recessive trait they inherited from their father. This means the male chicks and female chicks can be sorted by sex, just by sorting the different colors.

Common sex-linked traits include:
gold (recessive) and silver (dominant)
chocolate (recessive) and not-chocolate (dominant)
not-barred (recessive) and barred (dominant)

The barring gene can also be used to make auto-sexing chicken breeds, because it shows a dose effect. A hen with just one Z chromosome will have just one barring gene. That makes white bars on her feathers. A rooster with two Z chromosomes can have two barring genes. That makes more white in the barring of his feathers, and makes the chick down a lighter color as well. Cream Legbars and Bielefelders are known for being sexable this way, and it also works on Barred Rocks, Cuckoo Marans, and some other breeds. Sometimes there are confusing chicks (female a bit lighter than normal? male a bit darker than normal?), but breeding from just the most obvious chicks will generally cause future generations to be easier to sex.



I dont know if Aristotle said it too, but Pliny the Elder definitely did in the first century.
The work is Natural History, Volume 2, Book 10, Chapter 74 "The various kinds of eggs, and their nature." You can find an English translation here on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60230


Mesh bags or baskets, plus legbands or food coloring, works.
Or using several incubators and several brooders.

Such an awesome informative answer thank you for taking the time!

 

[ManOverBoard]

Where do you buy fertile eggs from that ship to your door?

Etsy and eBay, it's our first time trying both.

 

[ManOverBoard]

Etsy and eBay, it's our first time trying both.

Before I start another post, maybe you guys have an idea,
We've been a bit worried about our Lavender ameracauna eggs. They weren't all the best looking for hatching but most we're okay. Then we put them in a new incubator that we had up and running. It had an auto turner, which we didn't realize would seem so rough on the eggs till a couple of days in. We were so alarmed by how fast and how much it rotated each time that we took it out and have been hand rotating since. We're now on day ten and candled a few this morning. They're blue/green eggs and don't look like what we're used to. We're a bit worried something's wrong. We saw a little bit of veining but a whole lot of black and oddly tilted air sacks. Took a photo and some short videos.
Anyone know if these look okay?
... apparently I can't share a video

 

[Slothinc]

Before I start another post, maybe you guys have an idea,
We've been a bit worried about our Lavender ameracauna eggs. They weren't all the best looking for hatching but most we're okay. Then we put them in a new incubator that we had up and running. It had an auto turner, which we didn't realize would seem so rough on the eggs till a couple of days in. We were so alarmed by how fast and how much it rotated each time that we took it out and have been hand rotating since. We're now on day ten and candled a few this morning. They're blue/green eggs and don't look like what we're used to. We're a bit worried something's wrong. We saw a little bit of veining but a whole lot of black and oddly tilted air sacks. Took a photo and some short videos.
Anyone know if these look okay?
... apparently I can't share a video

It is really hard to tell from the photo but if you could use a smaller flashlight (even a phone flashlight) that might show more because that candler is losing a lot of light not going into the egg.

If you’re worried about the position of the air cell, it is okay. A lot of time shipped eggs have air cells in an unusual spot.

 

[ManOverBoard]

It is really hard to tell from the photo but if you could use a smaller flashlight (even a phone flashlight) that might show more because that candler is losing a lot of light not going into the egg.

If you’re worried about the position of the air cell, it is okay. A lot of time shipped eggs have air cells in an unusual spot.

I'll try again thank you

 

[ManOverBoard]

I'll try again thank you

I tried again, with not much better results. It was actually day 13 not ten. Lockdown tomorrow. It's just so hard to tell what's going on in the colored shells!

 

[Slothinc]

I tried again, with not much better results. It was actually day 13 not ten. Lockdown tomorrow. It's just so hard to tell what's going on in the colored shells! View attachment 4071293View attachment 4071293View attachment 4071292View attachment 4071291View attachment 4071293

As long as none of them smell bad, I would just leave them all in and see what happens! I hope that you have a great hatch!

 

[wrathsfarm]

I tried again, with not much better results. It was actually day 13 not ten. Lockdown tomorrow. It's just so hard to tell what's going on in the colored shells! View attachment 4071293View attachment 4071293View attachment 4071292View attachment 4071291View attachment 4071293

Try covering the light with a sheet of construction paper, cut a 1/2"-3/4" hole in it, and set egg in hole over the light.
This covers the incubator and prevents the light wash out, focusing the light into the egg.

 

[ManOverBoard]

Thanks guys!

 

[jandjmca]

Hi everyone,
We've got a lot of eggs in the incubator right now, some of which are Lavender Ameracaunas (LA's) we ordered through the mail. We're hoping to breed for blue eggs as our current ameracaunas eggs are more green than blue. Some of the LA eggs are more blue than others, one even having an extra blue ring around it. It looks like a rooster egg, and we want to try to track that chick to use it for breeding in the future assuming it hatches healthy and strong.
My question is how to mark that chick and any others we want assuming we see the chick that leaves that egg.
With adults we give them bracelets, but chicks?

Be ready for roosters, learn to identify the sexes, I hatched 12 of them, I got two hens