Year Of The Roosters

[GDB]

This year I have 8 silkies, which all turned out to be roosters. I also hatched close to 30 quail, which all except 4 are roosters.

Common for anyone else?

 

[CoopBoots]

I love that picture. Birds of a feather, eh?

I've never had THAT many boys all at once or over a season, but I've certainly felt my luck was weighted towards boys. Last year I had a 5/6 boy ratio in my biggest chicken clutch, and I thought that was awful... And right now I have a 4/6 going as well. But that hardly compares, does it?

I read somewhere that female birds provide the sex determination in eggs, but until I can find the source that's just another thing I read that may be completely false lol. It did make me wonder if my hens were discontent and wanted a new rooster around, hahaha

 

[FunClucks]

Yes, females do determine the sex of offspring, it's different from humans. If you hatch hundreds of birds, it's more like 50% of each sex, but with lower # of hatches, we get (un) lucky sometimes on the male/female ratio. I hatched 21 eggs once and got 15 roos. That was one heck of a bachelor flock. I eventually rehomed them all, at least 2 went to pet homes. But those 6 hens were the sweetest green eggers I've ever bred, so I feel the effort was worth it.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

I'm under the Curse of the Cockerels as well! My GD and I drove something like 10 hours from SE MO to AL back at the end of April to purchase some lovely lavender EE chicks. I bought 16 and one later died, leaving me with 15. Of those, TEN have proved to be cockerels! A dog got one of the pullets, so this lengthy road trip, though fun, has netted me only four beautiful EE pullets! The boys? Well, they're going in the freezer, so they're not a total loss. ‍♀

 

[The Chickens' Maid]

 

[Cluckingtime]

Yep. Out of 2 hatches I got 14 Cockrell and 8 pullets.. my first hatch was 8 and all 8 were Cockrell:/ therefore i had to do a second hatch lol.. sold 4 pullets and kept 4.. keeping one Cockrell and sending the others on a freezer vaca, (just not looking forward to the process .. I like eating chicken but I don't like culling and prosessing)

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Yep. Out of 2 hatches I got 14 Cockrell and 8 pullets.. my first hatch was 8 and all 8 were Cockrell:/ therefore i had to do a second hatch lol.. sold 4 pullets and kept 4.. keeping one Cockrell and sending the others on a freezer vaca, (just not looking forward to the process .. I like eating chicken but I don't like culling and prosessing)

We are blessed to have a lovely Mennonite lady within 5 miles of us who takes care of all that for us and only charges $2/ bird. She does a beautiful job. I put the birds in a crate the night before so their crops will be empty the next morning, then I take them to her in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. I put them in the refrigerator for about four days to rest, then into the freezer they go. This makes them more tender. I think this time I am going to part them out (we did four) so I will have bags of drums, thighs, wings and breasts instead of whole birds. I already have whole birds frozen.

 

[Cluckingtime]

I wish I could find someone to do that for me here.. thats wonderful that you have someone to do it for you tho and 2 a bird is a great price! I would do 3 or 4 a bird lol just so I didn't have to process myself

 

[HollowOfWisps]

We are blessed to have a lovely Mennonite lady within 5 miles of us who takes care of all that for us and only charges $2/ bird. She does a beautiful job. I put the birds in a crate the night before so their crops will be empty the next morning, then I take them to her in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. I put them in the refrigerator for about four days to rest, then into the freezer they go. This makes them more tender. I think this time I am going to part them out (we did four) so I will have bags of drums, thighs, wings and breasts instead of whole birds. I already have whole birds frozen.

I honestly would never want to make a Mennonite lady angry. We too used to have a Mennonite neighbor a few miles down the road growing up and she also did a lot of our butchering. Those ladies sure do know their way around a carcass with a knife. I remember watching her butcher one time and I think that was the most flawless and fastest butcher time I have seen. She also used to babysit us and I was always on my very best behavior