Saturday, April 13, 2013

How to hatch more hens part two

 More females per hatch by Dr. NW.Walker Phoenix Arizona,experiments with sorghum point to slightly more females per hatch,  last time I wrote about using younger roosters to get about a 50 50 chance of getting roosters and hens rather then ending up with to many roosters this time I'm going to wright about how to get more females per hatch from an article from the book sexing all fowl,some years ago ,while doing research on some accountable hidden secret in the seed of sorghum,Dr Walker discovered a genetic female hormone to be quite prevalent.  For research purposes he was using zebra Finch's because of their regularity in the prolific hatching of 4 eggs each month .  This saved much time in determining the results of his guessing that perhaps this hormone in Sorghum influence the sex in birds to be hatched .  Up to the time of these experiments , the hatching's yielded about 50-50 of males and females. He had been getting as many males as he had been getting females, but he wanted more females. a dish full of sorghum was placed on the floor of his aviary 24 hours a day.  At first the birds did not come to this dish enthusiastically, but  he noticed in the coarse of 3 -4 weeks that they ate the sorghum seeds before going to their regular feed troughs, morning and evening.  To his surprise , the percentage of females hatched began to increase in 2 or 3 months , gradually rising eventually to 75% females , and by the end of the year the hatching's were yielding 80% females. Other and for the moment more important matters - took precedence over his sexing experiments , so that he did not have the opportunity to test this discovery on larger birds.  He is presently interested in using coturnix quail , because  he found that these quail are the most prolific larger birds that he has come across lately .  Their eggs hatch in 16 days and the chicks start laying eggs in 5-6 weeks after being hatched . a similar experiment is about to start with Exchequer Leghorns, these beautiful rugged birds developed in Scotland three quarters of a century ago .  These are virtually immune to the ailments and sicknesses of the poultry . Their eggs are very large , white, and with an exceptional degree of hatch ability. information is from the book Sexing all fowl.

1 comment:

  1. I learn something new every time I visit here~ thanks for such great information!
    (Love those chickens in the last picture~ so pretty!)

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