Egg Shape As Indication Of The Sex Of A Chick

Last week we addressed a question from Royce about whether egg shape is an indication of the sex of the chick. Thanks to all of you who responded. Below are a few of the responses that indicate the overall experience you all have had in regards to this…

“I have allowed hens to hatch out eggs according to shape and the round egg for hen and pointed egg for rooster was correct from my experience.” ~ Laura Fowler

“My answer is yes you can tell the sex of an egg before it is even placed in an incubator. Several years ago I was told that the more pointed eggs would be roosters and the more rounded eggs would be hens. So I decided to do an experiment. I set 24 eggs in an incubator and hatched 20 of those eggs and they were all roosters except one. I currently try to use only the more rounded eggs for hatching and have about 75 % hens. This does not appear to be true for all breeds of chickens but does seem to work for the large breeds but not as well on bantams.” ~  Thanks, Donald R. Holbrook

“I used to set larger cross breeds and now breed Silkies and still set only round eggs using the same principal as I did with larger eggs. Obviously the bantam eggs are smaller but you still get the shape difference and I still get a much higher percentage of hens. I always say I’d rather scramble a rooster than a hen.” ~ Kim, Western Australia

“I am not what you would call experienced, but I have one chicken that lays eggs that are all noticeably more pointed than the other girls eggs. So unless she is laying only one sex of eggs, I would say that myth is busted!!” ~ Valerie

“I have several different breeds of chickens. Some breeds eggs pretty much look the same. My Rhode Island red eggs show a good variation. I wanted to raise some pullets from them so I incubated all rounded eggs. I got a few more pullets than roosters, so all rounded eggs aren’t pullets around here.” ~ Alan

…so there you have it Royce (and other readers), it seems that if there is any truth to the egg shape being an indicator of the sex of the chick, a rounded egg is more likely to be a hen and pointed egg is more likely to be a rooster – but not always.