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Straight run all drakes :(

 
Gail Jardin
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I've ordered three straight runs from cackle hatchery this spring. They were indian runner ducks, Rouen ducks and an assortment of geese. Sadly the runner ducks are all drakes! The Rouens are six ducks and five drakes and the geese I haven't gotten good at vent sexing. The geese appear to have a size difference, four larger ones which I'm hoping are ganders and three petite ones. Both the Rouen ducks and the geese are for meat and keeping a trio to breed. I am going to end up keeping the six Rouen ducks just to have some eggs as my few khakis are older birds.
I find it very odd that the straight run of the only egg laying variety I ordered turned out to be all drakes! When I called and spoke with someone I was told basically I was wrong!?!?! They repeatedly said a straight run is a gamble and I can't get ducks to make up for the all drakes. The gal also kept insisting they've never had complaints about their straight runs before. Has anyone else ordered a straight run of an egg laying breed and only gotten drakes? Suggestions on an honest hatchery to order from next spring?
 
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For some reason this year has been a very male heavy year.  My hatchery turkeys were 14 males to 3 females.  I've heard quite few others with similar stories.

I'd chalk it up to a weird year, and bad luck.  Even in a normal, less male heavy year, it's not impossible to get all males (or all females) in a straight run order of 10 birds (or however many you got, you didn't specify on the runners).  It's not like they sex them and have a pen with boys and another with girls and grab 5 from each.  They don't even look for sex, and you just get whichever 10 they grab.  If the chicks think they're middle-schoolers at a dance (all the boys on one side, girls on another) you could get heavily skewed results with either nearly all males or nearly all females.  But even still, while unusual, it's statistically possible to get all males (or all females).  

If there's a local FB or other social media based poultry group I'd suggest seeing if anyone on there wants to exchange for females.  That or just keep your eyes on those boys and pick out the best one and eat the rest.  Then try to get some females from other sources, or get more chicks now and hope for a few females.
 
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If you get 10 straight run birds and the probability of each being male is 50%, then you have about 1/1000 chance of getting all males. So assuming no monkey business at the hatchery, it seems you're just very (un)lucky.
 
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Our daughter had plans to breed her chickens for a specific color of eggs.

She bought straight-run chicks a couple of years ago.  She ended up with all roosters, 45 of them.

Just seems suspicious to me, like someone (maybe a new employee) did not know what they were doing.

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Anne Miller wrote:Our daughter had plans to breed her chickens for a specific color of eggs.

She bought straight-run chicks a couple of years ago.  She ended up with all roosters, 45 of them.

Just seems suspicious to me, like someone (maybe a new employee) did not know what they were doing.


Yeh, this one sounds like either someone put them in the wrong brooder, after sexing, or someone pulled from the wrong one, to fill the order. If there are 100 chicks in a brooder, that means chances are it will be roughly a 50/50 split. It's 100% feasible that in pulling only 10 from any one breed/brooder, 10 birds, drawn at random could easily be all one sex. But, 45? That's got to be a mistake.

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My neighborhood chicken whisperer who has hatched a *lot* of chickens over many years had something similar happen to her, although I recall it was 24 M and 1 F.

That said, she also says that heat at certain times of the year may skew things and some breeds seem to tend to throw one or the other.

For example, I've had 2 hatches of Khaki Campbell ducks and both were 2 boys and 1 girl. I've got a third too young to sex, but I'll consider it lucky if I get even 1 female again. Year over year when my moms have hatched them, I would say I've gotten equal or more boys.

On the other hand, with Muscovy ducks which I raise for meat and would *like* boys as they're bigger, I almost always get more girls than boys. Hatch 1 was 5 F and 2 M. Hatch 2 is 5 F and 4 M and Hatch 3 is an even 2 each.

Last year when we had some chick hatches, they were all layer breeds and we averaged more hens than roosters. I don't know if it was the weather or the rooster. We haven't had any layers hatch this year, but I've got a girl on eggs right now from the same rooster. The weather's cooled off a lot from earlier in the summer, but who knows.

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Thekla McDaniels
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I recommend Murray McMurray hatchery.  I haven’t ordered from them in a few years, but it’s hard to imagine them being less than gracious and helpful if this happened.

They might explain the “male heavy year” as someone did here, and their process, and even probability mathematics.

Even with a pen of 50-50 male female, it’s not impossible to pull out all the same sex, just almost never happens.

But as I said, I always appreciated the attitudes of their customer service people.

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It is true that getting straight run is always a gamble. And it has absolutely nothing to do with what breed of ducks you get. First year we got ducks, we got three Muscovies, and all ended up being drakes. I got three other ducks last year and I ended up with a trio of two ducks and one drake. So it is totally inconsistent, and unless you get sexed ducklings, you'll always run the risk of ending up with all males. That, being said, a lot of the results come from the roosters being used. The roosters sperm decides the gender of the chick, so if you have a rooster who's semen is mostly male, then his chicks will mostly be male. If the hatchery changes up which roosters they're using every year or so, then one year you may get a male dominated hatch, and the next you could get mostly female. Normally the average is fifty fifty, but that isn't always true. For sheep and goats, you can supposedly (I haven't tried it, but several reputable breeders have, with good results) give the ewes and does apple cider vinegar before and during breeding time, and the acidity levels will kill off the male sperm, so you end up with more girls. I'm assuming that the same would apply to poultry. Hatcheries aren't going to do that though, so if you order online, and you get straight run, then you'll get what you get.

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Thomas Dean
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My (jaded) opinion of straight run is that hatcheries pull out the males and females ordered, package all the rest as straight run... and even if that is not their "usual" policy, I can see them being tempted to do so if they get a smaller than expected hatch, or greater than expected order... "oh, we have an order for 25 straight run... we only have 20, pull 5 extra from the bin of males..."

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Mike Haasl
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I could imagine a world in which a hatchery has 1000 chicks hatch on a given day.  500 male, 500 female.  I'm guessing their orders average around 1000 chicks per day.  If it's too far under 1000 then they didn't forecast their demand very well.

So the orders come in.  450 hens are requested.  Ok, ship those out.  Now they're left with 500 males and 50 females.  Now they process the straight run orders.  Funny, they seem to mostly be males...  Oh well, it's straight run.

This is based on an assumption that people aren't ordering males that often...

If, in a different world, the hatchery satisfies the male and female orders and are left with lots of males, AND they send out straight run chicks with a deliberate 50/50 mix, what would they do with all the left over male chicks?

Please keep in mind that I don't know anything about this, I'm just postulating...

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Thekla McDaniels
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I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet, that even when ordering sexed chicks, you don’t necessarily get 100%.  I’ve  ordered 2 dozen females and ended up with 4-6 males included.

Sexing hatchling birds other than sex link is inexact, and that’s not even including the human element, or the speed they work at, nor the thousands of birds…

Seems like that would be a mind numbing occupation, which perhaps explains why poultry breeders developed sex link birds in the first place.

My preference is to chalk such things up to human error and “it’s a funny old world we live in.”



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Thomas Dean
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Mike Haasl wrote:what would they do with all the left over male chicks?


Some hatcheries (Murray McMurray, for example) have all rooster packages at much lower prices.
I have heard that incineration of unwanted male chicks is the norm for big egg production facilities that want thousands of pullets and zero males.
I had a friend who rehabilitated birds of prey, he was able to pick up excess males at a local commercial hatchery for free to feed to his birds.
Some can be frozen and sold as "feeders" to people with pet reptiles
When I was a kid, the local mills and feed stores gave away "25 free chicks with a bag of feed purchased" My family fell for that ONCE, never again.  50 free roosters that ate well, but never filled out.  
I've done "bin cleanouts" at local feed stores... when the chicks are getting older and/or new chicks are coming in soon, I've gotten chicks for less tan $.25 each.  I have no use for bantams or roosters, but they came as part of the package deal.  So I systematically culled the unwanted chicks and fed them as fresh food to my barn cats.  I felt guilty, but, in the end, the cats eat meat... I'm using a resource, and my way of dispatching the unwanted chicks is much more humane than the way the cats treat the mice that they catch... I've watched and felt bad for the mice.  

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Mike Haasl
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Thekla McDaniels wrote:I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet, that even when ordering sexed chicks, you don’t necessarily get 100%.  I’ve  ordered 2 dozen females and ended up with 4-6 males included.


I cynically wonder if they ever mess up in the other direction

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Thomas Dean
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Mike Haasl wrote:

Thekla McDaniels wrote:I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet, that even when ordering sexed chicks, you don’t necessarily get 100%.  I’ve  ordered 2 dozen females and ended up with 4-6 males included.


I cynically wonder if they ever mess up in the other direction


They do, but it's with meat birds  

But honestly, I've heard that most claim 90% accuracy, and when I've ordered from hatcheries, I never had issue.  Bins at the feed store are a WHOLE 'NOTHER BALLGAME, as untrained workers mix bins, mislabel, etc.  

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