Incubation temperature for chickens

If the poultry industry could choose to skew the sex of the chickens that hatch to better meet the product they sell, this could have a dramatic financial impact. Broiler companies would prefer to have mostly males because of their more efficient and rapid growth rate, while egg production companies would obviously want to maximize females for egg production. If incubation temperature could alter sex ratio in birds, this would be simple to implement and have potential global impact. To test the concept that perhaps UGA poultry scientists could sway this ratio in one direction or the other, they incubated broiler eggs at 99.5 F plus or minus 1.5 F. The female to male ratio at hatch was unaffected by incubation temperature in broiler chickens. The higher incubation temperature used reduced the number of eggs that hatched, by increasing embryonic mortality, but the mortality was similar for both sexes. This did not prove to be a practical method to skew the sex of meat-type chickens.