Aussie Finch Forum

Hi All
My last season I Aviary bred with 20 Hens & 20 Cocks. I put down 56% Black head, 30% Red and 14% Yellow with 88% Purple Breast and 12% White.

I bred 71 surviving chicks.

However the resultant chicks were 26 Cocks and 45 hens a variance to the norm of 12.2%.

There has been a study by Dr Sarah Pryke where, with different head colours the Hen compensates by producing more Cocks which is exact opposite to my predicament.

Can anybody provide some sort of explanation

Thanks in advance

You picked a 4 leaf clover and got lucky.
The proportion of males to females will in theory be 50/50. Just like when you flip a coin and get 50/50 heads and tails.
Now go flip a coin and see if that works out exactly. It probably wont.
Life is just like that.
But as the sex of the chicks is determined by the hens. So keep the hens that produced the heaviest female bias in their chicks and put them down again next season.

your sample size is too small to draw any inferences with respect to your breeding results and a 12% variance isnt too great.

could be a good idea if we pooled our results on this page to compare. lots of data to be gleaned.

don't question it, females are not as common so if you get more females, then you're on a winner.