Sexing Eggs

Okay, at the risk of appearing to be a total fruit loop, look what I found on the net yesterday;

Here’s the theory: you can tell the sex of the chick before you even start to incubate them by dowsing the egg using a small object on a string – some dowsers use strictly a special crystal, but anything will work, even a bolt or a pebble with fishing line tied around it, or even a wedding ring.
Put the egg on a flat surface away from other eggs.
Hold the pendulum over the egg.
Hold it completely still and then watch to see what the object does.

• If it ends up going around in a small circle, the egg holds a rooster.
• If it goes across in a straight line, the egg will hatch into a hen.
• It will show duds, or infertile eggs by not moving at all.

Some people recommend you 'suggest' what you want - show me male, show me female, before starting the dowsing.

Naturally I had to have a go at this to see what happened.

I picked up the chook eggs I'd been saving to go under Apple, and took them into the lounge with an empty egg container and a necklace I particularly like.  I put the eggs, one at a time, into the spare egg box and attempted to make my mind go blank as I hung the necklace over them. It was spooky! The 'pendulum' did go in different directions, and when I repeated the exercise this morning, I got the same results.

Now I'll gather today's eggs, do the pendulum thing, use the boy eggs for Christmas dessert and the girl eggs can replace the boy eggs waiting to be incubated.  Since I'm useless at sexing chicks it'll be a while until I can confirm the success of the experiment, although the article on the net did say that you can use the same sexing technique on two day old chicks, only the pendulum swings the opposite way; i.e. around for girls, back and forth for roos.

What I've learnt today:

1. Apple, like all women, has exercised her perogative and changed her mind about being broody.  Now I've turned into an indian giver as The Boss has to build an incubator!
2. Mouse the Maine Coon cat left a gift in the bath tub again, this time it was not a rabbit but a dead duck. Give me strength.

*****MERRY CHRISTMAS*****