Will the Egg Grow Up to Be a Hen or a Rooster? (Mar, 1922)

And if the chick is a hermaphrodite it turns into a perpetual motion machine!

Will the Egg Grow Up to Be a Hen or a Rooster?

WHETHER an egg is a potential rooster or an embryonic hen can be determined, it is claimed, by a “sexometer” which may prove to be of value in the poultry industry, for when the sex of eggs can be told, it will be possible to send most of the rooster eggs to market and retain the hen eggs for the upbuilding of the home flock.

The “sexometer” consists of a piece of cork wound with copper wire from which is suspended a pendulum of wire ending in a flat piece of aluminum-plated substance. In examining the egg, the cork is held in one hand and the egg in the other. If the egg is male, the pendulum, it is claimed, will swing in a circle. If it is female, the pendulum is said to swing back and forth.

It has been demonstrated that the device, when held over one egg, will swing in a circle; yet when it is held over another, it will swing back and forth. Whether these varying motions are due to the sex of the egg, or to such incidental qualities as shape and size, is a puzzle that no one has been able to answer. The inventor claims that in experiments covering a period of six months, the instrument forecasts on 85 per cent of the eggs tested were correct.