So, I’ve got 25 pumpkin plants of various varieties growing. They are flowering well, with 4-8 flowers/buds per plant so far. However, I’ve noticed that out of 100+ buds/flowers only about 5 of them are female. I was trying to do some manual pollination but there is almost no female flowers to pollinate. Is this just a luck of the draw and I’m unlucky? Need more plants next time and then thin out the males? Sort of disappointed that out of 25 plants we’ll only get 2-3 pumpkins from what are otherwise very happy healthy plants. 
What was your seed source?
I think they often start with more male flowers and then female come later (next few weeks?). At least I’ve noticed that with squash generally. And never a shortage of pollinators visiting them.
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Regarding the topic title - pumpkin is a monoecious plant with unisexual flowers.
Wait - first flowers are usually male, and there are always more males than females.
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First, thanks to whomever changed my title to something more descriptive. That was my mistake, thanks for fixing it.
Also, thanks everyone for your input. I wasn’t aware about the time frame affecting the flowers. I assumed since some were female already I was just unlucky.
@swincher - Thanks for the info. We have plenty of bees, but I made the mistake of planting my pumpkin patch beneath/near our very very overzealous pomegranate tree which the bees are obsessing over like crazy because there’s so many flowers, so they don’t visit the pumpkins much. Maybe when the female flowers bloom that will change. I was interested in manually pollinating because it’s very important to me to maximize the pumpkins harvest if I can.
@Richard A mix of last year’s pumpkins and commercial seed packets from Lowes. I’d say about 50/50, but interestingly, I have observed that the ones directly from last year’s pumpkins are much more robust and thriving and grow much faster compared to the store bought seeds, heh.
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