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Some colors of chickens will change color at later ages than that, but by 6 weeks they should at least have enough feathers to make a good guess on which ones will look alike vs. different.

That happens whether they eat gro-gel or not. Wing feathers start coming in very fast on some chicks. If they have a yellowish dot on top of their heads, barred. If no dot on top of their heads, black. Although "black" may not be quite accurate-- they could be solid black, or they could have...

If you take chicks that were feather-sexable, and when they grow up you breed them to each other, you will not be able to feather-sex the chicks in the next generation. You will get males that feather fast or slow, and females that feather fast or slow. But from that unsexable mix, you should...

You could check back at intervals, to see if more become available. Someone might cancel their order, or McMurray might decide to set a larger number of eggs of that breed. Especially check in the last week before the chicks are expected to hatch & ship. I have seen several times that more...

Yes, that would certainly explain it :) A barred hen and a not-barred rooster will give sex-linked chicks: barred sons and not-barred daughters. The only real condition is that they need to have a background color that is dark enough for you to see whether they have barring or not. It sounds...

Yes, that would probably help. That is a bit odd. White Leghorns usually produce white chicks in the first generation (sometimes with black dots). Maybe you had some kind of Leghorn-mix instead (some of them are very much like pure Leghorns in many respects.) White Leghorns, and any black...

If you only keep one or two roosters at a time, they have a very big effect on what color genes are in all the later generations. The hatcheries are probably working with a larger flock size, so this effect would be reduced. Reading about "genetic drift" might give a better explanation, if my...

It is not odd, it is perfectly normal. White Leghorns look alike because people culled all the ones that didn't match. ISA Browns all look alike because they are bred to be that way: they are color-sexable at hatch IF the parents are the correct colors. So the hatcheries are careful about only...

Yes, they were approximately Leghorn-shaped (but with pea combs) I'm not very good at recognizing chicken body shapes, so I wouldn't notice if they were a little off, but they were definitely not fluffy like an Orpington or round like a Cornish.

Some years ago, I ordered 4 males and got: 1 white 1 sort-of silver columbian (had stripes as a chick, sort-of like a chipmunk) 2 blues (1 with a beard, 1 without. I can't remember whether one of the other colors was also bearded or not checked my notes: three clean-faced, one bearded blue.)...