Young Australorp Chicks -- Roosters or Hens?

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FlockHappy

FlockHappy

In the Brooder
9 Years
Jan 5, 2011
69
6
39
North Carolina
I got twelve young Australorps. Today I moved them out into the coop...(they were getting too big for the cage). As soon as I moved them out, some of them started cock fighting. (Kind of shocking for such young birds). I'm not sure which ones are roosters. Australorps are all solid black, and both the roosters and the hens have pretty big combs and wattles. I was wondering if anyone has experience with telling young australorp pullet and cockerels apart.
Here's some pics I just took today:

See how big all their combs already are....
barnie.gif


I'm pretty sure this fellow below is a rooster. Several of them look like that.

This is one of the ones with a smaller comb:

A few last pictures:

 
I see a LOT of roosters. How old? My aussie girls didn't get pink combs until about 8 weeks and they didn't really grow until about 16 weeks.

I'd say every one of your chicks with descended wattles is a roo. I hope you have some hens.
 
They are only about five weeks. YIKES!
barnie.gif
I don't know what to do. The lady I got them had ordered tons of chicks from a hatchery.....I think it was a hatchery. I hope she hadn't ordered all roosters. Every single one of them...and I have twelve....have descended combs, some more larger than others. This is terrible.
 
She probably ordered straight run, which is unsexed chicks. There are hens in the group too, but there are quite a few roosters. The birds with larger combs/wattles, are larger, and have slower growing feathers are males. The ones with the smaller combs, smaller bodes (particularly noticeable in the legs), with nice smoothly grown feathers are females.
 
A lot of them look like roosters but a few look like hens. Bad luck I guess to get so many roosters but I may be wrong. It's happened once to me.
 
I, too, only had access to a straight-run for Aussies, so I may be feeling your pain, here in a few weeks, FlockHappy! I do hope your situation turned out better than the pictures seemed to indicate! By the way, Gritsar posted some great tips for distinguishing between the cockerels and pullets in the thread, "Pullets or Cockerels? How to Tell". I highly recommend checking it out! Either way, Enjoy your chickies!
 
After 50% of my banded Pullets were actually rooster, and I wasted money (they went to a local farm) I watched a very good and specific video on YouTube. I didn't steer me wrong. I batted 1000 out of the straight run bin! Wow hoo! Saved a lot of money.
 

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