I recently brought home four, 2 day old Black Copper Marans x EE chicks and as difficult as it was to guess genders early on, they seemed to develop quickly enough to see noticeable comb/wattle differences between weeks 1 and 2. My suspected pullet's comb has always been very dark gray and barely raised while the suspected cockerels had much larger yellow combs for the whole second week and this morning (at exactly 2 wks old) I noticed pink wattles coming in and pink at the base of their combs as well. Behavior (chest bumping, pushy vs quieter, submissive) has also played a part in my gender predictions.
Here they are at 1 wk old:
Chickie #1 (aka Wonka) is the most outgoing and fearless of the four.
Chickie #2 (aka Toblerone) is a bit pushy with the others
Chickie #3 (aka Godiva) is the most timid, notice her dark gray comb?
Chickie #4 (aka Ghirardelli) and Emma the nosy Aussie
This chick has always had a very "proud" stance.Now at 2 wks old:
Wonka has the fastest feather growth of the group, which I thought was more typical of a pullet, but you can see he also now has very obvious pink wattles starting and his large comb is turning pink at the base.
Toblerone is not as obvious, but clearly has pink wattles coming in and his comb continues to grow
Godiva is the sweet, calm one of the bunch. Her comb is still small and grayish, no wattles to speak of.
Ghirardelli is the smallest chick and has the slowest feather development (only one still with no tail feathers). He also has small pink wattles starting and a relatively bigger comb.
My money is on 3 cockerels (Wonka, Toblerone, Ghirardelli) and 1 pullet (Godiva). I will try to post an update later on in their development. I kinda hope I'm wrong and end up with at least two pullets...
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