Barred boys, or girls? 1 week old.

[J-Habs]

UPDATE! 1 day later, and the one I have suspected might be a female sure looks like a female according to feather sexing. It has what appears to be 2 rows of wing feathers and obvious tale feathers. The other two have neither. Also, the spot on the head is much bigger and more pronounced. Kind of like a streak instead of a spot. This might be breaking the rukes of sexing, but it sure looks like a female to me otherwise. All three chicks have same mom and dad. Any thoughts?

 

[NatJ]

View attachment 3772576
He comes from a Cream Legbar bred to a BCM, and then bred back another 3 generations to BCM. So would he carry barring from a Cream Legbar 4 generations ago?

Given his color, I would expect barring to be very visible if he did have it. So I am pretty sure he does not have barring.

 

[NatJ]

UPDATE! 1 day later, and the one I have suspected might be a female sure looks like a female according to feather sexing. It has what appears to be 2 rows of wing feathers and obvious tale feathers. The other two have neither.

That kind of feather sexing is based on the genes for fast feathering and slow feathering. it has the same kind of inheritance pattern as barring: if you use the right parents, the daughters will match the father and the sons will match the mother. Otherwise, either feathering speed can happen in males or females.

Your rooster and hens probably do not have the right genes to produce feather-sexable chicks, because a chick will not be both male by barring and female by feathering-- one of the two must be wrong. Based on the photo of your rooster, I am pretty sure he has no barring gene, so all barred chicks must be male, so that means the feathering is not an accurate way to sex these chicks.

Also, the spot on the head is much bigger and more pronounced. Kind of like a streak instead of a spot. This might be breaking the rukes of sexing, but it sure looks like a female to me otherwise. All three chicks have same mom and dad. Any thoughts?

If anything, a bigger and more pronounced head spot is MORE likely to be a male.

I am pretty sure have a male chick there, but definitely watch as it grows so you can know for sure. If the chick does turn out to be female, it would probably mean a different rooster (with barring) mated with the mother at some point.

Edit to add: if you want to raise feather-sexable chickens in a later generation, keep an eye on the feathering speed. You will want males that feather fast and females that feather slowly, and they will produce sex-linked chicks that feather at opposite speeds to what their parents did. So if that chick with the big headspot does continue to grow his feathers faster than the others, he is probably fast feathering and they would be slow feathering.

 

[NatJ]

He comes from a Cream Legbar bred to a BCM, and then bred back another 3 generations to BCM.

Um, I just read that again:
BCM is some kind of Marans, right? Black Copper or Blue Copper?

Marans do not have muff/beard on the face.
Cream Legbars do not have muff/beard on the face.
That rooster DOES have muff/beard on the face. That means he must have something else in the mix.

Also, it looks like he has the pea comb gene, which is not present in Marans or Legbars.

I would guess him to be an Ameraucana-mix, not a Legbar-mix. That would explain the muff/beard and the pea comb (modified pea comb, split for pea comb, heterozygous pea comb, one pea comb gene and one not-pea comb gene: several other ways to say the same thing.)

I still do not think he has barring, which is what matters for sexing your chicks. But based on those other traits, I don't think he is the particular mix of breeds that you say he is.

 

[J-Habs]

Um, I just read that again:
BCM is some kind of Marans, right? Black Copper or Blue Copper?

Marans do not have muff/beard on the face.
Cream Legbars do not have muff/beard on the face.
That rooster DOES have muff/beard on the face. That means he must have something else in the mix.

Also, it looks like he has the pea comb gene, which is not present in Marans or Legbars.

I would guess him to be an Ameraucana-mix, not a Legbar-mix. That would explain the muff/beard and the pea comb (modified pea comb, split for pea comb, heterozygous pea comb, one pea comb gene and one not-pea comb gene: several other ways to say the same thing.)

I still do not think he has barring, which is what matters for sexing your chicks. But based on those other traits, I don't think he is the particular mix of breeds that you say he is.

Great to know. I'm just going off of what the lady I got the rooster from told me. You make great points.

 

[JedJackson]

View attachment 3772576
He comes from a Cream Legbar bred to a BCM, and then bred back another 3 generations to BCM. So would he carry barring from a Cream Legbar 4 generations ago?

That makes it clear that he doesn't carry the barring genes. So sex linked chicks when he is crossed with a barred hen will work. All male chicks will have head spots, and females will not.

 

[Rare]

Any update?

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

Thanks! I was pretty sure they were males, I was just thrown off by one having much longer wing feathers.

Quick feathering is a male trait in some lines, a female trait in others, and sometimes both or neither. It just depends on the breed, and what individuals are selected for hatching their eggs. I would guess that since you used two such different chickens, one has the quick feather gene while the other does not.