blue wheaten ameracauna question

[Goose and Fig]

If the males and females are such different colors when they are adults, are the chicks sexable by color at any point? I have noticed a few tiny colored wing feathers coming in on my itty bitties.

Thanks!

 

[JamesA]

You should be able to tell fairly early.The roo's will start feathering out darker.Maybe 4 or 5 weeks old.

 

[DougD]

As soon as they get their first feathers you can easily see the difference. The same with Wheaten and Splash Wheaten colors.

 

[Tailfeathers]

You won't be able to sex the chicks by the color of those first wing feathers. You may be able to tell the difference between a W and BW but even that can sometimes be difficult. There are some who hold to the theory that you can sex males from females by the length of the feathers on the wings but I've not found that to be consistently true either.

I also had a couple of "weird" colored chicks this year that kept me from knowing whether they were a male or female for quite some time. James & Happy, perhaps you saw my post on the ABC about her. I wound up having about three that looked that way.

Splash pullets can be really hard to tell apart from the BW pullets. This has been an ubelievably hectic year so my mind is pretty scrambled right now but if I hesitate to even guess how long it is before you can tell with certainty whether you have a male or female. I keep telling myself that I am going to make a photo journal to record the development of my chicks but every year I get busy with hatching, raising, transferring from brooder to chick houses and then from chick houses to coops, and on and on. So I have never got around to it. Then everything runs together and I can't remember a thing anymore.

I just put a W and two BW hens in a pen yesterday and will be setting a rooster on them in three weeks. Maybe I can do the photo journal this year. In the mean time, I may have some pics on my website that can help you. Just look under the "Babies" and/or the "Ameraucana" album.

God Bless,

 

[Mahonri]

Royce.

Love your website!!!

 

[JamesA]

Royce would know way more than me on this subject.From what I have seen He has some absolutely beautiful wheaton/blue wheaton ameracauna's.He is also very knowledgable about his birds.

 

[Goose and Fig]

Tailfeathers I LOVE your website! What great baby pics!
Mine look just like that, but one of the them has 2 very faint orangish stripes down it's back. Like it was chipmunk dipped in bleach

So- going by your pics- they are obvious male or female by 2 months? I don't mind waiting. We've had some BBS orps that took even longer than that!

Thanks everyone!

 

[Tailfeathers]

Thanks for the kind words about the website guys but really it's not very good. One of these days I will be putting a website together solely for my poultry Fancy. I just have to find a way to shove another hour into the 24-hour day! Plus I can't for the life of me come up with a name for the ranch. It needs to be something-Tailfeathers or Tailfeathers-something but I ain't come up with any catchy name that has a ring to it yet.

Happy, I'm not sure about the orange striped chicks. Anyway you can post a pic or two?

God Bless,

 

[Goose and Fig]

Ok- I tried to get pics, but my camera was in the car and keeps fogging up

This is the best I could get, it's the one on the left. She does have a blob of poop or something on her head, but the color is there too. All the chicks have the same color wing feathers coming in however.

 

[halo]

The one on the left could be an EE. One of my EEs is laying an egg nearly as blue as my Ameraucanas, and its likely I sent you an egg from the EE. You'll know more as they grow up, they will look very different from the Ameraucanas.