vent sexing

[Justuschicks]

What would be real helpful to all of us are some good pictures of these "bead" examples. All the pics I can find on-line are real blurry or a drawing out of a book. I would love to be able to sex silkies. I have not gotten that far yet since the chicks are so small. I would hate to hurt one. P'fowls, can you bless us with some good pics? Am I correct in sexing the pictures above as a male? I am still just in the experimenting phase.

 

[P'Fowls]

Am I correct in sexing the pictures above as a male? I am still just in the experimenting phase.

I would not say on that one as we dont vent sex. To many variations. We have 95-100% sexing accuracy with my wife and I sexing by the feathers. We can pretty much sex them from the day they are born to they crow or lay. As they get older you change spots where you look at the feathers. Hatcheries will not sex silkies because they do not have feathers, they have more of a fur when chicks. My wife has gotten to where she can sex silkies. We dont sex them for customers yet. We want to make sure and check our accuracy on them a little more. I would add photos, but it would be hard to show you how to do it in a picture. Its not anything that you can explain with words and people understand unless you are here by my side watching me in person. Sorry.

 

[Justuschicks]

Can you feather sex all chicks....other than silkies? I was always told it only works on certain breeds. Something like the fathering roo has to be a slow feathering breed and the hen a fast feathering breed for you to be able to use the wing feathers to sex. If I learn to vent sex I will more than likely not use it for customers...just my growing breeding stock. I don't want to end up w/ a ton of roos left over or customers coming back with one of my mistakes.

 

[runsw/scissors]

Actually silkies are the only breed I can feather sex with surprisingly good results! In the first 48 hrs females have longer "feather" tips on the wing than do males. It's a comparison thing.

Check on google you'll see.

 

[P'Fowls]

Can you feather sex all chicks....other than silkies? I was always told it only works on certain breeds. Something like the fathering roo has to be a slow feathering breed and the hen a fast feathering breed for you to be able to use the wing feathers to sex. If I learn to vent sex I will more than likely not use it for customers...just my growing breeding stock. I don't want to end up w/ a ton of roos left over or customers coming back with one of my mistakes.

Yes you can feather sex any chick. Silkies are the hardest to learn due to their fur like feathers. We sex them for customers but charge extra for that. The extra money helps with feeding the cockerels we have left and taking them to the chicken sale if needed. It all works out in the end. There are people calling me all the time hunting certain breeds, colors or sexes. So the cockerels could be sold at any given time. I dont mind it.

 

[Justuschicks]

Good to know! I will start paying more attention to that. I always thought it was certain breeds. When you say longer feather tips, are you talking about the tips of the wings where one set is longer than the secondary set? Like this?

 

[runsw/scissors]

Link here: http://animalsciences.missouri.edu/reprod/ReproTech/Feathersex/sld006.htm -This shows better than I can explain. HTH

 

[runsw/scissors]

http://animalsciences.missouri.edu/reprod/ReproTech/Feathersex/img006.JPG

 

[P'Fowls]

Good to know! I will start paying more attention to that. I always thought it was certain breeds. When you say longer feather tips, are you talking about the tips of the wings where one set is longer than the secondary set? Like this?

Depending how old the chick is. When they are a day old we start at the base of the wing next to the body. As the chick gets older we move out the wing until we have to check the end feathers as you are showing. That looks like a cockerel from the photo.

 

[Justuschicks]

That one is 5 days old today. So that pic was when it was 4 days old. I have never heard of looking at the base of the wing, only wing tips. So at the base of the wing where it attaches to the body, how would the feathers look? Pullet- primary set longer than the secondary & Cockerel- primary & secondary the same?
So you say this is a cockerel because the secondary is so much shorter than the primary so when it was a day old we would assume the feathers would have all been the same length?

By the way, this pic is of a silkie.