Telling the gender of chicks. (for newbies trying to gender sex their chickens)

CochinBrahmaLover

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Dec 29, 2011
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(OK I have some extra time so thought I'd do this! :D)

How to tell what gender your chick is


Roosters

So I'll be working from young to old. A young rooster will typically get a red comb around 6 weeks of age (or sooner, but by 6 weeks you can sort all of them)

As you can see, this turken has a bent comb. 99.99999% if a comb is bent, its a rooster. However, the turken also has some pink coming in. At a young age, this guarantees that its a rooster (However, you can never be 100% sure, however this method works 99.999% of the time). A hen of the same age, such as this cochin, looks noticable different.

If your chick is around 6 weeks, and doesn't have a red comb, make sure his wattles aren't red. Sometimes wattles will get red before the comb. If you would like to see your chicks age faster, take feathering into consideration.
See the brown chick? Hes a rooster, however, you don't see a red comb, do you? Well, hes now a beautiful rooster. Look at the girl below him. See the difference in feathering? The male has no feathering down his middle, and none on his head, however the blue chick had feathers coming in on her head. They are the same age, and the blue chick turned out to be a hen (I will have no more pics of her though as she was killed by a fox). They are both cochins, so breed differences will not affect them.

So, by 6 weeks, you will either see A red comb or wattles, and roosters will feather in slower.

Full Grown Rooster

A full grown rooster will have glossy feathers (more so then hens usually), typically a larger comb (not always), saddle feathers and sickle feathers.
These are saddle feathers, they grow near the tail. Sickle feathers are parts of the tail.
This bird is called a fly tie, its a bird bred to have exceptionally long saddle feathers so they can use them for making hair ornaments and such.
Sickle feathers are those curvy tail feathers, their very glossy compared to the henlike feathers (the stiff, straight ones).
This rooster is an awesome example. You can see the sickle feathers and the hen like feathers behind it. However, on breeds like say, a cochin, no matter the gender, the tail is curved, however roosters usually have more then hens (Curvy feathers) and their longer.
Now, hen hackle feathers look a bit different then rooster hackle feathers most of the time.
As you can see in the above 2 pictures, the hackle feathers (ones around the neck) are sharp, and glossy, whereas on this hen their softer and less noticable.

Although sometimes hens will have pointy hackle feathers but not usually like a roosters.
That about sums up the difference between a hen and rooster, but remember, the hen lays the egg, the rooster does the matin'
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(Unless of course you have a hen that changes into a rooster, but I won't go into that)

Hens
See , heres the problem with hens, roosters have to GET certain things to be a rooster, and hens have to not have those things. So, you can say "Oh my little chick doesn't have a red comb, and grew her feathers fairly fast :D " Yeah, well before you know it "her" comb is red as an apple and is crowing his head off, so I can just give a few pointers.

Hens feather in fast, and if its comb isn't red or is just pinking up by 8 weeks, its usually a hen. Hens have thinner legs then roosters, and never have pointed saddle feathers or sickle feathers unless they have an over abundance of male testogerone, which is rare but happens, but if you have a growing chick with saddle feathers, then best bet is its a rooster.
 
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i wish this applied to all chicks and chickens but it doesnt. i have had to many change genders on by the time they hit 10 weeks of age
 
and then there are the hen feathered breeds such as sebrights where the only difference in them is comb and wattle size
 

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