I have realized recently that I notice roos sooner than many people. Sometimes younger than a week old I can point out genders. It's just because I watch their behavior. It's not a sure-fire-way, but it definitely helps me out telling cockerels from pullets.
The type of behavior I notice the young roosters do often is:
1.) Always looking up. This is a big one! if you have some chicks who are always looking up at you and looking you in the eye then they are likely boys.
2.) Challenging another chick over and over.
3.) Pecking at hands.
4.) Comes running when you pick a suspected pullet up.
AGAIN, this is not a for-sure way to sex them. It has just helped me out in the past, and I wanted to share how I guess so early with you all so you can create bonds with the ones you can keep.
What about breaking a broody???
If you don't want her to hatch out chicks, best to break her promptly.
My experience went like this: After her setting for 3 days and nights in the nest, I put her in a wire dog crate with smaller wire on the bottom but no bedding, set up on a couple of 4x4's right in the coop and I would feed her some crumble a couple times a day.
I let her out a couple times a day and she would go out into the run, drop a huge turd, race around running, take a vigorous dust bath then head back to the nest... at which point I put her back in the crate. Each time her outings would lengthen a bit, eating, drinking and scratching more and on the 3rd afternoon she stayed out of the nest and went to roost that evening...event over, back to normal tho she didn't lay for another week or two.
Water nipple bottle added after pic was taken.
Use your bug zapper for insects to feed to the chickens. Put in the coop or collect bugs from the zapper to feed them. My chicks go absolutely crazy for them.
We always have broody serama!! so we have a few pens, what we do is pull the broody hens out and throw them in with a different roo in a different pen, The new roosters DONT let them brood lol
