2 Roos?

[MeghanFaith]

Our last batch had 8 barnyard mixes and 2 turkeys (lost one turkey

). I sold 6 of the chicks my son of course wanted to keep 2. Here are the ones he chose, which or course look to me like 2 Roos

Anyways here they are, what do you guys think?

Amerucana Roo x Barred Rock Hen




Americana Roo x Speckled Sussex Hen




I'm not sure what's up with this comb? Just a Defect I guess, looks like a popped bubble to me!

 

[Sunshine0235]

How old?


I do think they are cockerels though.

 

[MeghanFaith]

Sorry I was actually typing 5 1/2 weeks when my computer crashed! Yes I'm leaning toward cockerels too. I would get rid of them but I'm scared my poult will freak out.

 

[BantamLover21]

Both look like cockerels to me.

 

[donrae]

both roosters. The first bird is sex linked, so the barring indicates a male.

 

[Wyandottes7]

They are both males.

 

[MeghanFaith]

I'm not sure if a Americana/Easter Egger Rooster and a barred rock will cause a sex link or not. I have looked on another thread that had a chart of the combos that will, it wasn't on there.

both roosters. The first bird is sex linked, so the barring indicates a male.

 

[Kev]

It is sex linked- any non barred roo bred with barred hen will throw barred sons, non-barred daughters. The first one is definitely a roo for this reason.

The other is a roo- he's already showing the basic roo color pattern. His comb is pea combined with a defect called telescope or inverted comb.

 

[MeghanFaith]

I thought that black sex linked were born with black with/without a white dot on their head. This guy was a white silver color with a slight chipmunk pattern. Here are pictures of them when they were about a week or so old.


Here in the bottom right corner is the white cockerel, and of course the brown chipmunk is the second.
The 3 other black chicks came from barred rock hens also.


Another pic:


I guess this is why I was a little confused?
I did look into sex-link to see if that's what they would be. Its actually one of the reasons I let him choose the silver because it was timid and small compared to some of the others. Also, the other 3 black had a dot on their head which would make them male if they're black sex link. So I tried to encourage him to not pick one of those.....Backfire

haha

 

[Kev]

You aren't wrong.. those black chicks with white on head ARE cockerels... seems you had a strongly male run! Try to do things the opposite way next time for all female hatch eh? (kidding! I once hatched 13 males and one female in one batch!)

The usual info on sex linking tends to be very simple as not to be confusing for a beginner. So they stick to breeds every one is familiar with for simplicity's sake.

It's directly the barring gene that is sex linked. Not the breed.

Barring expresses best on a solid black chicken, both the chick down and adult patterning-a barred rock is actually a solid black chicken with the barring gene added. The basic black chicken color is a dominant(and not sex linked), this is why hatcheries use barred rock hens for black sex links- the dominant black from the BR hen would make all chicks "black downed" with the males getting the white head spot that would show up well for easy visual sexing.

Barring generally not as strongly present on various colors and patternings with some exceptions. For example on a blue chick, the head spot can seem to be absent.. it gets 'diluted' sometimes as the blue gene likes to dilute pigments so the contrast can get lost. The head spot often is not very visible on some chick downs like some wheaten(cream) etc due to lack of contrast. In those cases you just have to wait until the chicks feather out to see the sex linkage.


For example if you used a cream leg bar with a black rooster, the chicks would come black downed with the males having the head spot plain for all to see. But if you used a RIR rooster over the legbar hen, you might be able to see head spots on some.. on others it would be so vague or even seemingly absent. However, as they feathered out, the barring on males would be evident. Not very economical for hatcheries to use.