3.5 week old Orpington with waddles??

[LavenderMotherHen]

Phew- I feel a lot better! I was very surprised

 

[kurby22]

Phew- I feel a lot better! I was very surprised

Yeah, I was pretty concerned when I saw them on mine too! I was like, OH nooo, I got two roosters??? Haha, it was not a great discovery. One I might consider but not two! I sooo very much love my little Evee (named after my daughter's favorite Pokémon) and she has a lot of behaviors that have been described of roosters...so we will see how things go! I decided to call her a her to make sure to convince her to be a hen haha. She's the most people friendly, the most brave, the most feathered, and the most bossy!! But I have read about very bossy hens too, so my fingers are crossed! For you too!

 

[dct10]

Don't jump the gun yet. They're pretty androgynous at this age. Here is one of my Orpington pullets at exactly four weeks. Looks very similar.
View attachment 2691163

my vote is pullet. You can get hints by the way they carry themselves and interact with others. All my cockrels started fake fighting early. They walk with their heads higher and start overwatch as I call it at a young age. The pullets tend to have their chests lower to the ground and they forage without a thought of looking for predators Also, the pullets wings will develop long feathers that go to their butts much faster than Cockrels (for most breeds) We have 8 new Cochin chicks and had 11 Cochin/Ameraucana crosses. This was the same with all. The ones who developed long wing feathers all turned out being girls and the boys had shorter wing feather and developed slower. My current batch of Cochins are all girls. One already started developing small red waddles. They are 1 month today.

 

[dct10]

Last night I had an "OMG" moment too, lol. My Delaware suddenly had very pink comb and noticable wattles! I'm supposed to have 14 pullets! However, after panicking, talking out what we would do if we have a roo (hubby doesn't want to eat one we've raised...we do have a friend that has a ranch though), calming down, and going out to hang with the chicks...all my gals with single combs are noticeably more pink now. They are about 4.5 weeks old now.

Well it wouldn't be unheard of for a hatchery to mess up sexing. Last year we ordered 12 chicks and paid extra for sexing. We only ordered one cockrel. We ended up with 4. It was a major problem once they reached about 8 months. Fighting all the time and the girls took a beating. We had to rehome 3.

 

[LavenderMotherHen]

my vote is pullet. You can get hints by the way they carry themselves and interact with others. All my cockrels started fake fighting early. They walk with their heads higher and start overwatch as I call it at a young age. The pullets tend to have their chests lower to the ground and they forage without a thought of looking for predators Also, the pullets wings will develop long feathers that go to their butts much faster than Cockrels (for most breeds) We have 8 new Cochin chicks and had 11 Cochin/Ameraucana crosses. This was the same with all. The ones who developed long wing feathers all turned out being girls and the boys had shorter wing feather and developed slower. My current batch of Cochins are all girls. One already started developing small red waddles. They are 1 month today.

I’m still learning! After further inspection I found that the other two have waddles as well. I haven’t seen any obvious rooster behavior, which is fresh on my mind since I had to rehome a rooster recently. ((It was obvious from the beginning that he was a rooster)).... and all 3 of these girls are feathering at the same rate. Our rooster (from the last batch) took forever it seems.... he only had wing feathers and the rest had a full body of feathers...