3w old EE with a pink comb - any chance of a pullet still?

[Painted Calls]

Is the red shoulder ALWAYS male specific in EEs?
Mary

Yep. Red shoulders are always male specific. It's very common in EEs and most mixed breeds. Red sexlink males also exhibit it.

 

[cityeggs]

Yep. Red shoulders are always male specific. It's very common in EEs and most mixed breeds. Red sexlink males also exhibit it.

Good to know - I had seen the red shoulders mentioned in another thread but wasn't sure if it was true - and I was really hoping it wasn't!

Thank you for your help! Sigh - one of these days, I'll get some blue eggs, but apparently it's not gonna be any time soon!

Are EE's harder to sex as day olds? Or are some hatcheries better at this than others? This is 3/3 EEs that have been cockerels that I've gotten from the same hatchery (via our local feed co-op) out of 6 chicks I've ever gotten (and one of the 3 pullets was a sex-linked one), so if I remember middle school math well enough (which is no guarantee!), the probability is supposed to be 1/1000 for all EE cockerels. I know I have a type - I can't resist a gray chick - are they more likely to be male??? Maybe this means I should just order some blue or lavender somethings and give up on satisfying that with a local EE that has some blue/gray in it, because they all seem to be boys!

 

[Painted Calls]

Good to know - I had seen the red shoulders mentioned in another thread but wasn't sure if it was true - and I was really hoping it wasn't!

Thank you for your help! Sigh - one of these days, I'll get some blue eggs, but apparently it's not gonna be any time soon!

Are EE's harder to sex as day olds? Or are some hatcheries better at this than others? This is 3/3 EEs that have been cockerels that I've gotten from the same hatchery (via our local feed co-op) out of 6 chicks I've ever gotten (and one of the 3 pullets was a sex-linked one), so if I remember middle school math well enough (which is no guarantee!), the probability is supposed to be 1/1000 for all EE cockerels. I know I have a type - I can't resist a gray chick - are they more likely to be male??? Maybe this means I should just order some blue or lavender somethings and give up on satisfying that with a local EE that has some blue/gray in it, because they all seem to be boys!

All chick vents should be the same. Just bad luck it seems.

 

[Folly's place]

Some hatcheries seem to be better at vent sexing than others, it's a specialty a very few people learn. And some farm stores don't seem all that good at labeling those chick bins either.
'90% accurate' seems to be the standard, and getting a very few chicks makes the odds irrelevant.
Try again in spring!
Mary

 

[Painted Calls]

Some hatcheries seem to be better at vent sexing than others, it's a specialty a very few people learn. And some farm stores don't seem all that good at labeling those chick bins either.
'09% accurate' seems to be the standard, and getting a very few chicks makes the odds irrelevant.
Try again in spring!
Mary

Mary means 90% accurate. Sometimes that seems like a low 90 for sure.

 

[Folly's place]

So much for not proof reading. Again!
We've had more issues over the years with mislabeled chicks from the farm stores, and done much better from MurrayMcMurray and Cackle. Not perfect, but better.
And hatched at home? Lucky if it's 50- 50.
Mary

 

[Aunt Angus]

I also wonder if hatcheries purposely put males in their orders for feed stores. They aren't liable for a sexing guarantee for chicks bought at feed stores. And the only "oops" males I've gotten have been from feed stores.

 

[FunClucks]

If you're going the feed store route, I don't know which hatchery your feed store uses, but you might try these for a blue egg layer that is blue as a chick/adult.

Cream Crested Legbar (not blue feathers all over, but there's some nice blue/salmon patterns there, and who can resist the adorable head poofs?) for sure will lay blue. I've not had any myself, but several of the hatchery mixes I do have have CCL in them.

Prairie Bluebell. They come in at least 4 chick/adult colors, and one of them is blue. There aren't many chicks who are blue in each batch, most are chipmunk colored or black. You would have to pick out the blue chicks yourself as soon as the store order comes in, or somehow communicate that to the hatchery if you direct order. The blue prairie bluebell chicks grow up to be blue with black occasional splotches. Mine have had black and black washed yellow feet, and one of them as an adult developed rust colored head and neck leakage around her comb and down the sides of her neck. She's very striking, actually. The other one, I don't know how she turned out because I rehomed her, but they were identical as chicks until I rehomed her at 8-10 weeks old.

PBB look very similar to a sapphire gem (another blue chicken, but lays brown eggs), but different (angular) body shape and lighter weight, and they don't have much blue on blue lacing to their feathers. I've had two of them. The "breed" is very flighty, so they'd make great foragers, and they're 4-5 lbs tops, so great feed to egg conversion. They can be friendly chicks, but you will have to work at it, and it depends on the chicken. They do tend to settle down a bit once they start laying.

My PBB who is laying now lays a 50g egg every day most of the time (and the color is just barely blue - you can only tell when it's in a white egg carton). Egg is highly textured/chalky like the white leghorn commercial white eggs, and unlike the ISA brown eggs or starlight green egger eggs, or basically most of my other eggs which are smooth and matte finish/semi-gloss shiny. However, I've had at least one PBB of my six who lays a tan egg. I think Hoover's hatchery says that can happen 15% of the time for the PBBs.

One of my blue PBBs at 8 wks is attached (outside pic). There is a reddish tinge to the bottom half of her by the corncob - that's from the dust bath she just took (same color as the dirt). Really she is gray all over like on her back feathers. The closeup of her feathers shows where someone feather picked her (we sorted it), but also shows a closeup of her feathers - her adult feathers are very similar - no lacing like the sapphire gem sometimes has. Chick pics at about 6 week on top of the growout box in the garage are also attached. Her adult coloring is very similar to her chick coloring.

ETA: One thing I like about the PBB is they have a pea comb. So if you buy a chick with the smallest possible pea comb, they're almost sure to be a blue egg layer, because the blue egg gene is tied to the pea comb, and smallness of the comb means likely female. Also pick the chicks that are scared of you, or not the most active ones, somewhat submissive, if you can tell that in a chick... One person on BYC ended up with a black PBB male, but I bought seven PBB, and none of them turned out to be male.

 

[cityeggs]

I also wonder if hatcheries purposely put males in their orders for feed stores. They aren't liable for a sexing guarantee for chicks bought at feed stores. And the only "oops" males I've gotten have been from feed stores.

I hadn't thought of that! That's a good point.

There are no other bins, so it couldn't have been a bin mix-up - it's a small store that only orders once a month - only one bin and only female chicks (except straight run silkies) though there theoretically could've been an order mix-up somehow.

The hatchery they get from doesn't have that many breeds, so if I stick with convenience, EE's are the only blue eggers they carry. I think the reason the store goes with that hatchery is it's relatively close, so there's less chance of losing chicks with shipping - but that's just a guess.

I'm sure my small number of dice rolls are more, well, dicey - I wish I had space for more (and to keep a roo or two), but not while I live in a city. I've got one more shot at getting some more chicks this week from the same place, but I don't know that I have it in me to care for more chicks right now on top of trying to rehome 2 cockerels...

I briefly toyed with the idea of ordering pullets instead of chicks, but I then remembered that MPC strongly recommends quarantining for 4 weeks, and I don't have the space to do that.