Hiya!
I've never bothered sexing chooks before, we used to have a huge long private garden away from houses when I collected rescue hens/ dumped pet hens, and then later lived on an isolated farm, so the roos didn't disturb anyone & it didn't matter. This time we have a small garden in the city so I will have to re-home roos asap and will only keep 4 hens max rather than the 30 we used to have.
We'd a terrible hatch, 1 black /Auracana? - posted eggs weren't labelled - out of 12 assorted pure breeds form 2 breeders.
So a week later we scored 3 emergency companion chicks from a local-ish farm as our wee all-black Chickum was very lonely. They were allegedly mixes of speckeldy but all 3 had white head dots which I seem to recall was an auto-sexing thing for boys?
Anyway, this is them, at only 6 weeks old the ginger Charmander 1 is definitely crowing, 3 out of 4 mornings this week. He has the thin spiky neck feathers I'd expect on a roo too. So I'm thinking roo?
We'd always thought the gigantic grey was roo as it was so much bigger (breeder said they were all similar age hatching, but I do now wonder if grey Stormy is just older), and its comb/ wattles are really similar to Charmanders'. It's also usually the boldest/ most aggressive and will chest bump/ fight the others, but all 3 of the collected chicks seem to do that. But its neck feathers look pretty rounded so I'm not so sure now.
Bumblebee the paler spotty 1 was tiniest of the companion 3, wattles etc more orangey and neck feathers only just coming in. Unsure on sex...
Original black Chickum as yet has no combs etc of any sort and a slight head pompom. It's the shyest/ quietest even though its 1st week it was alone and would only sleep on us. Sorry it keeps hiding from the camera, will try again..
Any help on sexing would be appreciated, breeder will take back any rosters and I'd prefer just 1 trip as we are still supposed to be shielding as much as possible.
Cheers!
Cat
I've never bothered sexing chooks before, we used to have a huge long private garden away from houses when I collected rescue hens/ dumped pet hens, and then later lived on an isolated farm, so the roos didn't disturb anyone & it didn't matter. This time we have a small garden in the city so I will have to re-home roos asap and will only keep 4 hens max rather than the 30 we used to have.
We'd a terrible hatch, 1 black /Auracana? - posted eggs weren't labelled - out of 12 assorted pure breeds form 2 breeders.
So a week later we scored 3 emergency companion chicks from a local-ish farm as our wee all-black Chickum was very lonely. They were allegedly mixes of speckeldy but all 3 had white head dots which I seem to recall was an auto-sexing thing for boys?
Anyway, this is them, at only 6 weeks old the ginger Charmander 1 is definitely crowing, 3 out of 4 mornings this week. He has the thin spiky neck feathers I'd expect on a roo too. So I'm thinking roo?
We'd always thought the gigantic grey was roo as it was so much bigger (breeder said they were all similar age hatching, but I do now wonder if grey Stormy is just older), and its comb/ wattles are really similar to Charmanders'. It's also usually the boldest/ most aggressive and will chest bump/ fight the others, but all 3 of the collected chicks seem to do that. But its neck feathers look pretty rounded so I'm not so sure now.
Bumblebee the paler spotty 1 was tiniest of the companion 3, wattles etc more orangey and neck feathers only just coming in. Unsure on sex...
Original black Chickum as yet has no combs etc of any sort and a slight head pompom. It's the shyest/ quietest even though its 1st week it was alone and would only sleep on us. Sorry it keeps hiding from the camera, will try again..
Any help on sexing would be appreciated, breeder will take back any rosters and I'd prefer just 1 trip as we are still supposed to be shielding as much as possible.
Cheers!
Cat
