Breed and Sexing Ideas

[SRC2]

Any ideas on the breed and sex of these chicks? We adopted from the kiddos coop...the are about 6 weeks old...
1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

 

[NatJ]

Sex guess: the last one looks male to me. The others might be female, but I wouldn't be entirely sure about that until they get a bit older. Some males can develop slowly enough to be confusing at this age (#3 and #4 are the ones I would be watching most closely at this point.)

About breed: my first thought is that most of them look like mixes. What do you know about them? Were they ordered from a hatchery or bought at a store? Were they hatched from a backyard flock? If so, what breeds of hens & roosters are in that flock?

 

[fluffycrow]

Agree with NatJ. All but the last are pullets. Mix breeds or possibly EEs/OEs

 

[SRC2]

Supposedly they came from a local farmer…all the told the school was they were heritage breed which could mean anything I guess! Wasn’t sure on breed because all but the white one still has feathered feet, but I am an absolute rookie so I have no clue. Thank you for your replies.

 

[NatJ]

Supposedly they came from a local farmer…all the told the school was they were heritage breed which could mean anything I guess! Wasn’t sure on breed because all but the white one still has feathered feet, but I am an absolute rookie so I have no clue. Thank you for your replies.

I think they are probably mixes, not any pure breeds. (The white one with yellow feet could possibly be a pure breed of one kind or another-- there are plenty of pure breeds with that color, but it is also easy to have mixes that are that color.)

 

[BastyPutt]

Agree with NatJ. All but the last are pullets. Mix breeds or possibly EEs/OEs

X2

It looks like there is a lot of Dark Brahma influence here. Perhaps a DB roo was running. This flock.

 

[NatJ]

It looks like there is a lot of Dark Brahma influence here. Perhaps a DB roo was running. This flock.

I don't think so, because of the combs.
Brahmas have pea combs. A Brahma rooster should give a pea comb to every chick produced (they may not all look like good pea combs, but should generally look different than single combs.)

It looks to me like chick #4 has a pea comb (the crested chick), but I think all the others have single combs. So I do not think that most of these chicks could have a Brahma father.

Given the single combs and the feathered feet, I might suspect some Cochin in the mix.

But the crest and the pea comb are obviously from some other breed, and the dark-colored feet are not from a Cochin either. I think at least some chicks are a mix of more than two breeds (which can happen when the parents themselves are mixes rather than purebred.)

Or maybe someone got a mixture of Easter Eggers and Olive Eggers, and then hatched chicks from them. That could explain crest (Legbar), pea comb (some Easter Eggers), single comb (Legbar, Marans, Welsummer), dark feet (some Easter Eggers), feathered feet (Marans), and a wide variety of feather colors. Of course there are many mixes with brown egg breeds or white egg breeds that could end up with the same collection of traits.