Okay...so I have a little task for all of you with chicks growing outI study my birds a lot. As in, frittering away hours just watching the little buggers. This year, I figured out that the ear fuzzies at 3+ weeks are indicative of the eventual head color with more mature plumage. I had 3 dark chicks and 3 wild pattern chicks that all had different ear fuzz despite having similar down color. And each one matured with adult plumage on head and upper neck that matched ear fuzz. Not a big deal with most breeds but super helpful if you have no patience and bought a bunch of EEs!
I'm now determined to find another way to sex older chicks since combs and wattles and rate of feathering isn't always accurate. I doubt any method is. So I pulled out a few chicks and examined their wings. Since I don't know for certain the sex of all of my chicks, my observation could be way off base but if you have chicks around the same age as mine (4 weeks) and you have a few free minutes, pull out the ones you're fairly certain regarding gender and check their wings. I'll attach a little drawing I made but it seems as though males have only 1 or 2 feathers at the joint and the sweep/angle of the top layer of feathers closest to the top of the wings starts out shorter towards the body and gets longer towards the joint. With females, it seems to be the reverse...there are a few+ feathers at the joint and the shortest feathers in the top layer are nearest the joint and the longer ones are toward the body. Anyone else have the same or is it just a coincidence?
This is really interesting! Do you think this would work with bantams as well?
Hoping it's not just a random observation. Going to look at my older birds later and see if I see any difference in their wings. It's raining right now so I'll wait till I feed them 
In the meantime, would love to know if others notice the same thing!
Mr. Pecker 
) but the other two are/were laced, one orange and one white, both with black lacing, so I’ve never had one her color before hahah
