This is Speedy, who is a roughly 6 weeks old barnyard mix. I'm trying to establish if Speedy is absolutely 100% certain a cockerel. I have to make a flock choice soon, and I so badly want to avoid the explosion of chaos that could happen if I acidentally put a super sneaky pullet into my bachelor flock...but if I know Speedy is a boy, then I also would ideally like to avoid first putting Speedy in my regular flock and then going "oops" and having to do another integration shortly after.
Specifically: is this wide-white barring pattern something that can only occur in males? I'd read it requires two copies of the barring gene which is only possible for males of barred breeds, but I don't know if there's some other unrelated trait that can produce the same effect in non-pure-bred barred birds.
My point of doubt is that Speedy is silent and the comb and wattles are within the range of ambiguity for what I've seen from prior chicks from the same flock - so if those are truly my only thing to go on, then it's not certain enough for me to put the Speedster straight on a path for the bachelor flock and I'll have to do potentially two flock moves. For comparison, this is what my cockerels are usually like by this age - big comb, very red, good wattles happening (even if not visible in the photo). This little dude is Smoke and he's well into making horrible noises at 5AM lol.
Specifically: is this wide-white barring pattern something that can only occur in males? I'd read it requires two copies of the barring gene which is only possible for males of barred breeds, but I don't know if there's some other unrelated trait that can produce the same effect in non-pure-bred barred birds.
My point of doubt is that Speedy is silent and the comb and wattles are within the range of ambiguity for what I've seen from prior chicks from the same flock - so if those are truly my only thing to go on, then it's not certain enough for me to put the Speedster straight on a path for the bachelor flock and I'll have to do potentially two flock moves. For comparison, this is what my cockerels are usually like by this age - big comb, very red, good wattles happening (even if not visible in the photo). This little dude is Smoke and he's well into making horrible noises at 5AM lol.
