Comb size

[wyofam]

I raised my first fock of six chickens and lost most after a few years to predators. When I was raising them I never thought anything about them possibly being a rooster I just assumed the hatchery was correct in sending what I ordered. It worked out just fine. I have not had a great experience with the hatchery I ordered from this year and being more experienced I am paying more attention to the chicks as they develop. I also picked some up from a feed store and am paranoid that everything I have Is a rooster. I definitely don’t trust the hatchery. Does this olive egger at 3 weeks look like a rooster. It just seems the comb is large but I have a few other birds that I think are mutts that have about the same size of comb.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

That's an awfully large comb at 3 weeks to be a hen

These three are 3 or 4 weeks and you can see two don't have any comb at all still. Granted they're not hybrids, but still

 

[NatJ]

I have not had a great experience with the hatchery I ordered from this year and being more experienced I am paying more attention to the chicks as they develop. I also picked some up from a feed store and am paranoid that everything I have Is a rooster. I definitely don’t trust the hatchery.

I would usually trust a hatchery to get MOST genders right, if I ordered directly from the hatchery. I would expect no more than 1-2 wrong genders in any order up to 25 chicks. But you may have found a hatchery that is an exception to that

I would be much more doubtful about feed store chicks--I have seen too many stories of chicks that were the wrong breed or wrong gender or both. (I think the employees do not usually know enough about chicks to notice if mix-ups occur. After all, the chicks do not wear barcodes to let you check what kind they are!)

That particular chick in the picture may well be a cockerel, although at this age it's hard to know for sure.

 

[wyofam]

This Olive egger in particular was a hatchery bird but I guess I will just wait and see how the comb continues to develop. I just really don't want a bunch of roosters.
Thanks for the info.