Do your Italian hens have orange chests?

[FloorCandy]

For the last few days I’ve been examining my only Italian chick from my last group. I currently only have 1 normal golden Italian, and a ton of pearls, and clearly the pearls give me no experience with regular ones lol.

So the Italian chick has been looking like it was getting orange pins on the chest for a few days, they’re like 2 1/2 to 3 weeks or so old. Today it was certain, orange chest, that inverted V under the neck with no new spots coming in. I have 35 chicks in the house now, and it’s gonna be 45 degrees next week so they can’t move out. I bit the bullet and culled it.

Ive been rotating the snowie x celadons inside one at a time so I can see if they lay blue, I band them and move them out once I see their egg. I took the previous girl out and I went and tossed some greens into the pen and grabbed the first one in reach. It was my only golden Italian, and she has an orange chest with sparse spotting below the neck. So I feel terrible I may have culled a hen.

I didn’t photo the chick, but here is my hen. I looked at images online and I’m seeing Italians with cream chests with spots.

 

[Kale the Quail]

For the last few days I’ve been examining my only Italian chick from my last group. I currently only have 1 normal golden Italian, and a ton of pearls, and clearly the pearls give me no experience with regular ones lol.

So the Italian chick has been looking like it was getting orange pins on the chest for a few days, they’re like 2 1/2 to 3 weeks or so old. Today it was certain, orange chest, that inverted V under the neck with no new spots coming in. I have 35 chicks in the house now, and it’s gonna be 45 degrees next week so they can’t move out. I bit the bullet and culled it.

Ive been rotating the snowie x celadons inside one at a time so I can see if they lay blue, I band them and move them out once I see their egg. I took the previous girl out and I went and tossed some greens into the pen and grabbed the first one in reach. It was my only golden Italian, and she has an orange chest with sparse spotting below the neck. So I feel terrible I may have culled a hen.

I didn’t photo the chick, but here is my hen. I looked at images online and I’m seeing Italians with cream chests with spots.
View attachment 2648350

that one looks like a hen to me.

 

[Nabiki]

For the last few days I’ve been examining my only Italian chick from my last group. I currently only have 1 normal golden Italian, and a ton of pearls, and clearly the pearls give me no experience with regular ones lol.

So the Italian chick has been looking like it was getting orange pins on the chest for a few days, they’re like 2 1/2 to 3 weeks or so old. Today it was certain, orange chest, that inverted V under the neck with no new spots coming in. I have 35 chicks in the house now, and it’s gonna be 45 degrees next week so they can’t move out. I bit the bullet and culled it.

Ive been rotating the snowie x celadons inside one at a time so I can see if they lay blue, I band them and move them out once I see their egg. I took the previous girl out and I went and tossed some greens into the pen and grabbed the first one in reach. It was my only golden Italian, and she has an orange chest with sparse spotting below the neck. So I feel terrible I may have culled a hen.

I didn’t photo the chick, but here is my hen. I looked at images online and I’m seeing Italians with cream chests with spots.
View attachment 2648350

I have a hen that looks like that.

 

[FloorCandy]

that one looks like a hen to me.

I know that’s a hen for sure, I watched her lay an egg today after I brought her in, and she’s plenty old to have a wide lady vent. The chick is who I’m concerned might not have been male, because I culled it based on chest color, Then I fish this girl out of a pen, and she has the same chest color. But I didn’t photo the chick. I’m just wondering if it’s common for an Italian hen to have an orange chest. If it’s not common, I feel like it’s a better possibility the chick was male.

Not that it matters, I can’t bring it back anyway, I guess. I just feel like an idiot for not even looking at the hen before I decided to cull. I was like, well boy, no sense feeding you for another day.

 

[CovidtimeQuail]

You're all so much more experienced than me, but so far all the ones with spots (even sparse) on their chests have been hens.

 

[muddy75]

I know that’s a hen for sure, I watched her lay an egg today after I brought her in, and she’s plenty old to have a wide lady vent. The chick is who I’m concerned might not have been male, because I culled it based on chest color, Then I fish this girl out of a pen, and she has the same chest color. But I didn’t photo the chick. I’m just wondering if it’s common for an Italian hen to have an orange chest. If it’s not common, I feel like it’s a better possibility the chick was male.

Not that it matters, I can’t bring it back anyway, I guess. I just feel like an idiot for not even looking at the hen before I decided to cull. I was like, well boy, no sense feeding you for another day.

The males will tend to have more brown on the head in some of the lighter colors and @Nabiki can tell gender by the face mask in some colors too. I haven’t paid close attention to my Italian hens in a while.....I can mainly tell by the bald heads!!!! I will try to look closer and maybe even get a couple pics today.

 

[FloorCandy]

The males will tend to have more brown on the head in some of the lighter colors and @Nabiki can tell gender by the face mask in some colors too. I haven’t paid close attention to my Italian hens in a while.....I can mainly tell by the bald heads!!!! I will try to look closer and maybe even get a couple pics today.

I can usually tell with manchurians by the head color, and with the head markings for Italian I thought I kind of had the hang of it, then I got a snowie with what looked like female head markings, and had a spotted chest. Then I see him crowing a couple weeks later, pull him out, big bulge and foam, so I guess I’m not great at it yet. With wild pattern, I’m great at early diagnosis haha, but not Italian yet.

 

[dand883]

I had a hen with the same rusty coloured chest and even less speckles than the one in your picture. I was convinced she was a male when younger and kept her as one of my 2 males when i was deciding who to keep, but then i started getting an extra egg each day that i hadn't accounted for and the male grew the brown head mask that others have already mentioned.