Gendering chicks by color?

[Ketta_czarina]

I picked up these chicks yesterday, and the guy at the ranch said they have Phoenix coloring...

Can I determine sex by color pattern? I think they are three days old, I tried checking their wings but they are so tiny. Any other tricks?

 

[sylviethecochin]

If Mum was silver, the chicks might be sexable by colouring. Might. We'd have to assume that those are her eggs.

Wing sexing probably won't work either.You need either a pure breed that has been bred for feathering out at a certain speed (Barred Rocks, for example, are slow-feathering) or a fast-feathering rooster over a slow-feathering hen for that to work. You don't know the parent breeds, so you can wing-sex them, but there's a pretty good chance that it'll be wrong.

All I can tell you is to post individual pictures at eight weeks.

 

[Ketta_czarina]

If Mum was silver, the chicks might be sexable by colouring. Might. We'd have to assume that those are her eggs.

Wing sexing probably won't work either.You need either a pure breed that has been bred for feathering out at a certain speed (Barred Rocks, for example, are slow-feathering) or a fast-feathering rooster over a slow-feathering hen for that to work. You don't know the parent breeds, so you can wing-sex them, but there's a pretty good chance that it'll be wrong.

All I can tell you is to post individual pictures at eight weeks.

True, I didn’t think about them not being her eggs, but she was hiding them all in a bucket in a barn, so it’s likely. Can’t believe how tiny and cute these little fluff balls are.