Gold laced orpington

[notasilkie]

I hatched four of these beauties 2 and a half weeks ago. One in particular is a lot lighter than the other 3, and 2 seem bigger than the others. Could the colour be a sex thing?

The speckled yellow ones are sablepoot chicks... S/he is on the right in top pic and can see her next to a smaller sibling in the bottom pic.

Their feathers arent looking great, they spilled a whole drinker into the straw and were splashing around in it.

 

[ColtHandorf]

Congratulations on some beautiful birds! I myself have Silver-laced Orpingtons and find them both to be quite stunning. In my experience with breeds like Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and Brahmas the males seem to feather out more slowly than their female counterparts. Often times young pullets already have full wings and backs and tails while the little cockerels look positively pathetic with chick fuzz still on their backs and head. Males are typically "bigger boned" so you can often differentiate the sexes based on the thickness of their legs. You can't exactly say they are delicate but the pullets legs are generally slimmer than the cockerels. I'm not really sure what age you can start to see the difference though. I certainly can't on my chicks that hatched out over the weekend yet. But in the four to seven week old started birds I got from another breeder you certainly can. By six-seven weeks the cockerels should already be developing some pretty obvious combs and wattles. Especially if you have young pullets to compare them to.

Super early guess, but I'd say you have two pullets and two cockerels. The smaller two appear to be female. And the larger two (the one to the left of the Sablepoot in the first photo and the one in the back furthest to the right) appear to be cockerels based on the very thick legs on the first chick mentioned and the slower feathering on the last.

 

[notasilkie]

Thanks! I think you called it. Slow feathering explains the different colour so I bet that one at the least is a cockerel.

Will see how they develop

I love all the laced birds!