Hampbar hen or roo? 3 weeks old

[Ben_ep1]

We got this Hampbar chick a couple weeks ago when it was about a week old at the Wilco. We thought it was a hen off the bat by our previous sexing experience but we don’t have much regarding Hampbars. There’s not many pics of chicks for hampbars online, and even though they’re autosexing, it seems confusing if the black spotting is or isn’t on the males. Her comb is growing faster than we’ve seen our pullet chicks grow theirs, and she’s also growing feathers much faster than the other three chicks, granted she was about a week older. We thought she was the darker sex, which is supposed to be female but I’m not so sure anymore.
She seems to be very calm and docile though, semi-curious.
So, hen or roo?

 

[JedJackson]

From what I read, males won't have any black spotting on the down feathers when they are chicks and females should. So that may be one way to tell, if you can remember to how it looked when younger.

Conversely, feathered out males seem to have black tails and wing feathers, with barring. This is from the few pictures I could find online of Hampbar roosters. I do not have personal experience with this breed, but going by that, I think your bird is female.

It does have a pretty big comb for its age, but I think it is too early to tell by that measure.

Since all of this is a bit mysterious and conflicting, I would wait and see what happens. Time always tells.

 

[Ben_ep1]

From what I read, males won't have any black spotting on the down feathers when they are chicks and females should. So that may be one way to tell, if you can remember to how it looked when younger.

Conversely, feathered out males seem to have black tails and wing feathers, with barring. This is from the few pictures I could find online of Hampbar roosters. I do not have personal experience with this breed, but going by that, I think your bird is female.

It does have a pretty big comb for its age, but I think it is too early to tell by that measure.

Since all of this is a bit mysterious and conflicting, I would wait and see what happens. Time always tells.

Thanks! It does seem like the more uniform feathering leans more female than male so far, but the comb is just so big it concerns me. This is what she looked like when she was younger:

 

[JedJackson]

It's just such a rare breed that there isn't much to go on. I hope you get a female, but unless someone more familiar with the breed comes along, I think it is a waiting game.

 

[fluffycrow]

I must admit that I had never heard of this breed before opening this thread (or maybe I had, and it’s just completely slipped my mind).

So I’m sure Jed is already a much more valuable commenter than I.

Maybe @Rhodebar Lover can help?

Whatever the outcome, please update us. It’s not very common that we get breeds/mixes that are on the rare size, and seeing how each sex of said breeds develops can help us all with future sex guesses

 

[JedJackson]

I must admit that I had never heard of this breed before opening this thread (or maybe I had, and it’s just completely slipped my mind).

So I’m sure Jed is already a much more valuable commenter than I.

Maybe @Rhodebar Lover can help?

Whatever the outcome, please update us. It’s not very common that we get breeds/mixes that are on the rare size, and seeing how each sex of said breeds develops can help us all with future sex guesses

It's one of many autosexing breeds. I think these are Rhodebar male over New Hampshire female. I'm betting since these seem new that the autosexing traits are not strongly defined.

 

[Whittni]

I've never heard of it either. "The Hampbar is a rare, auto-sexing, dual-purpose chicken breed developed in Canada during the 1950s by crossing Rhodebar males with New Hampshire females. Known as Barred New Hampshires, they are hardy, active foragers, and reliable layers of brown eggs. They are excellent for small farms due to their foraging skills and cold tolerance. "