Hello all! My name is Ashley and I am in Dallas county with a love for chickens! My first chicken, Queen Egglizabeth (Elly for short), is pictured in my profile image. I got her through an experiment in my AP Biology class. My teacher really sparked my interest for chickens and I raised Elly from egg to laying, and she now resides on my uncles farm. Today, I adopted 4 new baby chicks to try and save them from the gimmick that is buying children chicks for Easter. They are straight run, and I’m not sure of the breed either. One has feathered feet, 2 have white feathers coming in and a prominent tail, and the last one is much smaller and a more gray color. If you have any advice on raising them or sexing them and determining their breed, please let me know! Thank you!
Welcome! Chicken math is what they call it! Wait until you do ducks!
As for sexing, at this point.... All my experience knows is wing sexing. Once their wing feathers start coming in good... All long is roo and long short is pullet. There are so many more experienced eggsperts here and many threads to search through! Have fun! We're all chicken (and duck) crazy here!
Welcome to Backyard chickens. If you keep them till 6-8 weeks of age, the folks at "what breed or gender is this." may be able to sort them out for you. Thank you for saving from from Easter Baskets, and then getting dumped out with the trash.
I hope you enjoy being a BYC member. There are lots of friendly and very helpful folks here so not only is it overflowing with useful information it is also a great place to make friends and have some fun.
BYC has Topic of the Week discussions which I have found to be a great resource, informative and sometimes entertaining; so definitely worth checking out.
Including your general location on your profile will assist others. Location, climate, season etc can be important factors when members are responding to any questions you may have and vice versa.
Hello Ashley. Welcome to the flock! There’s so many friendly, knowledgeable folks here and I’m sure you’ll find this site a very useful resource. I hope you enjoy it as much as we all do.