Hello! I’m a new member! Looking forward to hearing all the tips on raising chickens.

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Lmduquet

In the Brooder
Mar 30, 2025
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We just bought four Sussex Bantam chickens. That’s all they had and we could not wait for the other shipment to come in. Haha. Looking forward to buying more within the next couple weeks. We had chickens about 10 years ago, so looking forward to all the tips on raising chickens again. My husband and I are both retired so we’re looking forward to raising our chickens.
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow

Congrats on your new flock! Chickens sure are becoming scarce this year, hopefully you can find more soon!

Definitely browse our forums and you might also stop by our Learning Center for all sorts of good reads on all the aspects of keeping chickens... https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/

Make yourself at home here and welcome to our community!
 
Thank you for all the welcoming. I feel right at home already. On our four bantam chickens they are straight run so we have no idea what they are. Hopefully more hens than roosters. And we have no idea how to tell early on if they are hens or roosters any tips on sexing them.
 
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

You will have to wait until they are around 3-4 weeks old to determine gender. You can post pictures at that time and we can help you learn what you have. Because most hatcheries are not able to vent sex such small chicks as bantams, you will have a pure straight run vs. the normal straight run hatcheries sell. The normal straight run is all the cockerels no one purchased along with a handful of pullets that didn't sell so the ratio of males to females is highly out of proportion from a natural hatch ratio.
 
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DobieLover said:
Hello and welcome to BYC! :frow Glad you joined.

You will have to wait until they are around 3-4 weeks old to determine gender. You can post pictures at that time and we can help you learn what you have. Because most hatcheries are not able to vent sex such small chicks as bantams, you will have a pure straight run vs. the normal straight run hatcheries sell. The normal straight run is all the cockerels no one purchased along with a handful of pullets that didn't sell so the ratio of males to females is highly out of proportion from a natural hatch ratio.
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Thank you for the information. I will send pictures when they are 3 to 4 weeks old. I read where you could tell by the wings and by the little tuft on their bottom but I think that was 80% accurate.
 
Lmduquet said:
Thank you for the information. I will send pictures when they are 3 to 4 weeks old. I read where you could tell by the wings and by the little tuft on their bottom but I think that was 80% accurate.
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Many pullets will develop their primary wing feathers in their first week and cockerels can be slow to feather out for a couple of weeks, however this is not written in stone.
 
Lmduquet said:
I read where you could tell by the wings and by the little tuft on their bottom but I think that was 80% accurate.
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That's 50% accurate. In other words, either guess for gender has an equal likelihood of being correct... even if you didn't even look at the bird.
 

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