Hen or roo?

[For the love of buffs]

Hey there! I am very confused with this chick. (I’m calling it a she until I know otherwise) She is four months old and has been my favorite chicken from our early March hatch of eight chicks. We call her vanilla and we thought it was a hen until this month when we had to separate her from the others due to a small head injury. She is the smallest by far and the others step on her so we thought it would be best to separate them. It only took about two weeks of being inside our house for her to change A LOT. Her comb which wasn’t the smallest in the first place went to a huge red comb, Her feathers are growing quite a bit and now she is failing but trying to crow, I still feel strongly that she is a hen because her mother has a huge comb and she also makes the egg-laying cackle. Is it possible she’s crowing to get our attention? Your thoughts? Here’s a few weeks ago the first day she came inside.

and…this is her now

and here’s her mom

 

[WingItRanch]

Can you get a side view of her showing hackle and saddle feathers?

The mother does have a nice big comb so it's possible it is a pullet but the fact you've heard it attempting crow pretty much settles that it's a cockerel. Plus. The comb is pretty large for only 4 months. I would expect it to get this big closer to POL (~6 months).

Females can crow but it would be very unusual at this age.

 

[For the love of buffs]

Here’s some of her right now. I can’t really see any saddle feathers or hackles unless i’m looking wrong

 

[For the love of buffs]

I’ll come back with some better pictures soon! It’s stormy outside right now

 

[For the love of buffs]

Here’s one from outside just now

 

[WingItRanch]

You said they hatched early March. So are we thinking around 20 weeks old?

This one is tricky for me because the feathers are sort of shredded so it's hard to tell if I'm seeing pointy hackles and saddles.

I think I'm still leaning toward cockerel but I'll tag a couple more people.

 

[WingItRanch]

@JedJackson @Jener8or

 

[Jener8or]

Cockerel. I think there are some shiny saddle feathers starting to come in.

 

[JedJackson]

It is a cockerel. Male specific feathering is just starting to peep through in a couple of spots. You can see a bit on the shoulder and the saddle-- it is the brighter colored feathers coming in.