How Do Feed Stores Claim All Their Chicks Are Hens?

[HJECG]

Now that spring is almost here, several of our local feed stores are carrying various breeds of baby chicks, such as Barred Rocks, Brown Leghorns, Austrolorps, Rhode Island Reds, etc. All the chicks are less than 2 weeks old and some are less than a week old.

Yet the feed store manager told me today that although the occasional cockerel gets mixed in, all the chicks they carry for sale are female, and he also said that the hatchery where they buy their chicks each spring is able to sex breeds such as the one I've listed as early as one or two days old. How is this possible? It's my understanding that woth the exception of sex-link varieties, there's no good way to sex a baby chick. Am I missing something here? Thanks!

 

[FaithM]

Most (if not all) standard size chicks actually can be sexed. They use processes called vent sexing and/or feather sexing, where they look for tiny distinctive differences in the vents or feather patterns of the chicks.

 

[Kelsie2290]

X2, most commercial hatcheries have chicks "vent sexed" by professionals, it is actually a job ... Dirty Jobs did an episode in McMurray Hatchery (link in the UK article), experienced people are 95+ % accurate
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/smallflocks/sexing_chicks.html#VentSexing ... http://geon.usc.edu/~biederman/publications/Biederman_Shiffrar_1987.pdf ... http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/sexing-day-old-chicks-zmaz74zhol.aspx

 

[Theo]

The last time I bought 4 chicks at a feed store, 1 was a cockerel. That's 75% accuracy. My friend bought 3 chicks last spring, one was a cockerel. That's 66% accuracy. I think the claim of 95% accuracy is farfetched.

 

[donrae]

The last time I bought 4 chicks at a feed store, 1 was a cockerel. That's 75% accuracy. My friend bought 3 chicks last spring, one was a cockerel. That's 66% accuracy. I think the claim of 95% accuracy is farfetched.

And to balance you, last time I bought chicks at a feed store I bought almost 30, and got 1 Oops rooster.

 

[Theo]

I just got 8 chicks hatched by a friend's broody hen. My friend said they were straight run--she brought me the ones that ran straight into her hands! The hard to catch ones stayed with their mama.

 

[Marthab1953]

Most feed stores buy their chicks sexed from the hatcheries.

 

[lazy gardener]

Hatcheries claim 90% accuracy. My last 6 chicks, from the hardware store... 3 EE were pullets. The 3 Doms ALL ended up being Roos. So either they had a newbie doing the sexing on the Doms, or they sometimes get sloppy and grab st run and call them pullets just to fill the quota.

 

[CAjerseychick]

Feedstores order from hatcheries-- when I did a hatchery order (13) they were 100% pullets-- we have 8 from the feedstore this year... so we will see...

 

[shmccarthy]

I've bought about 30 pullets from feed stores. Only one ended up being an oops rooster, a few years back.